High-Level Side Event: Restoring African Landscapes, Restoring Hope - UNCCD COP17

Ladies and gentlemen, I want to thank you so much for your patience.
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Thank you so much, Abba.
Warm welcome.
Amina, warm welcome.
Warm welcome to you also, all the representative of the Greek Green Wall, all the partners.
We are really happy to have you.
It's a full room today.
It's a bright day.
I'm very lucky.
So with this opening with hope, with the music from Baba Ma, we want to kick off it's really depicting also the hope we have and the example we are showing when we pronounce and talk about the Great Green Wall, this emblematic initiative for the whole continent, Africa, So the objective of getting here today is really to look into the Great Green Wall, which remained, again, a testament to sustainable land restoration as a strategy for investment in peace, resilience, and sustainable development.
And the private sector contributing from design to deliver.
In the opening of the COP, both the COP presidency and my executive secretary for the UNCCD has said that this COP is a COP for implementation, is a COP for looking into contributing to what matter on the ground.
I would like to really welcome the speakers to really give us the opening remark.
Doctor Yasmin Fouad, the UNCCD's Executive Secretary to really welcome us so that we could start this journey.
Thank you very much, Bergi.
Your Excellcy Sister Mihamed Deputy Secretary-General, my dear brother Moses, the Commissioner from the African Union, friends and colleagues from the African Development Bank, His Excellency, Mustafa Gabba, African agency for Great Greenwall and Sadk Secretariat.
First of all, I know he's not here to express my gratitude to my brother Ibrahim Tao, who take over this convention, and I'm here to continue the wonderful work that he has put within the convention the face of Africa and how we can move forward in that with my brothers and sisters and colleagues from the CCD.
Yeah.
Great Green Wall.
When I was a Minister of environment, long time ago, 20 years, I've been hearing about the dream of the Great Green Wall.
I kept asking myself, how would that generate more work and more newstreaming of not just the environment, but generate more income because I come from that ecology of ideology, of looking at the environment beyond the abstract of the physical environment, but rather, how can income be generated? Women can be part of that local community, be part of the development process.
Came to the CCDI and I learned everything from my colleagues from Burger and Jill.
Thanks for educating me on that.
I learned a lot.
I learned that it's not about the line of trees, it's about land restoration, job opportunities and having the communities more resilient that can bring more stability to continue living in their homeland.
I learned from stories about the Chia butter and how it provided job opportunities and more of that to different woman.
I learned also on Niger that there were projects on growing rice, maize and potato that feed the family and started to go beyond that.
But that's not only about the Great Green Wall.
The beauty about Great Green Wall is that whenever it is designed and there are lessons learned, we redesign that once again, we see how can that work.
And because no size fits all, the idea of the Great Green Wall with the support of the African Union, the African Development Bank, Pan African and our partners for putting their funds into this is to see how best can we shape according to the special circumstances and national context of each of those.
At the South part, which we call the Sadec, in 2016, the Sec was launched as the Great Green Wall and looking on how much can we enhance the life of 68 million people, which is around 17% of the region population.
I always say that when we even discuss drought issues, which 30 years ago, there was that request from the Africa to include that in the convention, it does not have a passport, so it does not really stop because you don't have that visa to go into another.
But it happened and that drought can be transferred.
I'd like to commend also the work not only on Sahel and what has been done, although it started early enough, but on Southern Africa platform for resilience, the pipeline of bankable project, recognize the GEF contribution in there and definitely I need to recognize our drought champion, South Africa, who's being represented here by the Deputy Minister.
Bernice Seward in this COP 17.
The challenge that we have now, if this is a COP for implementation, how can we double or triple the finance that is there? How can we upscale the good stories instead of just starting from scratch? How can we make that restoration that has succeeded at the Sahel and at the southern part a story of a global economy, a story that can boost our economy and not only an environmental asset into that.
Today, we have planted a tree.
For me, that tree that was planted with the president goes beyond just a tree or even the initiative of 1 billion tree of the President of Mongolia.
It means partnership, it means investment, it means solidarity and it means cooperation.
It means a real symbol of multilateral system that we all strive to keep alive in a very critical time.
With that, I'm sure that we will continue together with the support of each other to have the Great Green wall in much more than just the Sahal and southern.
One of the ideas is that how can we have a third pillar of Great Green Wall that will connect the Sahal together with the southern part.
Together, we can make that.
My last request to the ministers here, a very important part is not only working on the projects on the ground, but the vertical coordination is extremely important also and the horizontal at the national level.
I beg you that you need to start working on the national coordination mechanisms because the Great Green wall and land restoration and drought are not the responsibilities of the Ministers of Environment and agriculture alone.
We need to expand and enlarge the pie because it's already too large on changes that can accommodate us all, and in doing so, we will not be only restoring land, we will be restoring hope in the future of the upcoming generation.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, Executive Secretary of the UNCCD.
I allow me to not follow the protocol because of, you know, some challenges we are having with the luncheon and all which is going during this opening of the CP 17.
I wanted to follow and give the floor at the end to our UN Deputy Secretary-General, but she has to speak now so that she could also honor the engagement.
With that, I would like before giving you the floor to really again say that if you look at the UN Deputy Secretary-General, and I like to calling her my sister Hamina.
She's a champion of the Greek Green W from the start, from the beginning.
So you can always count on her.
Excellency, you have the floor.
Thank you very much, my sister, Excellencies, it is wonderful to be here with you, but more importantly, with my brother, Moses, our Commissioner Verkti of the African Union, and my sister Yasmin Fouad.
What can I say, the Great Green Wall has always captured my imagination and the imagination of many.
It's an idea that came from Senegal and Nigeria, and the African Union many decades ago.
This is not new.
I think it was about one vision, one Africa.
It was about more than just seeing trees that we would grow across the continent.
It was about people, it was about economies.
But today, as Yasmin has said, we're facing some very stark, realities of the climate crisis, but also the realities of conflict.
This is along the Great Green Wall.
Therefore, what we imagined those decades ago is not the environment in which we have to try to implement the Great Green Wall.
Have many examples of what has worked.
In the time of Ibrahim T, we tried very much to bring this alive and to show all the way from Senegal to Chad, to Djibouti, the examples of things that have worked and maybe not at scale then, so we know that we have the pilots that we can scale.
I think that the challenge at this cop is to recommit ourselves to the implementation of this great idea.
We have talked for too long about the Great Green Wall, and we need more investments, more political courage.
I'm not even going to say will anymore, but the courage to get behind a great idea that is more than just reclaiming the desert.
It is about reclaiming economies, reclaiming peace, putting young people at the center of this and women.
You heard today many expressions of that, particularly for my sister Indra, who does this.
Babal speaks to the spirit and the need.
As he says, we have to work on peace, we have to work on many things.
Let's take the spirit of COP, which Yassin has said is about implementation.
Let's bring together our states under, I think the great leadership of the African Union so that we begin as African states to own the uh response to the Great We Wall.
Every country can bring their resources, we can leverage others, and of course, it is the people, it is the women, it is the youth that will profit from peace.
I think time has come now.
There's always a time that comes when an idea really begins to flourish.
Let us make this a cop, not just of what we suffer from the drought, but the possibilities of a greener economy, a greener peace, and a greener Africa for our generations today, but of course, those tomorrow.
My plea is, let's think about what we're investing in.
And let's really double down on what could be the dividend that we would have.
It is peace, it is youth, it is a prosperous Africa, and it is our contribution to the global agenda for climate responses and environmental integrity.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Your Excellency.
In a moment, our UN Deputy Secretary-General for this word of hope, of encouragement and always commitment.
We know that we can always count on you when it comes not only to the Greek Trong wall, not only Africa, but with all the global issues.
Thank you so much.
With that, I would like now to turn to the African Union.
As you know, the Greek Greenwall is under the chapel of the African Union.
It's one of their initiative.
They are sharpening all the initiative when it's come to not only the Greek Greenwall.
So I would like to give the floor to the African Union Commissionary for the Great Greenwall.
Her Excellency is Moses Bilder Cay, and you are warm welcome, sir.
Thank you very much.
Your Excellency, My dear sister, Miss Amina Mohammed, Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations.
I was hoping to see you also next year, but yeah, doctor Yasmid Executive Secretary of the UN CCD, Professor Anthony Ho Kwon Jung, Director of Climate Change and Green Growth of the African Development Bank.
Your Excellency, miss Domer Marian Tangara, Minister of Mali, and Chair of the Pan African Agency of the Great Green Wall at the ministerial level, Honorable ministers and heads of delegation, distinguished technical and financial partners, private sector representatives, and impact investors, ladies and gentlemen.
