“We know there is a path to prosperity for all and a healthy environment in Africa—but we’re not on it. Shifting course quickly and at scale is the challenge of our generation. It’s what AFR100 Initiative is all about.” —Wanjira Mathai Chair, Green Belt Movement, Kenya 

The AFR100 Initiative (www.afr100.org) together with its partner countries, local communities and various technical and financial partner, are at work to rehabilitate, regenerate and restore millions of hectares of degraded and deforested landscapes that presently serve the wellbeing and livelihoods of Africans and their future generations.

Rural communities in Africa depend predominantly on forests for everyday upkeep and survival. Throughout the continent rural communities depend on the forest for their livelihood as they collect; batches of firewood for fuel, exotic foods such as bush meat, mushrooms, fruits, nuts, berries and herbs to eat and sell locally. Therefore, forests carry within them the well-being and livelihoods of the populations in the African continent.

An important function of forests in Africa, is its job creation potential. The timber production sector employs tens of millions of people. Non-timber forest products are also harvested and traded as medicine, decorations, essential oils and skincare products. The rural population receive around a quarter of their income from the collection and direct trade of plant seeds, shoots and roots, mushrooms, wildlife and insects. In Africa, we use a lot of palm oil in our products, which is derived from the palm tree forests. Some families make their living by picking fruits from these palm trees and using them to make and locally trade Palm wine - an alcoholic drink that is popular in the West Africa region.

However, the predicament that arises is that with this high demand of services from our forests, we are faced with an increased rate of deforestation and a rapid degradation of our forest landscapes in Africa. How do we as Africans, take this matter into our own hands and create sustainable strategies to deal with the challenges that come with the results of our own actions, for the benefit of the current and the imminent generation? A Continental response to the above challenges is the Africa Forests and Landscapes Restoration Initiative (AFR100)

The AFR100 Initiative:  An Ecosystem Approach To Forest and Landscape Restoration (FLR)

Every year nearly three million hectares of forests and land are lost on the African continent with an estimated three percent of GDP lost annually from soil and nutrient depletion. This results in nearly two-thirds of Africa’s land that is degraded with millions of people facing hunger, malnutrition and poverty, who in order to survive have to further deforest and often overexploit the continent’s natural resources. These actions not only intensify the effects of climate change, but also severely hinder economic development and threaten the ecological functions vital to African Countries’ economies. 

Rural smallholder farmers and households suffer the most from degraded land as their activities are largely depen­dent on stable weather patterns, healthy soils and tree cover, as well as water. Framework conditions such as governance of natural resources and policy coherence often do not favour restoration at scale, and numerous other barriers impede progress. These barriers include weak institutional coor­dination, inadequate devolution mechanisms to local resource users, and insuf­ficient economic incentives for local and foreign investments in sustainable land management.

These issues have led to increasing awareness regarding the potential for forest landscape restoration (FLR) to generate numerous benefits for people and support progress towards multiple national and sustainable development goals (SDGs), such as food security, poverty reduction, land rehabilitation, regeneration and restoration, biodiversity conservation, and climate resilience. Within this context, dozens of national governments have made commitments to restore deforested and degraded lands as part of global and regional restoration initiatives, including the New York Declaration on Forests, the Bonn Challenge, Initiative 20x20, and the AFR100 Initiative. The Bonn Challenge targets the restoration of 150 million hectares by 2020 and 350 million hectares by 2030, which is supported by the AFR100 Initiative, a country-led effort to place 100 million hectares of deforested and degraded landscapes under restoration across Africa by 2030. 

There are numerous opportunities for African countries to scale up FLR by restoring both deforested forest lands and degraded agricultural and pastoral landscapes where the tree cover has been depleted. Africa is unique in that it has the largest restoration opportunity of any continent in the world, with more than 700 million hectares of degraded landscapes that can be restored. Experiences in multiple countries, including Malawi, Rwanda, Ethiopia and Niger, to name a few, have demonstrated that FLR delivers a wide range of benefits and can be achieved on millions of hectares. Successful experiences with proven restoration practices such as Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR), Assisted Natural Regeneration (ANR), etc. improved management of smallholder woodlots, reforestation, evergreen agriculture with intercropped trees, and associated sustainable land and water management (SLWM) practices, such as water harvesting and erosion control have been documented, along with practical steps that can be supported to catalyze their adoption at scale. 

A Vivid Example of Restoration Effort  Africa: The Great Green Wall Initiative (GGWI)

The Sahel is a region with very sensitive human and environmental dynamics. It is a very fragile ecosystem where the signals of climate change have been most apparent. The region has gone through major drought periods, and rain shortage is identified as an ongoing crisis for the Sahel. 

In response to this plight, the African Union launched the Great Green Wall for the Sahara and the Sahel initiative (GGWI) in 2007. The objective of this African-led initiative is to restore Africa’s degraded landscapes, by planting an 8,000km-long line of trees and plants across the entire Sahel, from the Atlantic coast of Senegal to the east coast of Djibouti. The initiative aims to curb desertification and transform millions of lives in one of the world’s poorest regions.

The Sahel is stricken with multidimensional poverty and, at the same time, is faced with a steady population growth continuing into the next century. The Sahelian community is heavily dependent on natural resources for agriculture and/or livestock production as these are their main source of livelihood. However, most of the agriculture is rain fed, which makes production challenging due to the region’s low rainfall patterns. The increasing demand for natural resources is resulting in a continuous pattern of land degradation in the Sahel.

Challenges and Solutions on implementing forest landscapes restoration

The fact that 28 African countries as have joined the initiative and have committed to restore a total of 113m ha of degraded forest lands as well as the progress already made in the first 4 years is extremely promising for AFR100.  However, AFR100 does face challenges which need to be addressed in the upcoming years in order to be successful so that all countries can reach their goals in FLR implementation. It is noticeable that technical and financial partners are not equally present in partner countries. While some countries have the support of more than 10 technical and financial partners, such as Kenya, Madagascar, Tanzania, other countries have no or only 1-2 technical and financial partner to assist them, such as Benin, Ivory Coast and Mozambique. AFR100 will need to work on ways to improve technical and financial assistance for countries where technical assistance absent or underrepresented. This also would allow to address the issue of lack of local and national capacities for FLR implementation and good practices in some of the partner countries.

 AFR100 is working to bridge this gap by organising knowledge exchanges such as webinars that we have planned between our partner countries and financial partners in order to enhance access to funding opportunities. Another way AFR100 bridges the financing gap is through, for instance, the annual Land Accelerator, an AFR100-Partner-led endeavour to train entrepreneurs from African countries through business planning and incubation sessions during which participants also have a chance to pitch their initiatives to prospective investors.

In conclusion, we can agree that significant additional work is needed to take stock of the successful cases of FLR, expand communication, advocacy and outreach, and support the implementation of comprehensive strategies and concrete plans to trigger the widespread adoption of forest landscape restoration practices. The AFR100 Initiative will accelerate restoration to enhance food security, increase climate change resilience/adaptation and mitigation, biodiversity conservation, combat drought, desertification and rural poverty.