To succeed, the Great Green Wall must approach the Sahel’s restoration by going beyond tree planting to prioritize native species, soil regeneration, and local community leadership.
When Green Turns Gray
The Sahel, an 8,000-kilometer belt stretching across Africa’s southern Sahara, is often described as a place of extremes. The sun beats down relentlessly, and when rain does come, it arrives in violent bursts, carving deep scars into the earth. Amid this harsh reality stands an unsettling sight—rows of dead trees, brittle and leafless, stripped of life.
These “ghost forests” are what remains of the Great Green Wall Initiative (GGWI), a project launched in 2007 by the African Union with a sweeping vision: halt desertification, restore degraded lands, and create sustainable livelihoods. Millions of trees were planted to reclaim the Sahel from encroaching desert, but many have not survived. Instead of a thriving green belt, vast stretches remain barren, the trees’ skeletal remains a quiet indictment of what has gone wrong.
This shortcoming is not just about trees. The GGWI was never supposed to be just a tree-planting campaign. It was meant to tackle some of the Sahel’s deepest problems: climate change, food insecurity, and poverty. The . . .
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