On behalf of the African Union and our chairperson, His Excellency Mohammed Ali Yusuf, I thank the organizers for convening us under the important theme, restoring African landscapes, restoring hope, who are here about hope.
I'm particularly honored by the presence of Her Excellency, miss Amina, who was the Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations and I thank her for gracing this event with her leadership.
She has been a strong lead.
Mas put irons together for her.
May I also welcome my sister from Stek, who has joined us here.
I'm here today with one clear message, Africa's Great Green Wall is ready to move from ambition to investment and from investment to impact.
The agency could not be clearer.
Across Africa, land degradation is undermining food security, water security, livelihoods and and resilience.
In the Sahel alone, some 135 million people depend directly on landscape, increasingly exposed to drought, desertification, and climate shocks.
Since 2015, The Sub Saharan Africa has lost 163 million hectas of land to degradation faster than the global average, with nearly three quarters of our trillions already degraded.
For Africa's young and rapidly growing population, restoring this landscape is not simply an environmental priority.
It is an economic, social, and security imperative.
This is why the Great Green Wall matters.
What began in 2007 as a bold vision for historian integrated landscapes across the Sahel.
Has evolved into something much larger, an African platform for restoring land, for strengthening food systems, for securing water, for creating livelihoods, and building resilience.
It was never simply a line of trees.
It is about restoring productive landscapes and giving communities the opportunity to thrive.
In 2024, our heads of states adopted the African Union Great Green Wall Initiative strategy and ten year implementation framework 2024-2034.
The ambition is enormous.
We need to restore 100 million acres of degraded land and make restoration a driver of resilient livelihoods as well as sustainable development across our continent.
And we already have evidence that this can work.
Our first implementation status report covering 2007 to 2018 recorded nearly 20 million hectas that have been restored and over 350,000 jobs that have been created.
This demonstrates that community led restoration can deliver tangible, environmental, social and economic returns, and that successful approaches can be scaled.
But excellence is, our ambition is ahead of our financing.
To meet our target, Africa must restore approximately 8.2 million hectares every year at an estimated cost of US 4.3 billion annually.
Since 2021, One Planet Summit, we've tracked US 19.6 billion in pledges, which is less than 4 billion that is needed annually.
We must be frank, pledges are not disbursements.
We therefore need to close not only a financial gap, but an investment readiness gap An estimated US $30 billion in private capital remains untapped.
That capital will move when we convert restoration opportunities into credible, scalable, and investment ready projects which are supported by coordination, cooperation, risk sharing, and strong partnership.
This brings me to the African Union's 2026 theme of the year, which is assuring sustainable water availability and safe sanitation systems to achieve the goals of Agenda 2063.
This theme is highly relevant to the Great Green Wall.
There can be no lasting land restoration without water security.
Water is therefore the foundation of productive agriculture, healthy ecosystems, resilience communities, and sustainable economies.
The climate crisis is making that foundation increasingly fragile through droughts, floods, and other hydraulic shocks.
We therefore need integrated investment connecting water management, sustainable agriculture, rangelands, water infrastructure, as well as climate adaptation, and the agency is not theoretical.
We're seeing again how climate variability can disrupt food systems, even our water.
The developing El Nino event of 2026 is already being closely watched for its potential in intensity on drought and other weather extremes, including in parts of Southern Africa.
This is precisely why restoration must be understood as a disaster risk reduction and resilient investment.
We must therefore move from responding to disasters after they occur to investing in landscapes and communities that can withstand shocks before they become crisis.
In this regard, I'm pleased to highlight that there's going to be an international conference on disaster risk reduction and resilience in Africa, which the African Union Commission, together with the government of Mozambique and CETA will convene in Maputo from the 13th to the 15th of October 2026, under the theme Proactive governance and Strategic Investment for disaster risk reduction and resilient Africa.
The great Greenwall belongs family with that conversation.
It is about restoring the landscape before degradation becomes a disaster, strengthening communities before those shocks becomes crisis, and creating productive assets that generate returns for future generations.
This is also why data also matters.
The African Union's harmonized results management framework, provides an important foundation for tracking results.
We always say what gets measured, can be managed, what gets demonstrated, can be financed.
Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, our message today is clear, Africa is not simply to ask for assistance.
Africa is coming with solutions.
We have the landscapes to restore, we have the communities who are ready to act.
We have proven approaches that can be scaled.
We have institutions that are increasingly working together.
And we have an investment proposition capable of delivering environmental, social and economic returns.
The role of the African Union is to bring these pieces together to coordinate partners, sectors, reduce fragmentations, strengthen continental standards, and monitor and create the conditions for investment at scale, but we cannot do this alone.
Therefore, to our investors and financial partners who are here, I make a direct appeal, work with us so that we can turn restoration opportunities into investable opportunities.
To our development partners, help us move from fragmented projects to coordinated programs and scalable pipelines to our member states and regional economic communities.
Let us strengthen continental integration and ensure that our investments reinforce one another rather than compete with one another.
And to our communities as well as our young people, the Great Greenwall is your future.
Its success must create jobs, it must create opportunity, dignity, and resilience.
The Great Greenwall has already changed the conversation about Africa's decreed landscapes.
Our task now is to change the scale of action.
Us transform ambition into investment, investments into action, actions into resilience, and resilience into lasting prosperity for Africa's people.
We need to invest in the Great Green Wall so that Africa's land degradation can be reduced.
We need to invest in water, we need to invest in its people, we need to invest in resilience and ultimately invest in Africa's future.
I look forward to engaging every stakeholder and partner in this room.
Thank you very much for your attention.
Thank you very much, Commissioner for the African Union, for your work for encouragement and call of action for the Greek Green Wall.
I would like now to give the floor to the African Development Bank Director of Climate Change and Green Growth.
Doctor Laudi Garba Division Manager, Agriculture Research, Production and Sustainability.
You have the floor, sir.
Mercy.
Excellence, Madam Amina.
Excellence.
Your Honor, Amina Mohammed, Vice Secretary of the United Nations, Madam Jasmin Fouad, Secuty Secretary of the UN CCD, Excellence, Madame Duma Maria Dgara, Minister of the Environment, and the Sustainable Development in Mali, President of the Council of Ministers and the initiative of the Great Green Wall in Sahel and Sahara, ministers in Africa of this Green Great Wall Initiative and Mr.
Mohamed Ali Moses Villa Cati, commissioner for the African Union and responsible for agriculture, Madam Representative of South Africa, who will be taking the chair of the Council for the Great Green Wall in the Sada.
Ladies and gentlemen, for me, it's a great honor to talk to you all on behalf of the African Development Band, doctor SD Walta on the occasion of this great event, this high level to mobilize investment for the scaling up of actions in this Great Green Wall initiative in Lambato in the UNC City.
Today, we're living in an important moment.
The Great Green Wall is at a tipping point.
Our challenge is not only to show the relevance of this initiative, we know all why this is necessary.
We know the importance of the land degradation, drought, and vulnerabilities and consequences on the food systems and rural economy in Africa.
Our challenge today is to change the scale.
We need to move from initiatives that are too scattered to a true continental dynamics.
We need to go from ambitions to investment, from project to structure, and first and foremost, to go from restored hectors to visible and sustainable results for the African population.
Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, the African Development Bank welcomes the adoption by African Union of the continental strategy of the GGWI and the ten year initiative.
This evolution is an amazing headway.
It is making an initiative, an ambition that is truly continental to restore the land, the climate resilience and economic transformation.
Great Green World is not simply a response to decertification, it's become a platform allowing to unite a number of priorities in our continent.
Restoring land and ecosystem, food security, adaptation to climate change, protection of biodiversity, setting up employment for young women and rural resilient economies.
This is contributing thus directly to Agenda 2063 in the African Union, the ODS, and the commitments taken within the framework of the Free Convention.
But this new continental dimension imposes on all of us a new way to work, a new approach.
Continental integration does not mean to use the same model everywhere, but it means to build up a common ambition, taking into account our own realities in our own region and countries.
This means making consistent all of the national and regional initiatives, getting close Sahel, getting close the other regions in Africa around a common goal de result afin fare de la gran inverti platform African Desist transformation.
Excellence, Madam Chair reality, Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen.
This ambition is truly consistent with the strategic view that the African development has directly, the four pillars mentioned, first of all, to mobilize more capital at lower cost to fund the development of Africa.
Secondly, to have African financial system that are more solid, deeper and better connected.
Third, transform our demographics and make it opportunities and last but not least, to develop resilient infrastructure and value chain that would allow Africa to set up more wealth on our own land and territory.
The Great Green Wall can make contribution to this four ambition.
But for that purpose, large scale funding is required.
