Niger Greens 5 Million Hectares Without Planting Trees

In the 1980s, an Australian agricultural adviser discovered something unexpected in the Sahel: green shoots emerging from depleted desert soil. They came from root systems that had survived beneath the surface. Tony Rinaudo recognized a method to restore degraded land without planting a single tree. Today the result is measurable in Niger: five million hectares of restored savanna landscape.

33 African countries committed to the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative (AFR100) to jointly restore 129 million hectares of degraded land by 2030. That is an area larger than Germany and France combined. In parallel, the African Union’s Great Green Wall runs: an 8,000-kilometer band of vegetation from Senegal to Djibouti through eleven Sahel countries. The target: 100 million hectares by 2030, 250 million tons of sequestered CO2, and ten million new jobs.

Financing comes through a 33 billion-dollar framework involving the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the African Development Bank (AfDB), and the World Bank. At COP30 in November 2025, AfDB and development partners called for significantly larger funding commitments, as pledges so far fall far short of implementation costs.

The method Rinaudo developed is called Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration, or FMNR. The concept is structurally simple: instead of planting seedlings, farmers protect shoots that naturally emerge from the root systems of degraded soil. These root systems can survive decades of overgrazing and regenerate rapidly when pressure eases. Farmers decide which shoots to grow and which to prune. The result is trees directly integrated into existing farmland.

Economic logic explains the success. A tree on a farmer’s field belongs to the farmer. It provides shade, prevents erosion, improves soil moisture, and yields firewood, fruit, and animal fodder. Protecting one’s own tree serves self-interest, not program obligation. The NDC Partnership and the World Agroforestry Centre document: In Niger, an estimated five million hectares with over 200 million trees were restored this way. Approximately 2.5 million people benefit from the recovered land. Niger formally recognized FMNR as a national soil restoration method in 2020.

Measured against the overall goal, the Great Green Wall’s scorecard is more modest. By mid-2026, roughly 18 percent of the 100-million-hectare target had been restored, four years ahead of schedule. The reasons are tangible: parts of the Sahel where the initiative operates are affected by conflict. Burkina Faso, parts of Niger, and Mali lack stable state administration following coups. Without reliable institutions on the ground, restoration is difficult to plan.

Senegal ranks among countries with measurable progress: 12 million drought-resistant trees were planted in community programs incorporating local land rights. This method differs from Ethiopia’s approach.

Ethiopia pursues state-organized mass planting. The Green Legacy program reports planting billions of seedlings annually. On a single day in July 2019, volunteers planted 350 million trees by government accounts. The numbers impress. But they measure planting, not survival.

Researchers at the Ethiopian Environment and Forest Research Institute found that without systematic follow-up care, more than half of seedlings fail to establish. High planting numbers and actual restored land are two different things. The FMNR model from Niger bypasses this problem: trees emerging from existing root systems have significantly higher survival rates because the root system already exists and farmers have economic interest in protecting the trees.

Another successful approach: Rwanda’s TREPA project, which integrates trees into farmland and links them economically to farmers through fruit trees, fodder crops, and timber harvesting. The shared lesson from all success stories: local communities need economic interest in trees, not moral obligation to maintain them.

If the initiative maintains current pace, the Great Green Wall will have restored roughly 40 to 50 million hectares by 2030, less than half the target. The AfDB called for significantly increased funding at COP30, including new mechanisms for faster disbursement to local implementation organizations.

Key will be whether the FMNR model from Niger can be systematically extended to other countries. The method works wherever root systems have survived, meaning in regions that are degraded but not entirely sealed. Experts at the World Agroforestry Centre estimate this applies to large parts of the Sahel and southern African savanna.

Tony Rinaudo’s 1983 discovery that survival can mean remaining invisible has gained its own momentum. What began in Niger is now being tested in over 20 countries from Ghana to Madagascar. Whether that suffices to reach the 100-million-hectare target depends on funding and political stability. That the method itself works when conditions allow is demonstrated by the five million hectares in Niger.