Sahelian Countries Lose About 1.7 Million Ha of Arable Land Per Annum

The eleven countries within the Sahelian area lose each year on average 1.7 million hectares of cultivable land to the creeping desert, specialists at the Senegalese Environment ministry revealed on Friday at a news conference on the Great Green Wall project.

President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal and former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo initiated the project which was approved by the African Union during the 8th heads of state and governments conference in January 2007 in Addis-Ababa, Ethiopia.

The purpose of the project is to grow green again a strip of land going from Dakar to Djibouti i.e. an area about 7,000 km-long and 15km-wide.

According to the chairman of the project’s scientific committee, Senegalese national Abdoulaye Dia, the continental project aims at “softening the effects of the desertification and the aggressions of the desert, while developing the natural resources.”

Presently, Africa possesses only 9 % of the global fresh water resources i.e. 4,050 cubic metres per annum, and this water is unequally distributed, President Abdoulaye Wade lamented last February at the project’s ministerial meeting, while putting emphasis on the constant expansion of the Sahara Desert.

The ultimate goal is to restore the biodiversity between the Sahel and the Sahara, with forest, water retaining tanks and reforestation activities which take into consideration the various needs of the population but also enable them to carry out income generating activities.

Senegalese Environment Minister Djibo Ka said his country intends to reforest 2,000 ha which represent Senegal’s share in the Great Green Wall for 2008, after totaling 4,000 ha reforested lands in 2006-2007.

In a bid to achieve this goal, a “major holiday project” will be organized during the three-month summer holidays and will be run by soldiers, students and youths.

The project will cross eleven countries: Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, Chad, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti.

Source African Press Agency

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