We can attract new capital, set up employment for young people, strengthen the value agriculture and pastoralist chain, and finally, transform territories that today are vulnerable in more productive, more resilient, and economically more dynamic.
This is why the African Development Bank in the Great Green Wall is not simply an environmental program.
It is a program for development, investment, and economic transformation.
Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, restoring a degraded land is never an abstract action.
It is a productive act for the community is allowing farmers to produce more to improve their condition, the conditions of the nomadic pastors and more access to water and land, allowing rural women to have an activity.
C for young people an opportunity in their own territory.
Finally, is strengthen food security for families to protect the basins, to protect biodiversity, and increase the capacity of the territories to be resilient to climate change.
Every restore Hector has a family, a life, a community, a local economy behind.
It is this human dimension that should be the heart of our action.
In our mandate, the African Development Bank is always playing a role of champion catalyst for the Great Green Wall.
In the framework of 2024 to 2033, the African Development Bank is supporting Africa in promoting green, inclusive and resilience.
Our commitment will take us to strengthening the institutions, preparing the ground for investment, funding programs, and mobilizing additional resources in 2025, the bank could fund the institutional organizational and technical audit of the Pan African Agency for the Great Green Wall, thus identifying reforms for the efficacy of the Secretariat, consolidating the capacity in terms of mobilization of resources and assessment.
For our bank, this institutional Fact is essential because a continental ambition requires strong institutions.
Funding could not be yielding sustainable results if they're not supporting efficient governments and the real capacity to be resilient, so we are welcoming all of these steps that are carried out in transition to institutions that are more resilient.
Ladies and gentlemen, excellencies, since June 2026, the bank is supporting this transition through high level technical assistance mobilizing preparation of operational plan, 2027 2029, Priority Investment In Decade, 2021, 2030 for the Great Green Wall.
A final and decisive step.
Our objective is to continue to come up with priority programs that are consistent, doable, and bankable.
For that purpose, the Great Green Wall needs to support an essential transformation, transform the restoring and program ambitions into investment, transforming this un bankable project and transforming the mobilized finding in measurable outcome on site.
The bank will contribute to each and every one of the steps.
Ladies and gentlemen, these dynamics is not simply involving the Sahel.
Since 2025, the bank is supporting all of the countries in the SADC in the opera and operationalization of the Great Rain World in partnership with the Fund and the UNCCD.
We are going to support the countries in SADC in drafting an ambition priority program and mobilizing the necessary resources and this evolution and it has an important message, show that the Great Green Wall is not simply a Sahel response to the certification, but it is becoming an African strategy to restore the landscape, climate resilience, and transformation of the territory.
Sahel, Africa, all together will be supporting this project, and they are sharing the same needs, restoring the land, securing the food system, and strengthening the capacity of common waters and to make climate resilient.
It is precisely this diversity where continental integration takes on a new shape.
The bank has an important experience in matters of funding, conservation and preservation of the land, and resilience.
In the past few years, we have sustained intervention that has strengthened the resilience of 38 million small producers, only ten millions of hectres that they were degraded and to sustain more than a 250,000 green employment in the basins and Africa.
All of these figures are important.
But behind these figures this human reality.
Producers that are ready and resilient to face climate resilience opportunities for the young women and also the vulnerable community.
This is why we have opportunity and results.
But Likewise, we've learned an important lesson.
The width of the challenge in Africa requires a different scaling up.
We need to go faster and quicker and we know to intervene in the vaster territories.
Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, we will not make it a reality without changing the scale of financing.
The needs of the Great Green World go beyond the institutional capacity of one single country, one single project, public or private.
We need to transform and we need to mobilize all of the financing, public resources, multilateral banking and need to continue developing and being catalyzes of funds.
The environmental funds likewise need to be there to set up the conditions to attract more private capital and to develop mix financial mechanism.
The African Development Bank will continue to support African countries e bankable projects through technical assistance and the new climate fund allowing access to climate financing.
It's not all about how many hectas we want to restore.
It is all about how we're going to structure, mobilize, and secure the necessary financing to restore this land, creating economic value and opportunity for the population.
It is precisely there that we can contribute a specific value through financing tool through the capacity to mobilize partners, through the expertise in the preparation of project and the capacity to get quicker and faster the African countries and the funders and the donors together.
This is very important, no matter how many efforts we get together, we need to reinforce and strengthen synergy.
The partners, the institutions, and the program, they all acting on the same territory, even if they have the same goals without having enough integration we need to get out of this fragmentation.
The next step in the Great Green Wall is convergence.
Convergence and national strategy going together, converging so that we get all of the environmental and financial goals and the climate challenges all together so we, the African and the international partners, can work together.
Great Ringwall should become a cooperation space space for common investment in Africa.
It is in that spirit that the bank is working with the African Union, with the Pan African Union of the Great Green Wall, the member states and all of the partners so that we can add new dynamics to this territory.
I would like in that regard to give you an important perspective for the continent.
The bank will continue to contribute during 2026 in the First World Forum for Investment in Africa.
Our ambition is clear to work together around the same table, the governments in Africa, the climate funds, the environmental climate funds, the bilateral, the institutional, and the investors.
But we need to go beyond this simple mobilizing.
We need to set up a space where we are all represented, priority program, sufficiently structured and mature so we can go along with investors and the partners.
In this situation, we can really accelerate mobilization of resources.
Today, we know what to do.
Africa has a strategy and has the resources that are mobilized, has the experience, and it's about time to go to scale up the involvement of women, young, and communities.
The African Development Bank is ready to sustain and support the African continent to reach this goal.
And let's make the Great Rene World not simply one of the greatest ambitions to restore the land, but likewise, one of the projects that will be transforming economically, socially, and human wise.
The bank is ready to take his role in this ambition, and it's time to go to scale up.
Thank you so much.
Mercy B.
Thank you very much to the African Development Bank for those supportive words and for your support with the Great Green Wall from the onset from the start.
And you've always been a partner all along and for all sorts of projects on the ground and we are very grateful for the support that you give to the Great Green Wall.
As and there are so many parallel events going on.
So I would like to again, ask for your indulgence so that we can listen to the ministers, and then we could go back to the presentation of the keynote species.
We started late.
There are several event rolling on, so I would like to give the floor to the representative of the Deputy Minister of Forests, Fishery and the Environment of South Africa representing the Sadec to take the floor.
Thank you very much, Madam President.
Your Excellency's, honorable ministers, distinguished delegates and goals, donors and development partners, ladies and gentlemen.
South Africa expresses our appreciation to the government and the people of Mongolia for hosting this Cop 17 and the warm hospitality that has been extended to us since we've been here.
We also thank the African Union, the African Development Bank, the Pan African Agency of the Great Green Wall, the Sadec Secretariat, and the UNCCD Secretariat for convening this important dialogue on scaling up the Great Greenwall across Africa.
South Africa is pleased to participate on behalf of the Sadec member States and in our capacity as the chair of the South African Development community, and also the chair at deputy ministerial level of the Sad Great Green Wall Initiative.
We all know that Africa faces growing pressures from land degradation, drought, desertification, climate change, and biodiversity loss.
The interlinked challenges are closely linked to food and water security, livelihoods, poverty, and sustainable development.
This is why we strongly support continental initiatives such as the Great Green Wall Initiative and the African Forest Restoration Initiative, As they provide important platforms for countries and regions to work together to restore degraded landscape, strengthen resilience, and create opportunities for sustainable livelihoods.
This Great Green Wall Initiative is not only about restoring land, but also about land stewardship, focusing on sustainable land management and restoring productive landscape and creating green jobs, supporting rural communities also.
South Africa therefore welcomes the African Union Great Green Wall Strategy and the ten year implementation framework for the 2024, 2034 period, as these provides an important opportunity to strengthen continental coordination and move from individual projects towards integrated landscape management and implementation.
The strategy also provides an important platform for advancing Africa's commitments on land degradation, neutrality, drought resilience, Agenda 63, Africa biodiversity strategy, amongst others, and the implementation of synergies amongst the Rio conventions.
Excellencies, this initiative, the Great Green Wall, for it to achieve its full potential, we have to recognize that Africa's regions have different environmental, social, economic, and institutional context.
The SADC GGWI is therefore informed by the specific circumstances and priorities of the Southern Africa region.
While we can learn important lesson from experiences of the Sahaln Sahara region, the SADC approach cannot simply replicate that model.
Our regions share common challenges, particularly around drought, land degradation, but we also have different landscapes, governance systems, development priorities, and systems, and therefore, we have to promote learning cooperation and knowledge exchange while allowing countries and regions to develop approaches that respond to their own circumstances.
Ladies and gentlemen, we all know that drought is a global phenomenon, and its consequences are particularly severe in Africa, where it intersects with poverty, dependence on rainfed agriculture livestock, land degradation, limited infrastructure, and constrained access to finance.
