Africa is suffering from increasing heat and droughts, even though the continent itself plays a very small role in causing climate change. Environmentalists are working on a massive project that will see the planting of a green belt leading from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea. On a hot morning in July, and a man with a graying beard is crawling through the grass of the Sahel in northern Senegal. He joyfully picks up the seed of a zachun tree, then that of a baobab. Tiny seedlings are emerging from the ground in one of the poorest and most drought-stricken regions on Earth. "It's working," says Haïdar el Ali. Then he kneels down in front of the sapling of an acacia tree and emits an almost childlike laugh. "Without us, this grass and these young trees wouldn’t be here."

The idea is simple: A gigantic green belt south of the Sahara is supposed to stop the desertification and degradation of the land and help make the effects of the devastating droughts more bearable. The Great Green Wall is to extend from Senegal in the west of Africa to Djibouti in the east, a length of around 8,000 kilometers (4,970 miles) and about 15 kilometers wide. The belt is expected to sequester 250 million tons of carbon dioxide and create 10 million green jobs. The majority of the planting is to be completed by 2030. For years, the project had been plagued by a lack of money, but in January, the international community pledged around $14 billion, nearly half of the $33 billion the African Union says will be needed to complete the wall by 2030.

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