Africa's Great Green Wall is making progress on two fronts

“The Great Green Wall is about development; it’s about sustainable, climate-smart development, at all levels,” says Elvis Paul Tangam, the African Union Commissioner for theSahara and Sahel Great Green Wall Initiative.

Development at all levels means sustainable land management to provide jobs and money to keep people in their communities and able to thrive in a harsh climate. Tangam says it’s a matter of life or death for millions, particularly young men.

“Every young person wants to be valued,” Tangam says. “In the African context, every young person, especially a young man, has the responsibility to take care of their family.”

Tangam says idle young men, who have no work and have seen crops and animals die, face terrible choices. They might join rebel groups, or terrorist groups like Boko Haram or join the exodus of desperate migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean on rickety boats to find work in Europe.

The idea of the wall of trees, while a decade old, remains more vision than reality, yet Tangam says a lot has been achieved in terms of cooperation.