17 March 2025, Ghana: Experts advocate for effective policies that promote land restoration, as the second phase of the Regreening Africa Programme kicks off.
An estimated 65% of Africa’s productive land is degraded.
This has reduced agricultural productivity, increased food insecurity, led to declining livelihoods and weakened community resilience to climate change.
The Regreening Africa programme is addressing this challenge by scaling sustainable land management practices and advocating for effective policies that promote restoration initiatives.
Environmental experts, donors, policymakers, and government representatives convened in Tamale, Ghana to outline the roadmap for the effective implementation of the second phase of the Regreening Africa programme. This continent-wide initiative is focused on restoring degraded landscapes, improving food and nutrition security, and strengthening community resilience to climate change across Ghana, Somalia, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Mali, Senegal, and Niger.
The inception workshop, which brought together key implementing organizations, highlighted the urgent need for a collaborative approach to overcoming policy bottlenecks that hinder the success of regreening efforts. Experts underscored that addressing these barriers is crucial to tackling desertification, improving livelihoods, and enhancing food security across Africa.
This includes championing policies that promote community access to, and use of, resources from restored lands. Examples range from decentralized natural resource management systems to securing land and tree access for women and youth, as well as addressing conflicts between pastoral and farming communities.
The second phase of the Regreening Africa programme is funded by the European Union (EU) with a total budget of EUR 15 million. CIFOR-ICRAF, in collaboration with World Vision, Catholic Relief Services (CRS), CARE, Sahel Eco, and Agronomes & Vétérinaires Sans Frontières (AVSF), is implementing the initiative.
Together, these organisations are supporting communities to adopt regreening practices that restore degraded land such as agroforestry, tree planting and management, home gardening with trees, soil and water conservation, soil health improvement, sustainable grazing and pastoral management, and the farmer-managed natural regeneration (FMNR) approach.
Additionally, the second phase of the Regreening Africa programme seeks to create an enabling environment—through supportive policies, strengthened local governance, women and youth empowerment, and increased investment—to incentivize the widespread adoption of land restoration.
The new initiative builds on the achievements of the first phase of the Regreening Africa programme (2017–2023) which promoted sustainable land management practices that supported over 600,000 households, covering nearly one million hectares of land across eight African countries.
“The EU is fully aware of the challenges faced by Ghana and many African countries. This includes extreme and prolonged dry spells; declining tree cover and increased soil infertility. We provide funding to address these challenges and create jobs and employment opportunities in the communities, especially for women and youth, through land restoration, creation of market linkages for forest-based products and boosting food yields via agroforestry practices,” said Massimo Mina, Head of Cooperation at the EU Delegation to Ghana
“As we begin the second phase of the Regreening Africa programme in Ghana and other selected African countries, we will focus on expanding the proven practices and approaches from the first phase while addressing identified gaps,” said Mieke Bourne, the Regreening Africa Programme and Stakeholder Engagement with Evidence Lead at CIFOR-ICRAF.
“These include the need to include pastoral areas, better matching of practices to local contexts, improved access to quality tree-planting material, enhancing livelihoods through regreening linked value chains and fostering enabling policy environments.”
The initiative also builds on practical, low-cost tools and approaches developed during the first phase of the programme to restore and regreen degraded land.
“We plan to expand existing interventions and replicate effective approaches here in Ghana and across the region by establishing strong linkages and evidence-based scaling strategies for landscape restoration,” said Maxwell Amedi, Food Security & Resilience Technical Programme Manager for World Vision in Ghana.
“This will enhance climate change resilience at both national and regional levels. Our efforts will include widespread promotion of regreening as a climate adaptation and mitigation strategy, as well as assessing and understanding its potential for carbon sequestration.”
It is estimated that at least 65% of Africa’s productive land is currently degraded. This has led to reduced agricultural productivity, increased food insecurity, declining livelihoods, and weakened community resilience to climate change. The Regreening Africa programme seeks to address these challenges and contribute to sustainable development across the continent.
“The time to act is now, to reverse the degradation and make our land fertile and productive. This programme is not just about planting trees, it’s about planting hope, restoring ecosystems, and nurturing a sustainable future for generations to come,” said Edward Akunyagra, Programme Director for Agriculture & Livelihoods at the Catholic Relief Services in Ghana.
The Regreening Africa Programme aligns with several regional commitments that many African countries have endorsed and actively support. These include the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative (AFR100), the African Union (AU) Green Recovery Action Plan, and the Great Green Wall Initiative, which aim to restore the continent’s degraded landscapes and transform millions of lives in the Sahel region.
In addition, it contributes to the EU’s flagship support of the Great Green Wall initiative. It also complements other AU-EU Global Gateway Investment Package flagships, particularly the Team Europe Initiative (TEI) on Adaptation and Resilience in Africa and NaturAfrica.
Furthermore, the programme aligns with global commitments such as the Paris Agreement and the Global Biodiversity Framework, both of which the EU and African countries have pledged to uphold.
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