Women install barricades to halt the shifting dunes that threaten to swamp the oasis outside their village of Kaou, Chad. The oasis feeds their only source of farmland, but oases in the region have been shrinking steadily, elders say, in the face of hotter temperatures and stronger winds. The dune fixing is part of a broader intervention to support farming known as the Great Green Wall initiative.
Tommy Trenchard for NPR
Tommy Trenchard for NPR
In an arid valley near the village of Kourtimale in southern Djibouti, a tattered chain link fence marks the boundaries of what was once Abdi Guelleh’s farm. Within it, there’s not a speck of greenery in sight. Broken lengths of irrigation piping lie scattered in the dust. A derelict weather station stands in a corner amid a tangle of cables. Here and there, taps that haven’t seen water in years protrude from the earth.
There’s little to hint at the fact that this lifeless 2.5-acre plot was once meant to be one tiny brick in one of the world’s most ambitious environmental projects: Africa’s Great Green Wall.
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This multi-billion dollar project was launched by the African Union in 2007. The plan: to plant a “wall” of trees spanning the entire width of Africa — 4,350 miles long and 10 miles wide — to fight desertification in the Sahel, the arid region to the south of the Sahara desert.
The Wall’s vision was boundless, and its backers called it a “new world wonder.” It would re-green nearly 250 million acres of land across 11 countries from Senegal to Djibouti, and in doing so, would sequester 250 million tons of carbon, provide “green jobs” for 10 million people and alleviate poverty, food insecurity and conflict across the region.
Farmers at work on a farm outside Widou Thiengoly, Senegal, that was supposed to benefit from the Great Green Wall. The farm initially failed but was revived with funding from a Morocaan phosphate mining company.
Tommy Trenchard for NPR
Tommy Trenchard for NPR
The price tag was also massive: the United Nations estimated that $33 billion would be needed to complete the Wall. In each of the 11 countries, a national agency or dedicated ministerial department was set up to implement and track the project, with a coordinating entity, the Pan-African Great Green Wall Agency, based in Mauritania. International organizations — United Nations agencies, the World Bank, the African Development Bank, the European Union, the Green Climate Fund, the Global Environment Facility and others — pledged billions.
Eighteen years later, vast amounts of money have been spent, yet most of the planned Wall remains no more green than Abdi Guelleh’s barren field. What began as one of the world’s most ambitious ecological undertakings has in many ways devolved into a cautionary tale of poorly planned projects, lacking in local participation and entangled in a labyrinth of opaque financing.
Tomatoes grow, then wither
Guelleh can bear witness to the hope — and the letdown. When Djibouti’s government came to his village in 2014 and told him they’d be installing a water system to bring life to this parched land, turning it into a farm for the community, the 48-year-old father of 20 was thrilled. There were few jobs in the area and his life as a pastoralist, herding his livestock from place to place, was tough. Getting enough to eat was a struggle. Farming would be a safety net.
With funding from the Global Environment Facility, or GEF, the Djibouti government spent $150,000 digging a borehole to access underground water and another $100,000 fitting it with a solar pump that would fill a series of large concrete water tanks. They spent a further $50,000 damming a small stream to capture what little surface water existed.
Abdi Guelleh’s farm in Djibouti was supposed to benefit from the Great Green Wall project. Initially, it did. But today, there’s not a speck of greenery in sight.
Tommy Trenchard for NPR
Tommy Trenchard for NPR
With the system up and running, the new farm thrived. Guelleh and his fellow villagers grew tomatoes, legumes and fruits.
“I was able to feed my family,” says Guelleh. “We had food, which gave our community security.” Kourtimale’s farmers even earned a little money selling the surplus.
But within a few years, the water supply began to dwindle. The dam had been thwarted by persistent drought, then sprung leaks. The solar pump extracting the groundwater broke. It didn’t help that the borehole had brought new settlers to the valley, increasing strain on the remaining supply. Eventually, the water dried up altogether.
Today, a water truck paid for by the government still comes once a week from the capital to fill up the tanks, but without the pumped supply, there’s barely enough to give the livestock, let alone to irrigate Guelleh’s field. The crops withered and died. Before long, the farm reverted to desert.