In many African countries, drought can quickly become a food water, livelihood and humanitarian crisis.
Recent droughts have demonstrated the scale of this challenge.
This is why drought must remain one of the defining issues at COP 17.
The global and systematic nature of drought requires a stronger, more coordinated international response under the UNCCD.
We have to move beyond reacting to drought after it becomes a disaster and in state invest in preparedness, resilience, early warning, national drought planning, and anticipatory action.
Cop 17 should therefore do more than affirm that drought is worsening.
It should establish a clear pathway towards a robust global drought instrument that strengthens international cooperation and helps countries to prepare for and manage drought risk before they become crises.
But any new instrument must also be fair and implementable.
It must not simply create additional obligations for vulnerable countries without providing the means to deliver them.
It should be supported by predictable finance, technology transfer, capacity building, early warning system, sustainable land and water management approaches, ecosystem restoration, and practical implementation support, particularly for drought vulnerable developing countries.
Honorable Ministers, we are pleased that in June this year approval was received from the Global Environment facility for the implementation of the Southern African Great Green Wall Accelerator Project.
The accelerator project seeks to mobilize technical, political, and financial resources to support implementation and to strengthen resilience of people also and ecosystems and promote nature based solution and advance a green economy.
Importantly, the accelerator project is grounded in national and regional priorities.
We, therefore, as the Southern African development community, appreciate the support and commitment demonstrated by the EU, the UNCCD, the Sac Secretary, the Commonwealth Secretarat, multilateral Environmental Agreements, and other partners towards this initiative.
The task before us is significant, but there is opportunity.
If we are to sustainably manage and restore Africa's landscape at scale required, we must strengthen coordination, mobilize financial resources, and promote innovation, and ensure that local communities are at the center of implementation.
In conclusion, South Africa, on behalf of the Southern African development community, therefore, looks forward to continued cooperation with the whole region on the continent, the regional economy communities, development partners, financial institutions, and the private sector in advancing this important continental agenda.
I thank you.
Thank you very much to the representative of the Ministry of South Africa and for the Greek Green World South.
I know that there is time constraint here, but also there is a protocol constraints here.
Sometime you will see that I will give the floor.
It's really to try to accommodate some of the ongoing parallel events.
So please bear with us and we really beg your understanding.
Madame La ministra.
Excellency, the Minister.
Firstly, I would like to apologize because I know that the Pan African Agency for the Great Green Wall has been created before and has showed the example for the Sadak follows should have taken the floor first, but we changed the order and we apologize because they have to go to another event.
Please be indulgent with us for doing so.
However, this is my pleasure to give the floor to Excellency misses Duma Maria Togran, Minister of Environment, Sanitation and Sustainable Development in Mali and also holding the role as ministerial chair of the Pan African Agency for the Great Green Wall.
Your Excellency, the floor is yours.
Thank you very much for giving me the floor.
Excellency, secretary, vice Secretary of the UN, Secretary executive of the UN CCD, ladies and gentlemen, ministers, representatives of the African Union, distinguished financial and technical partners.
Ladies and gentlemen, it is for me a great honor to take the floor in this context about this major event dedicated to the G role as a side event of the Cop 17 for the UN CCD.
Firstly, I would like to welcome the commitment from all the stakeholders, actors who've been working alongside the African states to make the Great Green World a concrete and tangible reality for our population.
The Great Green Wall today is at a decisive moment.
We have to go from ambition to scale, from isolated initiatives to a true continental wide dynamics and extensive investment to really transform the territory.
Experience being learned from S has taught us one essential thing.
Restoring land cannot be separated from the economic and social development for our communities.
Behind each restored actors, we need to have a productive land, a family which is more resilient, a young person who can find an opportunity, a woman who can create a income generating activity and a community who is more prepared to face in the context of climate change.
This is why we must now measure the success of the Great Green Wall, not only in restored hectors, but also in terms of food safety, in terms of income generated, in terms of economic climatic resiliency and land restored.
Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, the second priority is scaling up.
The Great Green Wall should no longer be considered as a number of projects put together.
It must become a true continental platform for actions, investment supported by all the institutions in Africa.
In doing so, I would like to remind us that the Conference of the Heads of States of the Pan African Agency for the Great Green World has adopted a priority investment plan for the next year 2024, 2021 to 2030.
This is a very ambitious investment plan, and we've asked the UN CCD to coordinate the mobilization of resources and the monitoring of the commitments.
From the partners supporting this plan.
In order to change scales, we need to change the approach to the investment.
We must go from financing a project to financing a portfolio, a transformation portfolio, a portfolio, a project that could attract public resources, the climate related funding, and the partners economy and also involves engage the private sector.
We must create favorable conditions that will enable us to transform opportunities of land restoration into bankable and sustainable opportunities in agroforestry, agroecology, in the natural resources, sustainable management, the development of value chains, and the employment and the creation of jobs.
The Great Green Wall is also an African answer to a number of challenges at global level, fighting against adapted climate change, restoration, biodiversity, food safety challenges, and the creation of green jobs.
Therefore, we do have a very unique priority.
The Great Green Wall has to become the main and the main platform for nature based solutions.
We need to demonstrate that same intervention can also have environmental benefits, climatic, social and economic benefits.
It is in this context as the Minister for environment and as the ministerial chair of the Pan African Agency for the Great Green Wall.
I would like to have a call for a strengthened mobilization.
We need to harmonize our investments and coordinate even more with our partners.
We must develop a pipeline on continent level which can be transformative and bankable projects with rests that can be measured to ensure that each dollar, each euro each francs being invested in the Great Green Wall can generate the maximum impact possible for the African population.
Excellency, ladies and gentlemen.
Africa is not only asking for the Great Green Wall to be funded, to be financed, Africa is offering through that model, an investment model to towards resiliency, restoration of land, biodiversity, food safety, and the future of its youth.
The the moment has therefore come to go from investment to commitment from commitments to investment to project at scale and results.
The Great Greenwall can not only be a defense against desertification, but especially a wall for opportunity for resiliency and prosperity for today's generation and the ones to come.
Thank you very much for your attention.
Mi Bu.
Thank you, Excellency.
Thank you for your words and thank you for supporting.
Thank you for reminding the importance of the value chain and your sentence.
Great Green Wall is an African platform for a continental solution.
I think that is a wonderful recapping.
Call to give the floor to doctor Aaron Ad for the keynotes, and then we will open the floor for the minister interventions.
A, you have the.
Thank you.
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.
I'm not a doctor yet on my way.
Excellencies, distinguished guests, colleagues, and partners.
My name is Erondu and I'm the managing director for the Global Shire Alliance.
Thank you to the Africa Union Commission, the Africa Development Bank, the Pan African Agency for the Great Green Wall, the SADC Secretariat and the UNCCD for the opportunity to speak today.
I would like to reflect on how the share industry is demonstrating the role that the private sector can play in delivering nature based solutions and how we can upscale this experience to support the ambitions of the Great Green Wall.
According to the UNCCD, an estimated $355 billion is needed annually to combat land degradation and drought globally.
Yet current investment is only around $77 billion, with a private sector only providing around 6% of global finance for land restoration and drought resilience.
Public finance alone cannot close that gap.
The question is, how we bring the private sector into restoration in a way that works for business, landscapes and the people whose livelihoods depend upon them.
The share industry gives us a practical example.
The global share Alliance represents more than 900 stakeholders from women cooperatives to suppliers, processors, and leading food and cosmetic companies in Africa and around the world.
The tree grows naturally across 21 countries in Africa, many of them across the Great Green World landscapes.
These are not simply landscape to be restored.
They are productive landscapes where millions of women depend on share for income and to feed their families.
At the GSA, private sector engagement goes beyond funding.
We work with companies from co creation of projects to joint implementation, connecting restoration and women's economic empowerment to supply chains, markets, and long term commercial partnerships.
Investment in nature and investment in livelihoods must go hand in hand.
Let me show you what that looks like.
In Burkina Fassa and Togo, through a project called the Thor's Climate Resilience Communities, with support from the Africa Development Bank through the Africa Climate Change Fund, 15 women cooperatives are leading farmer managed natural regeneration in their communities a community, the non sudra cooperative where we have women who are leading this farmer managed natural regeneration.
They identify viable shots, prune them, and grab those that are possible.
The women are also undertaking beekeeping, creating an additional source of income whilst promoting pollination of the trees.
In Bengkde, processors are filtering and reusing water from shear processing.
While in Togo, we have women cooperatives converting waste into energy, thereby reducing their reliance on firewood.
We also have applied the same principle through our partnership with UNCCD.
