UN commits $78m to revive Africa’s Great Green Wall

The United Nations and its partners have unveiled a $78 million programme to restore more than 270,000 hectares of degraded land and improve livelihoods for five million people across nine Sahelian countries.

The programme, funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF), is aimed at tackling land degradation, drought and growing climate pressures threatening communities across Africa’s Sahel region.

The initiative will cover Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Chad, Ethiopia, The Gambia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Senegal, with more than half of the expected beneficiaries being women.

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) said the GEF grant would provide a major boost to the Great Green Wall Initiative, taking total pooled resources for the programme above $500 million when combined with partner co-financing.

UNEP will implement eight of the programme’s 10 projects and coordinate their delivery across the participating countries, while the West African Development Bank (BOAD) will implement the remaining two.

The investment is expected to support the restoration of degraded landscapes while creating economic opportunities for communities whose livelihoods are increasingly threatened by drought, desertification and climate change.

The Great Green Wall is a major African environmental initiative focused on restoring degraded land across the Sahel, improving food security and strengthening communities’ resilience to climate-related shocks.

Nigeria’s inclusion in the programme is particularly significant as the country is one of the participating states in the continental Great Green Wall Initiative, which targets degraded areas across the country’s northern belt.

The new funding is expected to strengthen restoration efforts while supporting communities facing worsening environmental and livelihood pressures across the region.