An ambitious effort to build a transcontinental wall of vegetation across Africa to halt the Sahara’s southward expansion is encountering significant difficulties, with progress in Senegal highlighting the immense challenges of the undertaking. The Great Green Wall for the Sahara and the Sahel Initiative, launched in 2007 by the African Union, has been hampered by a lack of funding, regional instability, and insufficient monitoring, leading to slow and fragmented implementation on the ground. Despite being considered one of the most proactive nations in the project, Senegal’s reforestation efforts show modest results when measured against the program’s ultimate goals, underscoring a continent-wide struggle to realize the vision.
The initiative has evolved from its initial concept of a simple tree barrier into a more complex mosaic of sustainable land use projects. The overarching goals are to restore 100 million hectares of degraded land, sequester 250 million tons of carbon, and create 10 million green jobs by 2030. This integrated approach aims to combat desertification while simultaneously providing economic opportunities for the millions of people living on the front lines of climate change. However, with the 2030 deadline approaching, the project has only achieved about 18% of its land restoration target, raising serious questions about its trajectory and the viability of its ambitious timeline.
An Evolving Restoration Strategy
Experts and project leaders have increasingly recognized that the initial vision of a literal wall of trees stretching 8,000 kilometers from Dakar to Djibouti was insufficient. The strategy has shifted to a more holistic and flexible concept involving a patchwork of different land use projects, including forested areas, grasslands, and sustainable farmland. This approach acknowledges the varied ecological and social landscapes across the Sahel.
The modern vision for the Great Green Wall emphasizes community involvement and sustainable livelihoods as core components of successful land restoration. The goal is to move beyond mere tree-planting exercises and instead foster systems that help local communities build their incomes. In Senegal, partners are working to develop resilient ecosystems by consulting with local populations, particularly women and young people. Projects include the creation of community-based nature reserves and the development of value chains for non-wood forest products, such as ecotourism, to provide sustainable income. This model helps ensure that restored areas are protected in the long term because the local population has a direct economic stake in their success.
Senegal’s Proactive But Limited Progress
Senegal has been a leader in implementing the Great Green Wall, yet its experience demonstrates the project’s slow pace. The designated route for the wall in Senegal stretches 545 kilometers and covers an area of 817,500 hectares across three regions. The country’s implementation is managed by the Senegalese Agency for Reforestation and the Great Green Wall (ASERGMV), which has prioritized research and development to support its efforts.
Despite this proactive stance, the tangible results remain limited. Between 2008 and 2021, official figures show that 57,000 hectares were reforested in Senegal, averaging just over 4,000 hectares per year. A 2020 report provided a slightly larger figure, indicating a total of 119,202 hectares had been restored through various methods, including traditional reforestation, assisted natural regeneration, and the installation of windbreaks. While these efforts are significant, they represent a small fraction of the country’s total commitment and highlight the practical difficulties of large-scale restoration in an arid environment.
Pervasive Implementation Challenges
The Great Green Wall initiative faces a formidable array of obstacles that extend across the entire Sahel region. A volatile security situation in many participating countries creates dangerous conditions for workers and disrupts long-term projects. Beyond security, environmental and logistical hurdles abound, including a severe lack of water, which makes nurturing saplings a monumental task.
Coordination and Monitoring Deficiencies
Stakeholders have repeatedly pointed to fragmented communication and poor coordination among the many agencies, governments, and partners involved as a primary cause of delays. Many programs have been criticized for having limited impact on the ground. There is also a critical need for better long-term monitoring of reforested areas to assess survival rates and overall ecological health. In Senegal, it has been noted that a more robust technical capacity is needed to accurately assess the total amount of degraded land and track the progress of restoration interventions.
Financial Shortfalls and Delays
Securing the necessary $33 billion to achieve the 2030 goals has been one of the project’s most significant challenges. While international partners have pledged substantial sums, the disbursement of these funds has been slow and inconsistent. In 2021, the Great Green Wall Accelerator was launched by world leaders to inject new life into the project, promising $14.3 billion between 2021 and 2025. However, as of March 2023, only $2.5 billion of that pledge had been delivered, frustrating efforts to scale up activities on the ground. In Senegal, total international funding as of 2019 amounted to just over $18 million.
The Path Forward to 2030
Despite the slow progress, supporters of the Great Green Wall remain hopeful that the initiative can accelerate. The project’s leaders believe that the knowledge gathered over the first 15 years has provided crucial lessons on what works and what does not. The focus is now on applying these lessons, particularly by empowering local communities and ensuring that restoration projects deliver tangible economic benefits that encourage long-term stewardship of the land.
Collaborations are being forged to advance these goals. For instance, the Olympic Forest project, a partnership between the International Olympic Committee and the nonprofit Tree Aid, aims to plant over half a million trees in Mali and Senegal as part of the Great Green Wall. This project is designed to sequester carbon while serving as a direct income stream for local communities. Such initiatives, combined with the broader strategic shift from planting trees to cultivating resilient socio-ecological systems, represent the evolving hope for the Great Green Wall’s future success in halting the encroaching desert and building a more prosperous future for the people of the Sahel.