In 2024, with support from the Austran Development Corporation through UNCCD, the GSA worked with women cooperatives in Volcano and Mali to reverse land degradation through regenerative she agroforestry.
Rather than looking at tree planting in isolation, the project combined restoration with the practical needs of women and their communities.
Women planted share a native trees and introduced crops, including fonu, bobarb, Minger and others.
Bull holes provided access to water, opening opportunities to grow crops beyond the rainy season.
Whilst tricycles and other planting tools increased or help increase the productivity of women as well as their income.
At the end of the project, 160 hectaas were restored, benefiting over 2,500 women and their communities.
That is what makes these approaches relevant to the Great Green Wall.
Restoration is connected to livelihoods, food production, resilience, and economic opportunity rather than being delivered as a standalone environmental intervention.
The global Share Alliance initiative called the Action for Share Pkline Initiatives, take this approach to a greater scale.
Excellence.
The GSA estimate that 80 million share trees are lost every year across West Africa.
For companies that buy share, that is not only an environmental issue.
It is a supply chain issue and ultimately a business issue.
And so over the past decade, we have mobilized more than 470 private sector partners.
Through this initiative, over 100,000 women across eight countries are leading Parkland management where the existing stock of shared trees is being kept and over 3 million new share and native trees have been ntured with a private sector investing over $14 million in restoration related projects.
Building on this experience, the GSA in 2024 adopted the Abuja Declaration, where the members of the Alliance committed to restore 4 million hectaas by 2020, nature 10 million new shared trees, and then engaged 10 million women in revitalizing parklands and work with ten countries to strengthen parkland management policies.
Cop 17 is focused on implementation.
The GSA knows many of these solutions.
The challenge is bringing together the partnerships, investments, and delivery mechanisms needed to apply them at scale.
This is why the Great Green Wall presents an extraordinary opportunity.
SHARE is already part of this landscape, supporting the livelihoods of over 60 million women across the wide Shel.
So the opportunity is to build on these existing economic activities, bringing together communities, government, development, finance, and the private sector to drive restoration, strengthen livelihoods, and create economic opportunity.
And while our experience is in share, the opportunity goes beyond share, and that same can be applied across several value chains in the Great Green Wall landscape.
So the message is simple, bring the private sector in from the beginning.
Do not see business simply as a source of funding.
Bring companies into the design and implementation of restoration programs and build the economic case for these companies to invest in the restoration.
Public and development finance can help reduce risk.
Private companies can bring investments.
They will provide the markets, the innovation, and the long term commercial relationships, and communities must be at the center of this.
Your Excellency, in conclusion, the Global A Alliance is ready to take leadership role in this process, working with the Africa Union, the Great Greenwald Institution, government, and financial partners to bring the private sector actors into the Great Green Wall Initiative.
We are ready to share what we have learned over the past 15 years and help develop models that connect private sector investment with landscape restoration, resilient livelihoods, and long term opportunity.
By bringing these actors together, we can build on the Great Green World's achievement and help create its vision of restored, productive landscape, resilient livelihoods, and a sustainable economic opportunity across Africa.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Aaron, for this keynote speech.
We are now as you will see, we will skip the group photo and try to do it at the end to try to save some time.
We are now entering into the ministerial intervention, and it's really 3 minutes each.
We need to really stick to that.
So we will open the floor for this and I will hand it over to the African Union and deal to continue this co moderation.
Pamela.
Thank you very much, doctor Bagua Miana for the excellent moderation and it's a pleasure for us to receive you all here.
Excellencies, please bear with us.
We have 20 minutes left and we have ten ministers that have asked for the floor.
A, after the ministers take the floor, there are 16 representatives of ministries that have also asked to take the floor.
So there's another segment on the private sector afterwards.
So we will certainly go over time, and we ask you to bear with us.
So thank you so much.
And once again, the ministers were asking for your promptitude.
We would like to we have received a special request from Zimbabwe that must excuse itself.
So, Honorable Minister from Zimbabwe, if you're ready, we will take you first.
Otherwise, we are going to start with Nigeria and with Chad.
Thank you, Mr.
Chairman.
It is pleasing, ladies and gentlemen that you note that the Great Green Wall is evolving beyond its original concept of the narrow tree belt.
Today, through continental integration, it represents a dynamic landscape.
Of sustainable land management across all regions in Africa, including the 16 Sadac member states, as Southern Africa experiences intensifying climate risk, land degradation and biodiversity loss landscape restoration is no longer just an environmental goal.
It is a fundamental and socioeconomic survival, food security, and regional peace in our region and Africa as a whole.
I want to say that in Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe is implementing a national development strategy to, the second five year plan, which identified the private sector as the principal driver of economic growth and sustainable land management.
This framework provides policy predictability and lower sovereign risk, encouraging long term private investment in restoration of our land.
The launch of the carbon credit registry and carbon trading regulations in 2025 has created a transparent market for carbon offsets, biodiversity credits, and ecosystem services payments.
These mechanisms are attracting private sector capital, into catchment such as the Sanati and Side area, turning restoration into commercially viable opportunities in our country.
Zimbabwe is pursuing blended finance and public private partnerships to scale up restoration of small plots of small pilot projects, into bankable investment, read nature based solutions.
This approach mobilizes private capital alongside global funds.
The allocations under the Global Environmental facility, F seven and F eight are supporting targeted interventions, including the Dry Sustainable Landscape Impact Program and the Sustainable Cities Project, which directly contribute to the Great Green Wall targets.
We have also set aside US 600,000 under the J eight cycle as a start allocation, demonstrating governments commitment to co financing the restoration efforts and build investor confidence.
The Cabinet approved lending, degradation neutrality, working group provides high level political backing and coordination underpinning Zimbabwe's pledge to restore 6.4 million acres of degraded land by 2030.
That's our target.
Civil society organizations, communities are actively engaged in co financing and implementing restoration programs, ensuring that investment deliver measurable benefits at the local level.
Private banks in the country and companies are being encouraged to align their investments national restoration priorities while mining companies and other enterprises are contributing through corporate responsibility initiatives in areas where they operate in order to restore the degraded land within the mining areas.
Zimbabwe requires risk capital and technical support to establish sustainable frameworks for disaster risk management, including tools and parametric insurance to respond rapidly to droughts, floods, and cyclones that of late we are experiencing as a country.
We we call for private capital to move beyond pilot scale grants into bankable commercial green investment, particularly in climate resilient agriculture, solar powered, solar powered systems for irrigation, sustainable life value chains, and ecotourism.
Those are the investment areas where our people are putting their money and reaping value.
Zimbabwe says core investment in landscape restoration that delivers both economic returns and measurable ecological dividends.
Including strengthening sustainable timber and non timber forests that are planting throughout the country.
I so submit.
Thank you so much, doctor Evelyn Lav for these very pertinent remarks and very on point.
Without further ado, I think we'll move on to the honorable Minister from Chad.
His Excellency, Mr.
Hassan Bahi Madam Secretary-General, on behalf of the Vice Secretary-General and the United Nations.
Ladies and gentlemen, for me, it is a great honor to take the floor on the occasions of this important high level side event on behalf of our people and the minister is a great honor to take the floor and in support of the Great Green Wall Initiative.
Today, we are here to talk about restoring African land, restoring hope, This entails profound action, restoring the land is not simply restoring degraded ecosystem, but restoring livelihood, reinforcing our community resilience, and proposed new perspective in coming generation in Chad.
This ambition is particularly important with more than 80% of its territory in arid or semi arid area.
Our country is at the avanard of the fight for decertification and climate change.
This is why ever since the Pan African Agency for the Great Great Green World Chad was the first one to be present and we never stopped renewing our commitment towards this initiative.
Ladies and gentlemen, Excellencies, restoring land can only be possible if a combination of actors are together.
This requires collective mobilization, the inclusion of solid partners who can carry out action in the long run.
It is in this spirit that Chad has implemented a multi actor coalition for this initiative.
We are involving different sectors, private sector, civil society, and technical partners.
In this regard, we have inclusive governance, coordinating our actions and setting up a favorable setting for the restoration of land.
Our commitment is not simply limited to this temporary project.
We are having tangible results on site.
We have the cooperation with the agency with the Great Green Wall.
35,000 degraded hectas have been established.
We have implemented and planted more than 30 million trees, 18 farms, and we had projects funded by the World Bank, thus becoming an example of this partnership.
We want to show the pillars of agriculture and the local producers to draw synergies with community excellences, ladies and gentlemen, so that the partnership with the private sector can yield outcome to the level of our ambition, which is to set up conditions for sustainable development based on shared accountability and the outcome that is tangible too.
The long term requires a consistent, patience, and a vision that is prolonged in time.
