Once a desolate landscape, the Simiri plateau in Niger is now a small paradise for fauna and flora.
Goats crunch acacia seeds, squirrel and partridge prints dot the ground, praying mantises to hang from trees and swarms of grasshoppers devour the verdant foliage.
“A small forest has miraculously been reborn,” marvelled Simiri mayor Moussa Adamou.
The project is part of the African Union’s Great Green Wall initiative, which intends to restore 100 million hectares of dry land along an 8,000-kilometer (5,000-mile) stretch running from Senegal in the west to Djibouti in the east by 2030.
In landlocked Niger, where desert occupies three-quarters of the area and 80 percent of the population relies on subsistence farming, arable land is treasured.
According to the World Bank, the country’s population will grow from 23 million in 2019 to 30 million in 2030 and 70 million in 2050, highlighting the importance of the Green Wall’s success.
