Africa’s Great Green Wall - the so-called  Great Green Wall for the Sahara and the Sahel Initiative - is a Pan African Initiative, established in 2007. It is Africa's flagship initiative to combat the effects of climate change, desertification, food insecurity and poverty. It brings together more than 20 African countries around the Sahara (North, East and West), international organizations, research institutes, civil society and grassroots organizations.

Africa’s Great Green Wall initiative is not a line or a wall of trees across the desert. The “Wall” is metaphor to express solidarity between countries and partners.

COFO 23 offers an opportunity for high level representatives of participating countries to share their achievements, challenges and expected  developments and to identify how best FAO could contribute to the achievement of the GGW objectives and expected results, building up on its past and ongoing support and taking advantage of the conclusions and recommendation of the recently concluded  International Great Green Wall Conference, held in Dakar, Senegal, in May 2016 and its road map to Marrakech in the framework of the next Conference on Climate Change.