The Great Green Wall initiative aims to restore land degraded by desertification and create sustainable jobs in Africa’s Sahel region.
The World Economic Forum’s Uplink platform has recognized ecopreneurs who contribute to sustainable development in the region.
Four start-ups in Mali, Benin and Niger have developed innovations which are helping people live and work more sustainably.The Sahel region of Africa is already feeling the effects of the climate crisis.

The Great Green Wall initiative (GGW) is an ambitious project which aims to “transform the lives of millions of people living on the frontline of climate change by creating a mosaic of green and productive landscapes across Africa,” according to the United Nations.

Conceived in 2007 by the African Union, it was a response to widespread land degradation as well as extreme poverty caused by severe droughts in the Sahel region. The GGW land restoration intervention zone is 8,000km long and 15km wide, covering 153 million hectares of the Sahel. A 2020 update report by the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) stated that almost 20 million hectares of land had been restored and 350,000 jobs had been created during the period 2007-2018. The GWW initiative has a target of restoring 100 million hectares of land by 2030, creating 10 million jobs in the process.

Making the Sahel more sustainable
The Trillion Trees: the Sahel and the Great Green Wall Challenge is part of the World Economic Forum’s UpLink platform. Its aim is to find innovative start-ups to “contribute to the vision of the Great Green Wall Initiative and deliver benefits to people and the environment of the Sahel”. It’s run in collaboration with the UNCCD and its Great Green Wall sourcing challenge, which calls on global supply chain managers “to upscale the use of sustainably produced Sahelian ingredients”. READ further from the source