Climate adaptation and sustainable finance take centre stage as ESG BROADCAST shares key takeaways.
Africa is witnessing a landmark moment with the official launch of the Scaling-Up Resilience in Africa’s Great Green Wall (SURAGGWA) programme, backed by a $222 million investment from the Green Climate Fund (GCF). The financing was approved in July 2025 to restore degraded landscapes across eight Sahel countries of Burkina Faso, Chad, Djibouti, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, and Senegal intended towards boosting the effort towards resisting the expansion of the Sahara Desert any further.
At its core, the SURAGGWA programme aligns with the broader Great Green Wall (GGW) initiative led by the African Union aimed at restoring degraded land across the Sahel region. The initiative targets are to create an 8,000 km long green “wall” of trees to combat the desertification of land in central Africa. Covering more than 20 countries, the GGW aims at reviving 100 million hectares of degraded land, creating 10 million green jobs, and sequestering 250 million tons of CO₂-equivalent by 2030.
SURAGGWA was formally endorsed on July 4, 2025, when Senegal’s government and the FAO signed a major partnership to implement the programme. The launch underscores a strong regional commitment: the project aims to restore agro-silvo-pastoral [integration of crops (agro), forestry (silvo), and livestock (pastoralism)] ecosystems and scale up climate-resilient value chains for non-timber forest products.
As per the GCF’s project timeline the implementation of the program will span until 2035. The project is coordinated by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in partnership with the Pan-African Agency of the Great Green Wall. At the country level, national agencies such as Nigeria’s National Agency for the Great Green Wall (NAGGW), along with government ministries, civil society, and local communities will drive on-ground action.
SURAGGWA has three key components. First, landscape restoration will revive degraded land using native species to restore ecosystem services and increase carbon storage. (fao.org) Second, it will support low-emission, climate-resilient value chains for non-timber forest products, boosting livelihoods for women, youth, and vulnerable rural populations. Third, it will strengthen GGW institutional capacity, with governance, monitoring, and resource-mobilization structures being reinforced at regional and national levels.
Strategic significance lies in the powerful model SURAGGWA presents for climate-resilient development. By restoring landscapes, it increases nature-based carbon sinks while creating green jobs. Its value-chain approach empowers local communities—especially women and youth—through non-timber forest products, promoting inclusive growth. Strengthening GGW institutions ensures long-term coordination, governance, and knowledge sharing across borders. For ESG investors and governments, this signals a mature, scalable, and deeply social climate-finance intervention. It aligns financing with sustainable outcomes, draws in regional cooperation, and could catalyse further green investment across the Sahel, making SURAGGWA not just a restoration project, but a cornerstone for a resilient, renewable future in one of the world’s most climate-sensitive regions.