Camels drink from a water tank that once irrigated a community farm in Kourtemale, Djibouti. The country’s Great Green Wall department installed a borehole and pump to bring water to the tanks, allowing the farm to flourish. But after the pump broke, nobody came to fix it. The land rapidly reverted to desert.
Tommy Trenchard for NPR
Tommy Trenchard for NPR
On a Monday last spring, Guelleh stood watching a procession of goats, donkeys and camels quenching their thirst at the water tank that once supplied his field.
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“What’s the point of having food for one day,” he said, reflecting on the futility of such a short-lived project, “if I’ll have no food tomorrow?”
Tree troubles
People like Guelleh are among the world’s most vulnerable to climate change. Just as temperatures in the Sahel are rising 1.5 times faster than the global average — Djibouti already reaches 106°F on average in summer — the population is also growing faster than anywhere else in the world. According to the U.N., over 135 million people in the region currently depend on degraded land for survival. Food insecurity, migration, terrorism and resource conflicts are all on the rise.
Boys stand on the edge of the town of Mao in Kanem Province, Chad, where desertifcation and land degradation are an increasing threat to the ability of locals to grow food. Some 135 million people in the region rely on the degraded land.
Tommy Trenchard for NPR
Tommy Trenchard for NPR
In the face of these massive challenges, the Wall was supposed to be a lifeline. At first, in 2007, the initiative set out to plant trees in enormous numbers to complete the vision of a literal green wall. The vast majority died, often because they were the wrong species and there wasn’t enough water — and because local communities in one of the world’s poorest regions were given little incentive to keep them alive.
“Scientifically, it was a disastrous idea,” says agronomist Dennis Garrity, who headed the World Agroforestry Center for 23 years. By then, he says, many studies had already shown that large scale tree-planting initiatives, especially in low-rainfall regions, typically led to “absolutely disastrous failure, over and over again.”
A farmer displays a handful of sandy soil at his field outside Sakal, Senegal. The farm was part of a Great Green Wall project and thrived for a time before falling into disrepair and reverting to desert.
Tommy Trenchard for NPR
Tommy Trenchard for NPR
Senegal — the poster child
Senegal was one of the driving countries behind the project, and its poster child. Officials claim to have restored some 850,000 hectares of land since 2007, roughly the size of the state of Delaware. The birthplace of the project was the small village of Widou Thiengoly, in the Ferlo valley in the north of the country: an arid savannah mainly inhabited by pastoralist, nomadic people.
“This is where it all started,” says Sergeant Ahmadou Badji, who oversees the Great Green Wall projects around Widou Thiengoly, showing us through a 1,700-acre plantation of sparse acacia trees planted in 2008.
Sergeant Ahmadou Badji, head of Great Green Wall efforts in the region of Widou Thiengoly, Senegal, tends to seedlings on a farm outside the village that was supposed to benefit from the project. It initially failed, then was revived with funding from a Moroccan phosphate mining company.
Tommy Trenchard for NPR
Tommy Trenchard for NPR
Many of the 10,000 saplings died within a few years of planting, Badji admits, but “considering how little rain we receive in this region, getting this kind of plant cover is already good.”
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Yet from above, the reforested area is hard to distinguish from the arid, acacia-studded landscape that surrounds it. “There is no difference between what is inside and outside the plots,” says Valerio Bini, a geographer and professor at the University of Milan who toured the sites around Widou Thiengoly in January 2025. “The Great Green Wall does not exist.”
An aerial view of a farm run by Senegal’s Great Green Wall agency outside Widou Thiengoly in the Ferlo Desert. The farm failed at first and has now been resurrected.
Tommy Trenchard for NPR
Tommy Trenchard for NPR
A study published in the Land Use Policy journal in October 2025 confirms just how little the reforestation projects actually worked. Out of 36 Great Green Wall plots surveyed in Senegal, covering nearly 45,000 acres, the researchers found that only one was more green than it would have been naturally due to rainfall. The ecological benefits of the Wall were “minimal to nonexistent,” they wrote. The social impacts were “periodic and short-lived” — mainly limited to short-term jobs preparing the saplings or farming small plots.
“It’s a very powerful, compelling narrative, but that’s all it is,” says one of the authors, environmental researcher Annah Zhu. “They’re just throwing away money, planting trees in the desert for them to die.”
