The Green Wall of the Sahara and Sahel

going green... 


The Sahara desert experiences one of the harshest weather conditions in the world. The very dry, sandy winds and hot weather conditions certainly affect trade output and patterns in this region. For instance as sand dunes move, they bury villages, roads, oases, crops, irrigation channels and dams, causing major economic damage and increasing poverty and food insecurity.This groundbreaking transcontinental project tries to address this.

African nations on the desert border south of the Sahara are taking action to halt the march of sands by creating a great wall of green. They are contributing to the prevention of desert advancement and the development of the Saharo-Sahelian zones in order to ensure sustainable natural resource management and poverty reduction.

The “Great Green Wall” project is largely a multi-species vegetal belt 15 km wide that will link Dakar and Djibouti and stretch over a distance of about 7000 km. However it won’t be a continuous band of trees, but may be rerouted if necessary to avoid obstacles (streams, rocky terrains, mountains and rock hills) or go through inhabited areas, stretching from Mauritania in the west to Djibouti in the east.

The initiative will be a set of cross-sectoral actions and interventions aimed at the conservation and protection of natural resources with a view to achieving development and particularly, alleviating poverty. The trees however will be "drought-adapted species", preferably native to the areas planted, and so far about 37 suitable species have been identified. 

The African Union officially adopted the Great Green Wall initiative in December 2006 as one of the pillars of a rural strategy which reconciles development and environment. At the 8th common session of the Conference of the Heads of State and Government held in January 2007, the African Union adopted Declaration 137 VIII approving the Initiative "Green Great wall of Sahara. "

The plan benefits from Africa-EU Climate Change Partnership support and is implemented in collaboration with the Community of Sahel-Saharan States (CEN-SAD). The Project has been in the works for several years with sources indicating funding difficulties and concerns regarding its maintenance. Nonetheless, it is expected that tree planting will soon begin. The great green belt will be 7000km long and 15km wide, at a cost $3 million to plant. The west-most section will be planted in Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, and Senegal, while the eastern section will be planted in Chad, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Sudan.


Being a transboundary Programme, the implementation of the Great Green Wall Initiative would require some degree of policy harmonization for the implementation of issues such as transboundary range, ecosystems, water management and joint afforestation programmes. The participating countries would need to review their relevant policies and legislation to accommodate community involvement in environmental resources management and ownership of the benefits. 

Meanwhile the Food and Agriculture Organization has recently published a manual featuring a project in Mauritania which successfully fixed dunes and stopped sand encroachment. Sand encroachment is what happens when grains of sand are carried by winds and collect in dunes on the coast, along watercourses and on cultivated or uncultivated land.

According to a Study by the Sahara and Sahel Observatory (OSS), the threat prosed by desertification is particularly acute in Africa, one of the continents most affected by the processes and impacts of land degradation and the deterioration of the communities' living conditions, particularly in the CEN-SAD area characterized by climate ranging from hyper-arid to dry sub-humid. 

Livelihoods in the countries located in this sub-region are heavily dependent on soil, water and vegetation resources, which have become increasingly fragile due to the mounting pressure being exerted on them.