The National Office of the Great Green Wall (NOGGW) was created in 2016 by Council of Ministers Decree No 36 and was activated in July 2021 in accordance with Ministerial Decree No 6, declared by the Minister of Agriculture and Forests. These actions were line with the recommendations of multiple evaluations that were carried out in which it was deemed necessary to strengthen the capacities of the institutional and organizational structures of the Great Green Wall (GGW) initiative and GGW national structures of the participating countries.

This work was carried out with support from the CGIAR Initiative on Climate Resilience, ClimBeR. We would like to thank the Belgium Federal Public Services (FPS) Foreign Affairs, Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation and all funders who supported this research through their contributions to the CGIAR Trust Fund. 

• The Great Green Wall (GGW) is focused on land restoration through tree planting and natural regeneration across 8,000km of the Sahel.
• Impacts to-date include land restoration on 4m hectares of the official target zone and an additional 14m ha across the target region. USD 90m in revenue has also been generated.
• The GGW has the potential to contribute to global goals related to climate mitigation, ecological resilience, improved human health and wellbeing, and equity and empowerment.

The Great Green Wall initiative is a pan-African flagship programme of the African Union that seeks to tackle the triple challenges of desertification, climate change and loss of biodiversity. It aims to restore 100 million hectares of currently degraded land stretching across 8 000 km of Africa from west to east, sequester 250 million tons of carbon, and create 10 million green jobs by 2030 across the Sahel region (UNCCD, 2020; GGW website).

The Great Green Wall initiative is a pan-African flagship programme of the African Union that seeks to tackle the triple challenges of desertification, climate change and loss of biodiversity. It aims to restore 100 million hectares of currently degraded land stretching across 8 000 km of Africa from west to east, sequester 250 million tons of carbon, and create 10 million green jobs by 2030 across the Sahel region (UNCCD, 2020; GGW website).

The Africa Union’s Great Green Wall Initiative Strategy and ten-year Implementation Framework, drafted in December 2022, reiterates the need to facilitate collaboration between stakeholders – including strengthening linkages with the research community – to coordinate and scale actions towards achieving its goals.