Where’d the billions go?
Within a few years, the Great Green Wall switched focus toward a more metaphorical “wall.” Tree planting remained an important component, but the vision became broader, with more focus on cultivating arid, degraded land — like the mountains around Kourtimale or the Ferlo valley. Yet it has continued to be beset by problems. By 2020, 13 years into the project, a U.N. report found that only 4% of the land had been “restored.”
A borehole installed to support the Great Green Wall Initiative outside an oasis in Barkadroussou, Kanem province, Chad. The water supports 300 farmers in the oasis.
Tommy Trenchard for NPR
Tommy Trenchard for NPR
In 2021, aware of the lack of progress, international donors pledged a further $19 billion to the completion of the Wall. The Green Climate Fund alone has poured in $14.4 billion over the past decade, according to spokesman Simon Wilson. The EU contributed over $1.78 billion in just three years between 2021 and 2023 — information obtained through a Freedom of Information request. Other donors, including the World Bank, the African Development Bank, the GEF and the U.N., have contributed billions more.
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With so many international donors backing the project and hundreds of organizations large and small involved in implementing the Great Green Wall, it’s almost impossible to keep track of where all the money has gone. In 2023, 80% of the $19 billion pledged had been “programmed” but only 13% had been disbursed. In the countries along the Wall, the national agencies responsible for administering and overseeing the progress say they have received just a fraction of the money spent.
In a response to questions sent by NPR, the Pan-African Great Green Wall Agency said the initiative’s main challenges have been “funding issues to match the ambitions, coordination, national technical capacities, heterogeneity of contexts, public security in certain countries, and coordination of financing at the national level.”
“Despite intensified advocacy efforts … and significant announcements of financial support, the level of funding mobilized has remained well below the planned needs,” the agency said.
The Sahel is dubbed Africa’s “Coup Belt” for its recurring political instability and insurrections, and several Great Green Wall countries have also undergone major political upheavals since the initiative began, pushing environmental priorities to the sidelines.
But even in countries with relative stability like Senegal or Djibouti, projects like Abdi Guelleh’s farm have struggled to stay afloat.
A report card
Meeting in a hotel in Djibouti City, the head of the country’s Great Green Wall department, Abdoulfatah Arab, shed light on what went wrong in Kourtimale. The project had received just enough international funding to build the irrigation system on Guelleh’s farm, he explains, but didn’t have money to fix the dam and the solar pump once they broke down.
Arab hopes to be able to resurrect the project once money becomes available, but for now his department lacks the funds. In the ten years since they began operations, he says they’ve received just $30 million.
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“It’s less than 10% of what we were expecting,” he says. “Trying to hit our targets with this limited amount isn’t easy.”
The issues that led to the failure of the Kourtimale project — poor planning, lack of coordination between various stakeholders, inadequate funding — have been repeated countless times along the length of the Wall.
We visited 15 project sites along the Great Green Wall in Senegal, Chad and Djibouti. Some were more successful than others. A few small, green farms provided fresh vegetables to local communities, while other initiatives supported local producers with training and seeds. But most of the sites visited had returned to dust or showed no signs of being able to endure over time.
Young men eat slices of watermelon at a vendor’s stall in a market in the village of Karnak, Chad. The village has seen Great Green Wall interventions from an nongovernmental group looking to plant acacia trees.
Tommy Trenchard for NPR
Tommy Trenchard for NPR
“The reason you’re seeing results on the ground in an unsubstantial manner is because there are serious problems with coordination at the national level,” admits Gilles Ouedraogo, who heads the Great Green Wall Accelerator, an instrument of the U.N.’s Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) launched in 2021 to support the implementation and governance of the project and track its funding.
The national agencies “are not systematically involved in the implementation of Great Green Wall projects” where funding may instead go directly through the ministry of finance or other government institutions, he explains.
“There’s a myriad of actors involved without us being aware of what is being done,” confirms Aminata Diallo, the acting head of Senegal’s Great Green Wall Agency. “It is very difficult to track all this funding and all these projects in order to truly assess everything that is being done on the ground.”
Aminata Diallo, acting head of Senegal’s Great Green Wall Agency, at the agency’s offices in Dakar, Senegal.