We need capable partnership that can be engaged in the long run to sustain actions worth the outcome is progressively built.
This ambition calls for investment and partnership in sharing the risk.
A few million dollars will not simply making the Great Green Wall a reality, but we need the involvement of the private sector hand in hand with the government and environment, the global environmental Fund.
We want to at the same time renew and adopt locally speaking our models for action.
Solutions that we want to develop should respond to the real necessities and needs of our population, particularly in sustainable governance and renewable energies.
In this regard, we want to have solid partnership, mobilize more resources, and sustainably renewing our African landscape.
Chad, ladies and gentlemen, is committed with this Great Green Wall Initiative for 2024 up to 2034.
Our goal is clear.
We're not alone.
And we're not going to be alone.
Restoring the land should come from a shared and collective investment.
We need to combine the efforts of the state, the communities, the private sector, the financial institution, and all of the partners that can make a contribution to transform the territory and save the land.
So in this regard, Chad, we'll be supporting this initiative.
We will plant 10 million trees to accelerate our efforts and build a true sustainable development of the landscape, thus involving the state, financial partners, climate funds excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, the challenges are huge, but our will is also going beyond Every hectar that is restored hides a family that is recovering productivity.
Every tree that we plant, there is a promise for resilience.
Every community that is mobilized requires a territory building up on the future.
Restoring our landscape is restoring our economies, strengthening the capacity of our population and preserving them for the future.
Chad is willing to go deeper in this dynamic.
We make a call to all of our partners and and ask them to join efforts, not just in this initiative to restore ecologically the land, but to make it economically viable, make inclusion to become a reality, and the hope for future generations.
Together, let's restore our land.
Together, let's strengthen the resilience of our people.
Together, let's restore the S.
The hope.
Thank you very much.
Minister Cs.
Thank you very much for your words and your support in working together.
That's very important.
On that note, I would like to invite Honorable Minister Andrea Tsarla Andrea Tisala Novale Lukary Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development in Madagascar to take the floor.
Thank you very much, Chair.
Excellency, ladies and gentlemen, distinguished delegates partners, Madagascar, restoring land is not only an environmental objective, it is a guarantee to ensure food and the future of our communities.
In the context of drought and land degradation and desertification, we made a choice to not just restoring ecosystems and human development, but to build together.
Madagascar has hosted a ministerial meeting of different partners and was recognized as a country well involved in this initiative.
Our objective is to go to go beyond the commitments in terms of commitments towards resiliency.
This is what we do with our Ecovilage model.
Over 60 eco villages are now being implemented in Madagastar thanks to the support of numerous partners.
The principle is simple.
We start at the community level, we strengthen the local governance, and we consider and we raise the awareness for the environment.
No restoration cannot be lasting without the local ownership.
On that basis, we gather in the same territory, water, renewable energy, the land landscape restoration, agro forestry, resilient agriculture, and all new economic opportunities for women and youth.
This approach translates at local level the six pillars for the Great Green World Initiative.
It's also within the ambition of the African Union's ambition.
A restored land territory is not just a new space, but it's a way to secure the resources in water, strengthening food safety, supporting economic activity, and improve resiliency.
We have got operational basis in place.
That engages with communities as well as multilateral partners, both civil and private.
We have demonstrated again and again the potential presented by this approach.
Now, the challenge is to scale.
The scaling up so far has been supported by the state and its implementing partners Next step has to mobilize the private sector around the components, the income generating components, the decentralized energy, the agriculture, green jobs, and circular economy.
What we offer, what we propose is not just to fund a number of separate projects, but to develop a partnership that will be a way to scale up those projects.
Madagastar invite the African Development Bank and all financial and technical partners to work with us to develop this partnership, long term investment around this context.
We have cut already concessional funding, which is a way to absorb some of the initial cost and technological partnerships to transform land restoration.
Into sustainable opportunities, long lasting opportunities.
Madagasar is standing ready to contribute to make the Great Green World and to make it a model to transform lives in a population.
We are willing and we're standing ready to work with you to do so, and we thank you.
Thank you very much, Excellency.
Pleasure of giving the floor to His Excellency, Balarabi Abslawal, Minister of Environment of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Thank you.
You're welcome among us.
Thank you.
Because this is so unfair.
I just came back from another one and you are just asking you to do this one.
Thank you.
Let me start by raising some I don't have a prepared speech for this, but let me just raise some issues that I believe is important for this gather.
One is that we all believe that and we strongly support that G Greenwald is very important for us in our part of the continent.
We have been on this for very long time.
We have made a lot of efforts in trying to invest in trying to address this issue, trying to fence our areas, this hill area, particularly from the encroachment of the desert, which is almost foreign everything.
We have seen consequences of that.
For example, Lake Chad, which is located around that area, is now facing a very great threat from the encroachment of the desert and also degradation and drought that affect that particular area.
So This is something that is very important and we need for us to come together collectively and address this important issue.
I was here when the EU and the African Borg made this contribution.
Two years ago, we're here The same contributions were done, but I believe that we're doing as much as we should be doing because we are definitely lagging behind in terms of trying to address these issues.
We must come together and address these issues squarely.
We must organize resources, funding from within our countries and outside and also try to encourage, try to encourage the private sector to come in.
In Nigeria, for example, we have launched three green bonds directed at trying to address this issue of land degradation, drought, and encroachment of the desert.
We must work collectively because the whole essence of the Panapol Grid Nal is to come together and share experiences, with resources together and address this issue.
I believe we should do that.
I want to thank the organizers of this particular conference for that because we need to have this kind of dialogue.
We need to have this discussion in the area of land degradation and drought and the encroachment of the desert and also the disappearance of our ecosystem because of this very impact of this devastation that's coming A Africa.
I want to thank you very much for this opportunity.
I said, I just 2 minutes, so that's all I have to contribute.
Thank you very much.
Thank you so much, Excellency, for agreeing to take the floor so quickly after you arrived.
Without further ado, I think, we'll give the floor to a minister who aspires to join the Greenwal Initiative.
Welcome to Honorary Clement Duman Muganma, Minister of Agriculture and Food Security of South Sudan.
Welcome.
Thank you, facilitators.
I want to acknowledge the protocol that has already been established because I don't want to make mistakes while going through the list.
I'm very grateful to the government of Mongolia for hosting these important events and also for the organizers, especially the African Union, for allowing us to participate in this important dialogue.
South Sudan is one of the youngest country in the whole.
We believe that some of the issues that is being discussed here today are relevant to South Sudan.
We are facing a lot of challenges, including deforestation and land degradation, flooding, all those things that has been mentioned in the whole.
South Sudan is facing them.
But of course, we cannot take part in them.
Are not part of it.
We believe that collective responsibility and African solution within the context of the African Union is important for South Sudan to play an important role.
Therefore, we are calling for strategic integration of South Sudan into this block so that we can be able to benefit more from it.
We are already involved in some kind of land reclamation through planting trees.
But of course, this initiative cannot be done by one single states.
So we want to be part of the bigger integration, and that is why we feel that this is where we can be able to play a much bigger role.
I did not prepare a speech for this particular events, but when I got the invitation, I thought it was important for South Sudan to be here.
And so we are committed to play our part within the African context.
Thank you so much for the opportunity.
Thank you so much, Excellency, and I think the Pan African Agency for the Great Green Wall has heard you and I'm sure they'll welcome you within their ranks.
I'm now looking at the list of ministers left.
I'm seeing and noticing that the minister from Algeria is absent, as is the one from Angola and Eritrea and Tanzania as well.
I see here a representative for the Minister of Senegal, who is to take a speech in the plenary during the ministerial.
What I'm suggesting now is until the Minister for Senegal comes and joins us, we'll move along on the program and take the representatives of countries who have asked for the floor.
In this list, you can announce it then.
There's a suggestion that is different from what we have in our program just in the interest of time.
Yeah.
Thank you, Gs.
On interest of time, we have partners that has been invited, including private sector, who would want to pitch before the ministers.
Once the ministers come, the minister will pitch because priority will be given to ministers to speak and then in private sectors who have confirmed and then it will come back to the minister's representative.
Thank you.
Thank you, Pamela, for the suggestion, and we'll do it the African Union way.
Yeah.
I'd like to invite actually since our initial speaker for the United Nations Environment Program isn't here, and I'm seeing the ambassador of the EU to Mongolia, miss Ina, and please pardon my pronunciation.
Maronti Yes.
Very good.
You're more than welcome to take the floor.
Thank you for your presence.
Thank you very much.
Your Excellencies, dear ministers, dear colleagues of protocol observed.
It is my honor to speak to you on behalf of the European Union today, one of the earliest supporters of the Great Green Wall.
