The Great Green Wall: Implementation Status and Way Ahead to 2030 launched TODAY 7 September 2020. It evaluates the implementation of a most ambitious project along the southern tip of the Saharan desert in Africa.

The report , which was presented at a virtual meeting of the ministers of environment of the participating countries, takes stock of the progress made to restore land, create jobs and generate income in eleven Great Green Wall (GGW) countries: Burkina Faso, Chad, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal and Sudan. The GGW is an African-led initiative, launched by the African Union in 2007 and designed to transform the lives of 100 million people by growing an 8,000 km long and 15 km wide mosaic of trees, grasslands, vegetation and plants that can restore the degraded lands and help the region's inhabitants produce adequate food, create jobs and promote peace.

The GGW is a symbol of hope in the face of desertification, one of the foremost challenges of our time that has upended livelihoods in the Sahel and turned the region into one of the poorest in the world. Once complete, the Wall will be the largest living structure on the planet: a grown, not built, world wonder, stretching across the entire width of the continent of Africa.

Under the leadership of the African Union Commission and Pan-African Agency of the Great Green Wall, and with the financial support from the government of Ireland, the initiative has united African countries and international partners in an endeavor that could see 100 million hectares of degraded land restored, 250 million tons of carbon sequestered and ten million green jobs created by 2030.