Tommy Trenchard for NPR
Tommy Trenchard for NPR
Hoping … and waiting
But Ouedraogo believes there is cause for hope. After a leadership void for nearly two years, the Pan-African Agency now has a new executive secretary “who wants to advance the agenda,” he says. “There is a lot of goodwill around the table. It’s a huge, continual effort and we need everyone to play a part.”
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Deep in the rolling dunes of Chad’s desertic Kanem province, north of the capital N’Djamena, the potential of the Great Green Wall can be seen in the green vegetable gardens growing in dozens of remote oasis villages.
An aerial view of the town of Mao and its oasis in Kanem province, Chad. Such oases feed farmable land for nearby communities — but hotter temperatures and stronger winds are taking a toll, say community elders.
Tommy Trenchard for NPR
Tommy Trenchard for NPR
These deep-set oases, locally called wadis, once stretched for miles across the desert, remembers Issa Ousmane Tcharaba, the chief of Barkadroussou, a cluster of 14 villages that depend on a lush oasis surrounding a striking blue lake. Today, he says, rising temperatures and strong winds have seen much of the tree cover lost to the sand.
Village chief Issa Ousmane Tcharaba walks with village elders through the oasis of Barkadroussou in Kanem province, Chad. The oasis has benefited from support by the Great Green Wall Initiative, stabilizing the dunes that threaten to swamp the oasis as well as installing a borehole and providing seeds and technical assistance.
Tommy Trenchard for NPR
Tommy Trenchard for NPR
“If the wadi disappears, we will be forced to leave,” sighs the 79-year-old.
In 2014, the regional nonprofit group SOS Sahel came to Barkadroussou and taught villagers to stabilize the dunes by building palisades of palm fronds. It provided seeds and training and installed a solar water pump capable of irrigating up to 45 hectares of land.
Locals had been cultivating for generations, but the help was welcome, says Tcharaba. The extra irrigation now supports over 300 independent farmers. The oasis is packed with dense thickets of date palms and banana plantations. Green plots of sorghum, cassava, tomatoes and onions ring its edges. Young men who had left the village returned home for the promise of opportunities.
Gum arabic traders at a market in the village of Karnak, Chad. A nongovernmental group called SOS Sahel is planting acacia trees, which produce the gum, as a part of its work on the Great Green Wall initiative.
Tommy Trenchard for NPR
Tommy Trenchard for NPR
It is a glimpse of what the Great Green Wall was once hoped to be. Yet it remains just one broken pump away from failure. In 2023, the project’s funding ran out, says Mahamat Ali, the local operator who oversaw the work. Unless they can find more funding, if the solar pump breaks, the villagers will be on their own again.
In a statement sent in response to NPR’s questions, the Pan-African Great Green Wall Agency notes that the project’s problems “are not indicative of failure, but rather reflect the complexity of a multi-country, multi-sector initiative that is the first of its kind.”
Sections of a broken irrigation system in what was once a thriving community farm backed by the Great Green Wall initiative in Kourtimale, Djibouti. The farm’s irrigation system failed, and the land reverted to desert.
Tommy Trenchard for NPR
Tommy Trenchard for NPR
After the failure of Abdi Guelleh’s farm in Djibouti, the farmers gradually drifted away. Some began mining sand for the construction industry, to the frustration of the Great Green Wall department, which sees it as destructive to the environment. Others went back to roaming the hillsides with their livestock.
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As Abdi Guelleh surveys the barren remains of his once-thriving farm, he says he’s holding out hope that the government will one day fix the pump and give the farm a second chance. Until then, there’s little he can do but wait.
This article was developed with the support of Journalismfund Europe.
Julie Bourdin is a freelance journalist based in South Africa and France. She covers human rights and climate-related stories across Africa and beyond.
Maya Misikir is a reporter and editor based in Ethiopia. She covers human rights stories with a focus on labor, migration, women’s rights, conflicts and their impacts on communities.
Tommy Trenchard is an independent photojournalist based in Cape Town, South Africa. He has previously contributed photos and stories to NPR on the Mozambique cyclone of 2019, Indonesian death rituals and illegal miners in abandoned South African diamond mines and won a World Press Photo prize for the images in his story for NPR on clashes between elephants and people in Zambia.
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