Across the Sahel and the Horn of Africa, the figurative seeds that we have planted together, notably at the 20210 Planet Summit are beginning to sprout and flourish.
Regional level, our Knowledge for Great Green World Action Program, implemented by the Landscape Alliance and FAO has been a reliable and steadfast pillar of support.
It is due to the success of this collaboration that we decided earlier this year to provide financial top up of 7 million to the program and to prolong it until 2030.
Our cooperation is changing and with it the modalities of our engagement.
Under the EU's global gateway strategy, more attention will lie on collaboration with the private sector and the development of bankable investment pipelines.
It is encouraging to see that today's event is echoing this direction of travel.
Blending operations with European development finance institutions and local banks are already part of our broad support to the Great Green Wall in countries like Nigeria, Benan, and Cameroon.
But we must continue to collectively work on the policy, institutional, human, and market conditions that are indeed to bring to bear investable pipelines of interest for financial institutions and private sector actors.
The program will do its part at regional level to further push the envelope on this, creating the capacity, knowledge, and data systems that can provide credible decision ready evidence for investors, governments, and communities alike.
We are looking forward to further and more detailed discussions on these topics at the Great Green Wall Pavilion in the coming days.
I thank you for your attention.
Thank you so much, Excellency, and thank you so much for your contributions to the Great Greenwald Pavilion, along with the government of Austria.
I would like now to invite the Food and Agriculture Organization to take the floor before we move on to the United Nations Environment Program.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Excellencies, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen.
I'm Beth Bechtel, Deputy Director General of the Food and Agriculture Organization coming from Rome.
It's a pleasure to be here and to speak about how the Great Green Wall has clearly moved beyond vision.
I think the question now is how we create the conditions for investment at the scale that many of the previous speakers have noted is required.
FAO is not a financial institution.
I'm sitting next to colleagues from EFOD.
We've heard from our friends at the African Development Bank and the World Bank, we are not bringing capital ourselves.
But capital requires credible opportunities, reduced risk, and an economic proposition and confidence in results.
That is where we as FAO, working alongside many of the governments represented here, financial institutions, private investors, and other partners can contribute.
First, we have to turn restoration opportunities into investable propositions.
Identifying degraded land is only the beginning.
Investors need to know what can be done with that land, what will work technically, what will it cost, and what productive potential can be created on that land.
Through Africa Open Deal, which is a joint FAO AU initiative, we have with 350 African experts helped identify 162 million hectars of degraded land that require restoration across the Sahel Great Green Wall area.
The next step is to translate that type of evidence into investment opportunities.
Moving from the maps that show the need to showing maps that demonstrate economic potential.
Second, we need to reduce risk before asking investors to take that risk.
We often discuss de risking in financial terms, but some risks can be reduced before we ever get to the financing table.
Better data, better science, better project design can tell us whether land is suitable, whether water is available, whether production systems will work, markets exist, and results can be measured.
That is not financial de risking, that is technical de risking.
There again, FAO is ready and willing to help reduce those underlying risks.
Third and finally, restoration needs an economic proposition behind it.
A restored landscape truly can become a productive asset, supporting agriculture, livestock and grazing systems, agro forestry, improved water management, processing, and rural businesses.
Finally, in closing, scaling means making sure that successful models are also repeatable.
We need common data and measurement, stronger investment pipelines, and the ability to aggregate smaller opportunities into, as have been said, portfolios that are large enough to attract finance.
Combining the technical foundation that I've described with smart, public and concessional resources, development bank financing, and private investment where returns are possible means we will have the stronger pathway to scale.
That is how the Great Green wall is going to move from individually financed projects towards the investment model that we have talked about here today that needs to be both repeated and expanded across Africa.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for those insightful remarks, Beth.
I really look forward to you hearing the remarks from the Barca Fund that will take the floor later.
Right now, we will move on to the United Nations Environment Program with my colleague, Fabrice, and we will then move on to Mr.
Jean Marc Sina Amy representing the Gef.
So over to you, Fabrice, and the Gef can get ready.
Thank you so much, Giles Bonjour Bonis Bona Prim Good afternoon, good evening to all of you.
Speech on behalf of our executive director, misses Singer, who's now in other meetings.
Okay.
Partners, investors.
The Great Green Wall Initiative is many things.
These verdant belt across the Sahel is a wall of nature helping to slow climate change and restore biodiversity.
It is a wall of hope, bringing peace, jobs, and sustainability, but it is also a wall of potential investment in economic returns and global gains.
We all know the benefit that restoring ecosystems and proively building resilience can bring.
Repairing damage is always more expensive than avoiding it.
For 15 years, UNEP and other partners have supported Salient countries as they lead on this initiative.
Today, through the UNCCD led Rad Global Drought Resilience Partnership and the Jeff Beck Greenwald Project, We are moving from grants to bankable structures.
Friends, I'm now asking you to invest in this great Greenwall through these structures and turn degraded carbon emitting soil into a carbon sink verified hector by hector.
Reversal, the active process of restoring degraded land is paired directly with performance based by credit payment that reward verifiable unit of ecological integrity instead of a one of fungible offset purchase.
UNEP and partners are working to make this happen.
By integrating satellite monitoring and UNCCD reporting, we are providing the verification required to attract large scale private co financing.
The current target is 15 million.
We are aggregrating tourism, sustainable harvesting and carbon revenue into diversified portfolio to overcome investment barriers to scale project.
Are building strategic partnership with African partners and using donor initiatives such as the global environment, facility replenishment to support countries.
We are working to integrate the Green Brick Wall Initiative into other MEAs including the upcoming biodiversity and Climate Cp.
Now, partners, our financial partners can be part of this story of change.
You can register your interest as a co financer under the Global Drought Resilience Partners Investment Facility.
You can work with UNP and the UNCCD to define bankable carbon reversal metrics and verification standards for the Sahel.
Our friends, pastoralists, farmers, indigenous people and local communities have already understood the deep interconnections between land, water, biodiversity, and livelihood.
But they need investable, verifierable structures that support them to do what they do best.
That is what UNEP, the UNCCD, the Great Green Wall partners are building and where private capital can move from financing a cause to holding a stake in the outcome.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you very much to Up for these very pertinent remarks.
I will now invite Mr.
Jean Marc Sina to take the floor.
Thank you, Mr.
Chair.
Excellent seasoned colleague.
I'm speaking on behalf of Claude Gasco interim CEO of the GF, who are to counsel is travel for family reasons, happy family reason, I must say.
Excellent colleague, Claude My colleague couldn't be here because of family.
Positive news, I have to say, so Want to began more than 15 years ago with the GF and the World Bank investing in a landmark program covering Sale and West Africa region with a vision to achieve sustainable ecosystem and resilient communities.
Since then, the initiative has evolved as one of the leading global programs, which is characterized by strong political commitment, ambitions, system based approach, and global cooperation.
The power of the Great Greenwall vision lies in the fact that the local benefits generate also global general benefits for water, land, and nature.
F is proud to be a strategic partner for the Great Green World countries with investment of nearly $1.2 billion in grants through diverse projects and programs.
This investment has leveraged an additional 6 billion from national government, development partners, and other multiple sources.
These resources have promoted holistic approaches in Great Green World countries that are challenges of climate change, food security, poverty reduction, and environmental conservation while empowering rural communities to drive transformative change.
Much remains to be done.
However, progress to date affirmed the potential of targeted investment to support transformative action on the ground.
These actions are leading to better climate resilience of vulnerable communities and green jobs in rural area.
In this regard, Jeff remains committed to engage and participate in strategic discussions with key partners of the Great Green Wall, including the GCF, the Green Climate Fund, and our long term vision on complementarity to play a supportive role in advancing the transformation within the framework of implementing the convention.
F eight programmatic approach of about $80 million financed half by the GF and half by LDCF for adaptation developed by UNEP and the West African Development Bank is ready for implementation.
The regional coordination project should be launched on September 28th this year in Senegal.
A national project includes nine countries, Burkina Faso, Chad, Ethiopia, Gambia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, and Senegal.
Now, the FR punishment with this initial $3.9 billion for the next four year cycle is a powerful demonstration of commitment to meeting international environmental goals through multilateral cooperation.
In Jeff now we will enhance our focus on network best solutions and adopt a world of society approach to engaging CSO, private sectors, indigenous people and local communities.
Further, there are opportunities to unlock private sector investment potential by promoting blended finance, providing catalytic fund and incentives and ensuring policy coherence at the national level.
Please allow me to highlight our new dryland and draught integrated program.
With a tentative envelope of 140 million, this IP respond to call off party of the UNCCD for the GF to prioritize drought resilience and its programming.
The F nine investment cycle will make drought resilience more central, more targeted, and more misurable.
