Green Business Forum

With two thirds of its land degraded, the Sahel is characterized by its significant social and ecological vulnerability to climate change in combination with an exponentially fast growing population. The Sahel is also home to the largest land restoration opportunity in Africa. The restoration of degraded landscapes across this region presents a unique opportunity to rebuild its soil, biodiversity, water quality and resilience while creating new jobs, industries, and fostering local livelihood.

The Great Green Wall (of the Sahara and the Sahel) is an African Union-led Initiative aiming to establish a mosaic of green and productive landscapes across 100m hectares across the Sahel by 2030. The vision of the Great Green Wall is to allow the transformation of vast rural areas of the Sahel into economic emergence through cost-effective interventions.  After over a decade of slow growth and limited impact, unlocking the full potential of the region will require much faster action, implemented at bigger scale.

A renewed international support to the Great Green Wall initiative was announced during the One Planet summit in January 2021 and the Great Green Wall Accelerator was created to better coordinate the efforts of all the stakeholders and support the Pan African Agency of the Great Green Wall in resource mobilization and monitoring evaluation to build the most ambitious nature-based solution on the planet and demonstrate the leadership of the African continent on these issues. However, there remains a challenge in supporting investment to reach local entrepreneurs and communities.

This session will focus on exploring and defining opportunities for investment in restoration-focused, agricultural and landscape investments that bolsters food security, environmental resilience, and local livelihoods in the Sahel.

CIFOR-ICRAF speaker

Peter Minang

Directeur du CIFOR-ICRAF pour l'Afrique