the difficulties of the Great Green Wall megaproject in the Sahel

It is a pharaonic project developed by African countries and announced by the African Union in 2007. A Great Green Wall, crossing eleven countries, from Senegal to Djibouti, with a wall of trees 8,000 kilometers long. The goal is to save trees threatened by the advance of the desert, which is two kilometers on average per year. Since the launch of the project, less than 4% of the objectives have been achieved, and despite the support of the World Bank, the UN and the European Union, the project is struggling to get off the ground.

Often the money does not or does not arrive at the right place. In Mali and Sudan, the war slows down investment. In Senegal, thousands of acacia plants to be part of the project are dying. The means are not present. On the sidelines of COP26, Emmanuel Macron co-chaired a meeting on this subject. “It is obviously the climate emergency that we know everywhere, but it is also the fight against poverty and terrorism. All our fights are linked around these initiatives”, he explained. The project is already ten years behind schedule: of the 100 million hectares to be restored, only 4 million have been restored to date.