‘Feeding millions’ – how land restoration can turn around Africa’s Sahel

Every year, when the first rains fall on Mauritania’s parched lands, Djeinaba Ba’s heart beats with pride. She has a deep connection with agriculture in her village of Gvava Peulh, located in the country’s southeastern Assaba region.

“What I love in this village is agriculture,” says Ba, who is widowed and has three children. “It’s the only activity we are familiar with, and one that helps us meet our families’ needs.” 

Ba grew up helping her parents clear their fields, sow seeds, harvest crops and gather fodder to feed their livestock. Now she heads a local women’s cooperative. Farming has been a lifeline in the West African country, helping entire families survive and sometimes prosper for decades. 

But recurring droughts, deforestation and land degradation are threatening agricultural productivity for millions of farmers like her. Today, more than one-quarter of Mauritania’s population is exposed to land degradation that affects 60 percent of the country.  

Those issues are in now sharp focus at a key desertification meeting in Saudi Arabia. Gathering representatives from dozens of countries, the Conference of the Parties talks in Riyadh, or COP 16, aims to fight drought and protect and restore roughly 1.5 billion hectares of degraded land by the end of this decade. 

The frontlines of the desertification battle are located in countries like Mauritania, where the World Food Programme (WFP) is supporting the Government through an ambitious programme to restore lands depleted by droughts and other hazards. The effort is part of a broader resilience-building programme launched in 2018 with partners across five West and Central African nations, which also comprise Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali and Niger. 

So far, the initiative has benefited 4 million people in 3,400 villages across the region, and restored more than 300,000 hectares of degraded land. It links watershed planning and land rehabilitation to school meals; provides nutritional support to women and young children; assists smallholder farmers, and empowers communities to maintain and improve food security in the face of recurrent shocks.

The resilience-building efforts also contribute to Africa’s ambitious Great Green Wall project, which aims to restore degraded landscapes, fight desertification and boost economies across the Sahel by 2030.

“Land rehabilitation in the Sahel is key for the food security of millions of people, as it rebuilds ecosystems and livelihoods, reduces humanitarian needs and enables the region to transition to a sustainable, food security pathway,” says Margot van der Velden, WFP Regional Director for Western Africa, 

“By addressing land degradation, we empower rural communities to grow food sustainably,” van der Velden adds. “We create a lifeline against climate shocks like droughts and floods, and build a greener and healthier environment for the millions of people whose food security would otherwise be jeopardized.”

Fertile again

In Mauritania, abutting the Atlantic Ocean, rising sea levels and other shocks like droughts have fed acute hunger that affects about one-fifth of the population yearly. For veteran farmers like Ba, the fallout is clear. 

“The soil has become less fertile,” she says. “Our harvests have been hardly enough to meet our basic needs.”

Then came WFP’s resilience programme, rolled out four years ago across hundreds of Mauritanian villages like Gvava Peulh. It employs restorative and regenerative land practices, and innovative water-management techniques such as half-moons and dykes, to replenish water-depleted soils and aquifers.

“Since WFP's arrival, we have observed notable changes; the degraded lands have become fertile again,” Ba says.

The programme’s payoffs have been stunning. Participating households are seeing their harvests double or triple for each hectare of rehabilitated land, translating on average to at least one extra month of food consumption. 

“I am very happy to see now how resilience works on the ground to obtain very tangible results for the extremely vulnerable households and communities,” says Reinhard Uhlig, Deputy Head of Mission at the Embassy of Germany in Mauritania, which helps fund the initiative. “We would like to see these joint efforts scaled up in the future.” 

In both Mauritania and neighbouring Chad, WFP’s resilience programme goes beyond building food security and sustainable livelihoods. It encourages environmental stewardship, reinforces social cohesion, and improves access to markets and basic social services. It also supports education, by sourcing the produce for WFP-supported school meals from participating farmers. 

It can also reduce migration, by offering rural farmers — often male heads of households — powerful financial reasons to stay home. That frees time for women to engage in other pursuits, including learning other income-generating skills.

“Before, my husband had to leave us during the dry season to look for job opportunities in urban areas,” says Amsinine Radiane, a mother of nine, who participates in a WFP resilience-building project in Doungoulou, in central Chad.

She has since seen her millet harvest grow by nearly sixfold thanks to the project, which has not only restored degraded farmland, but also introduced irrigation systems that allow farmers to plant market gardens year-round. Radiane’s husband no longer leaves in search of work. 

“We've got more than enough to feed our children,” she says, “and I can store part of it to get through the lean season.” 

WFP’s integrated resilience programme in Western Africa is supported by Canada, Chad (through the World Bank), Denmark, the European Union, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Monaco, Republic of Korea, Spain and the United States.

Lean more here about WFP's resilience project