Great Green Wall - The African Mirror

Feb

2022

The new world wonder: a 100 million hectares wall to protect Africa

BAHER KAMAL ONCE completed in 2030, it could well be considered the world’s eighth wonder, this time natural. It is the African-led Great Green Wall or the largest living structure on the planet – an 8.000 kilometres natural hit stretching across the entire width of the continent. It is a symbol of hope in the face of one of the biggest challenges of our time – desertification, the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) informs. And it aims at restoring Africa’s degraded landscapes and transforming millions of lives in one of the world’s poorest regions, the Sahel. Launched in 2007 by…

Jan

2021

By The African Mirror

African Development Bank backs young ‘agripreneurs’ to beat climate change

BUSINESS

MEGAN ROWLING THE African Development Bank plans to deploy billions of dollars to help young people build a new digitally-driven model of agriculture that can feed the continent's people and boost prosperity even as the planet heats up, its president said. At a global summit this week, the bank and the Global Center on Adaptation announced an initiative to strengthen African efforts to become more resilient to extreme weather and rising seas, threats worsened by fast-accelerating climate change. The African Development Bank plans to put half of its climate finance towards the initiative - $12.5 billion between now and 2025…

Jan

2021

By The African Mirror

Africa’s Great Green Wall aims for fresh growth spurt after sluggish start

ENVIRONMENT

THIN LEI WIN GROWING up in a village in Burkina Faso, Georges Bazongo remembers his parents and neighbours cutting down trees each year to expand their farmland so they could "grow enough food for our families to eat". He also noticed some trees becoming drier in the drought-prone region, an indication too that the soil was deteriorating as heavy rains washed away its fertile layer. Some of his relatives moved to Ivory Coast in search of a better life, Bazongo, 48, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. But things started improving a decade ago when the government and environmental groups helped…

Jan

2021

By The African Mirror

Donors pledge $14 bln for ‘Green Wall’ to hold back Sahara

ENVIRONMENT

DEVELOPMENT banks and states have pledged a total of $14.32 billion over the next four years to build a "Great Green Wall" to help contain desertification in Africa's northern Sahel region, French President Emmanuel Macron has announced. Speaking at an international biodiversity summit in Paris that his government is hosting, Macron said the pledges had exceeded the initial target of $10 billion. Creeping desertification of land on the edges of the Sahara desert that used to be productive is plunging people into desperate poverty and driving some to migrate. The project covers a strip of land stretching 8,000 km (5,000…