A Great Green Wall for Southern Africa?

The situation will only become more severe in the years ahead: By the middle of this century, climate change will cause a 22 per cent drop in maize production and an 18 per cent fall in groundnut production, according to a recent study. Outputs of other staple crops like sorghum, millet, and cassava will also be affected. That’s disturbing news for a region that has already proven incredibly vulnerable to famine.
Bringing southern Africa’s farmlands back to good health is key to helping the region’s farmers build their resilience to climate change and prepare them for whatever other challenges may lie ahead. But doing so require will require ample amounts of both funding and coordination – which so far has been lacking.
“The biggest failure of all of the efforts to stop land degradation over the last 50 years has been the haphazard nature of the different projects,” says Elvis Paul Tangem of the African Union. “A lot of different initiatives have been tried. What’s needed is a common platform.”
Tangem was at the Beating Famine, Southern Africa Conference, which was held in Malawi from 14-17 April, to try to build momentum for just such a platform. Using the political weight of the African Union (AU), he wants to create a movement to build a Great Green Wall for Southern Africa, along the lines of a similar initiative for the Sahara and the Sahel that was launched by the AU in 2007.
The Sahel project – officially the Great Green Wall for the Sahara and the Sahel – has already mobilised an impressive $2 billion in funding from an array of donors including the World Bank and the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO). The initiative started off as a grand notion to build a “wall” of trees along the southern edge of the Sahara, from Senegal in the west to the Horn of Africa in the east. But it has gradually shifted to a more holistic project to promote sustainable farming practices across Africa’s central drylands belt.
The project has already yielded some impressive results: Under the umbrella of the Great Green Wall, Senegal has restored 27,000 hectares of degraded land and planted 11 million native trees. Ten countries across the region have adopted national action plans and set up dedicated national agencies to support the campaign.
The Great Green Wall has been successful, Tangem says, because it works with projects and structures that already exist at the regional, national, and local levels. The metaphor of the “wall” has also proven to be incredibly attractive to donors, even if a physical wall of trees hasn’t been the project’s literal objective.
“What we bring to the table is the power of politics and diplomacy – the power to advocate when we need to do it,” Tangem says. “It’s a huge project, but it’s working because we’re coordinating and advocating. It brings people together where others have failed.”
Now, Tangem hopes to bring that platform to Southern Africa, a region whose land degradation crisis has so far failed to capture the attention of the international community. And he has found some ardent supporters for his cause.
“Southern Africa has a more alarming negative trend in land degradation compared to the rest of the continent, but the region has been relatively neglected in terms of funding,” says Dr. Dennis Garrity, a senior fellow at the World Agroforestry Centre and a United Nations Drylands Ambassador.
“Southern Africa could benefit enormously from a coordination mechanism like the Great Green Wall, because we have seen that such a device has given a huge boost to investment in the Sahel,” Garrity adds.
“I think this is a great opportunity,” Tangem says. “Southern Africa needs to get on board.”
Source: World Agroforestry Centre