Building the African green wall, piece by piece
Kouloumboutey, Niger
When village people and local authorities in southern Niger won back over one hundred hectares of degraded land, they added one extra piece to a mosaic being laid across the Sahel and the Sahara aimed at tackling desertification and land degradation.
Ibrahim Dan Ladi, a 47-year-old farmer from southern Niger, remembers that his village of Kouloumboutey used to be surrounded by thick forest.
The trees protected the villagers against the wind, and their leaves and undergrowth provided good fodder for the animals.
But the trees started to disappear with El Boukhari, the great famine of 1984-1985, which was caused by drought.
“Overgrazing and excessive felling did the rest to transform a forest into an area of barren land,” says commander Sidi Sani of Niger’s service for the environment and the fight against desertification.
Without the protection of trees and grasses, soil easily becomes a “glacis” – a thin cover of arable land at the mercy of wind and rain. [more]