CuHeMo team members Annah Lake Zhu and Amadou Ndiaye have published a public commentary in The Conversation on Africa’s Great Green Wall — one of the continent’s most ambitious environmental projects. In accessible, jargon-free language, they explain why a project backed by more than US$20 billion in pledges has produced so little visible change on the ground: money announced at global summits rarely makes it to planting sites, trees die without irrigation, and fencing meant to protect saplings is routinely dismantled by pastoralists whose grazing routes the plots block. The jobs the project generates in remote Senegal are real and valued, they write — but short-lived, and no substitute for genuine ecological restoration.
Their piece ends with a clear call to action: replace activity-based reporting (trees planted) with outcome-based monitoring (trees that survive and grow), and use the satellite tools now available to hold the project accountable to actual results.
Read the full piece: Africa’s ‘great green wall’ is stalling: in Senegal very few planted areas show progress, The Conversation, 7 October 2025.
