Ethiopia Unites Great Green Wall Projects Under One Coalition

Ethiopia is taking charge of Africa's biggest environmental promise by uniting dozens of disconnected restoration projects under one national umbrella.

The country announced plans on August 14 to create a coalition that will coordinate all its work under the Great Green Wall Initiative, a continent-wide effort to push back desertification and restore degraded land. Right now, multiple organizations work separately on similar projects with different funding sources and no shared way to measure success.

The Ethiopian Forestry Development is leading the effort alongside the African Union Commission and regional partners. They met in Addis Ababa to design a framework where every restoration project reports through the same system and tracks the same outcomes like tree survival rates, water availability, and jobs created.

Kebede Yimam, director-general of Ethiopian Forestry Development, called it a milestone moment. "The pan-African Great Green Wall Initiative is the single largest pledge of our continent to combat desertification," he said, noting that Ethiopia helped found the initiative and should lead by example.

The coalition aims to solve problems that have held back Africa's restoration work for years. Projects often overlap, funding gets split into tiny pieces, and short timelines mean trees get planted but nobody monitors whether they survive. By pooling resources and coordinating donor money, climate finance, and government budgets, Ethiopia hopes to make every dollar go further.

The new approach balances environmental healing with economic opportunity. In dryland regions, the coalition plans to focus on commercially valuable species like Boswellia papyrifera, which produces frankincense, so communities can earn income while protecting forests instead of cutting them down.

The Ripple Effect

Ethiopia already runs massive environmental campaigns, including the Green Legacy Initiative that has planted billions of trees. But officials acknowledge that saving drylands requires more than just planting. The coalition will support watershed management, soil conservation, and sustainable livelihoods that reduce pressure on struggling ecosystems.

The platform will be formalized through agreements between participating institutions, though no launch date was announced. Adefres Worku, the country's focal person for the Great Green Wall, said the coalition will make coordination between programs far more efficient.

Other African nations are watching closely. Stakeholders at the workshop suggested Ethiopia's unified approach could become a template for the 11 countries participating in the Great Green Wall, which stretches across the Sahel region from Senegal to Djibouti.

By turning scattered efforts into coordinated action, Ethiopia is showing how one of the world's most ambitious environmental projects can actually deliver on its promises.