The African Development Bank (AfDB) has highlighted the importance of preserving the Sahel region and stopping desertification as a result of climate change.

Speaking about the Great Green Wall initiative during the United Nations COP26 conference this week, AfDB president Dr Akinwumi Adesina said the wall was not one that divides, but unites – uniting livelihoods, resilience and adaptation against climate change.

The wall involves building an 8 000-km-long and 15-km-wide swathe of trees, grasslands and plants across the Sahel, which should help to restore degraded land and help inhabitants of the Sahel produce food, create jobs and promote peace.

The Sahel is a semiarid region of western and north-central Africa extending from Senegal eastward to Sudan.

Adesina noted that desertification, obliteration by sand dunes and droughts had continued to pummel vast areas of the Sahara and the Sahel.

“Life is unbearable, so people migrate, populations are displaced, conflicts are aggravated as previously coexisting communities of farmers and herders engage in relentless battles over declining communal resources.”

He added that, for the millions of people in the region, it was either adapt or see the disappearance of the Sahel.

AfDB had committed to mobilise $6.5-billion towards the Great Green Wall initiative, by 2025. This is 45% of the $14.5-billion that development partners committed to the initiative at the One Planet Summit in Paris.

It also represented 20% of the $33-billion needed to deliver on the ten-year priority investments of the Great Green Wall by 2030.

Adesina said his institution was delivering on its commitment through several projects, including $2-billion for the Desert-to-Power programme to deliver universal access to electricity in the G5 Sahel countries (Niger, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Burkina Faso) through solar power.

Adesina mentioned that French President Emmanuel Macron’s leadership in convening the One Planet Summit for Biodiversity earlier in the year, and his call for commitment to accelerate certain climate actions, had been a turning point for the Great Green Wall initiative.