Besides the new integrated program, there is a new dedicated objective for the implementation of national drought P and drought vulnerability has also been included in the formulation of the star resource allocation formula.
We are glad that the Great Green Wall is now expanding in the Southern Africa countries, we welcome and support this.
We are already working closely with the Southern Africa Development Commission on the Great Greenwall Initiative through an ongoing integrated program and through a recently approved eight project with the African Development Bank and the global mechanism.
In closing, F remains to long term cooperation with the Great Green Wall Initiative in the Silence Sara and with the Sadik region and its member states for enhanced coordination towards strategic investment and multi stakelder efforts for Nigerian people.
Thank you.
Thank you very much for these remarks, Jean Marc, and thank you for the Great Green Wall Accelerator of Southern Africa as well.
I'd like now to hand over the floor to the World Bank Group right before we go ahead and talk to the BarkA fund a little bit about de risking.
I give the floor to Mr.
Nagjhaa Harsh, over to you.
Thank you.
My apologies for butchering your name.
No worries.
Just harsh will do.
Thank you very much and it's great to represent the bank at this meeting.
As we all know, the Great Green Wall was and is a great dream in terms of trying to get countries together to work on an activity that they jointly look at.
We've been at the World Bank a partner on trying to make this dream a reality right from the beginning and we have tried to mobilize financing at scale.
For example, in currently in some of the Sahel countries, we have the resilient Program for about $500 million working across Mali, Bukinafaso, Niger, and Chad.
In Nigeria where we heard the minister, we have been working on a program which I've also been involved with called Acrisal, the agro climatic resilience in Smirid landscapes, which is one of our biggest landscape programs globally that we are financing, which is $700 million with now they're exploring an additional financing of another $300 million on this.
In the four years they've already achieved a lot getting close to 1 million hectars of land being improved as well as millions of beneficiaries, depending on how you count it, more than 4 million.
In places like Ethiopia, we've done billions of dollars of investment in many different innovative programs to try and do these activities at scale.
Because in many of these countries, there were a lot of small projects, but one of the things we are trying to do is to see how we can finance and help the governments to scale up the work in a big way.
We have some new larger initiatives on Agriconnect and water forward that we also hope to try and bring to bear even more to try and improve the landscapes in these areas.
I'll be short in terms of looking ahead.
I think the key is to try and see how we can bring in more innovations on technology, on financing, and on policies and regulations, and what we can do to learn from global good practices in this regard.
That's where a global institution like the bank could be a useful partner to try and scale these activities up even more to make this dream even more of a reality because failure is not an option here.
As everyone has said before, these activities have morphed from simple planting of trees to something which is more of an integrated landscape management, which brings in multifaceted benefits in terms of peace, sustainability, jobs, and so on.
At the bank itself, also now the World Bank Group has retooled to help integrate a lot of our IFC and mega teams with our World Bank teams working on these issues.
We hope to bring to bear more of these kinds of financing across different types of sources which can then be scaled up and working with the government on domestic finances to scale up a lot of these investments as we go ahead and make knowledge also, as we heard from many others, a key part of this because it's not just the investments, it's also how you bring knowledge together.
So again, we are committed to the Great Green World, and we look forward to working with you more on this and focus on jobs, which is our new Northstar at the bank as well, and it takes a village, so look forward to working with all of you on this.
Thank you very much, Harsh, for those remarks and we fully agree.
I will move on to Bark Fund.
Rikia Fuel, who is the founder.
Right after Rika, we will be going with the Landscape Alliance, which is misquoted today as CFA kraf, their former name.
After Cfakaf we will close this private sector and partners segment with the World Resources Institute, which has patiently waited for this to happen.
Thank you so much for your patience.
Over to you, Rika.
Thank you so much, Mr.
Chair.
It's a privilege to go before the War Resource Institute because our journey actually started with them.
Thank you to the organizer of the event, the African Union Commission, the UNCCD, the African Development Bank, and the Pan African Agency of the Great Green Wall.
The country of Mongolia for hosting this important event.
My name is Rika Fudel.
I run the BRCA Fund, which is an impact investment platform that support climate focused SMEs across 11 African countries, including the Great Green World countries.
Here's what our work has found about what makes capital hard to deploy in the Great Green World countries and generally across Africa.
The problem is not appetite, it's not pipeline.
It's that the capital that is on offer today for many of my colleagues and other fund managers is of the wrong size, the wrong tender, and sometime offer in the wrong instrument for business that are actually restoring lend.
In terms of size, companies in the Great Green Walld that we've worked with, and to date we've worked with more than 100 companies need capital 200-50 thousand to maximum $2 million.
However, most development fund or impact capital starts at 5 million simply because of what we call transaction cost.
A $20 million impact investment fund will choose therefore to do fourth transaction and limit their cost and their risk instead of drawing 20 transaction.
Second problem we see is that restoration takes time.
Tree takes five to 15 years to produce fruits.
A standard fund runs ten years before the fruit from the trees can pay for the loan or return the equity.
This is a structural mismatch.
The third thing that we see that is really a problem and prevent a lot of capital deployment in the companies we work with, it's the commercial nature of the funding.
Commercial capital move with a deadline and returns and in our ecosystem, in addition to commercial capital, we also need technical assistance.
To these three problems, Parker has built a solution.
We offer a full cycle impact investment platform that helps the risk companies before we invest.
To reduce financial risk, we've built a robust investment readiness program.
We work with company as small as $50,000 a year in revenue and work with the founders to put in place the structure to raise the right funding.
To date, we've closed $5 million from partners, including the Basil's Earth Fund to do this readiness, this team work.
The next stage of our activities include actually investing to work around the restoration biology, we favor businesses that generate cash before restoration matures.
Restoration attached to an enterprise and embedded in the activity of enterprise.
I see that I had 30 seconds, but I need to tell you really quickly what does it mean to be a restoration business in the Great Green Wall for us.
If you are a woman led cosmetic company transforming Save butter into beautiful retail product, we work with you so you can secure your supply chain.
You heard from my colleague from the Save butter Alliance.
Supply securitizing your supply chain must be an integrated activity of a business company.
If you're transforming Moaninga in Mali into tea powder and oil will help you structure your company to raise investment fund and technical assistance so that the small farmers you work with continue to supply you with Moaninga.
Our fund tenure was also extended and we have about 15 years we have gotten between 15 years to require investment, which is not like transitional form, meaning we don't have 15 years to return the fund.
And today we raised $5 million.
Lastly, we raise $1 million to also provide rent for post investment.
The reason why we're able to do this work and be able to deploy in the Great Green World and we've invested 3 million today is because we've offered the full cycle of readiness, investing in post investment.
Really quickly, most people are not hopeful about Africa.
I am very hopeful because we believe the work that we do will change lives and make a difference however small it lifts to the spurs.
Thank you.
Thank you so much, Rika.
You went over many instruments that would be very interesting to you today on de risking for companies.
You're more than welcome to have a slot in the Great Green Wall Pavilion this week.
If you are available, it would be nice to spotlight these instruments that you just mentioned.
Without further ado, I'd like to introduce one of our partners in the Great Green Wall Pavilion, CFR Accra or apologies, the Landscape Alliance.
Before you take the floor, Ibrahim, I'd also like to recognize the presence of His Excellency, Mr.
Ahmad Yousuf Maswani.
His Excellency is the Minister of Tanzania for the Union and the environment.
His minister will take the floor right before Sfakaf if you don't mind.
You waited patiently and thank you so much.
Thank you very much.
Excellencies, Tanzania is experiencing significant environmental pressure with an estimated 376 970 acres of forest loss annually on approximately 61% of the current of the country total land area is affected by land degradation, particularly in arid and semi arid regions.
These challenges placing increasing pressure on ecosystem, biodiversity, water resources, for security, and livelihoods of communities that depend on natural resources.
Tanzania joined the Great Green Wall Initiative in 2016 and prepared a national action plan for 2024, 2030 for EE's implementation, targeting the restoration of approximately 2.2 million acres of degraded land in Maryland and 800 acres of degraded forest in Zanziba.
Plan is expected to benefit approximately 1.7 million people, including 13.2 million vulnerable people living in highly degraded land dry areas.
For Tanzania, the Grid Green Wall Initiative is an integral component of our national efforts to address land degradation, desertification, drought, climate change, and biodiversity loss.
Through the implementation of the Grid Green Wall Initiative, Tanzania and other countries in the region have an opportunity to collectively restore approximately 240 million acres of degraded land, potentially sequester of 1.3 to 3.0 billion tons of carbon and generate significant environment, social and economic benefits for approximately 344 million people across the region.
Additionally, during the 16th session of the UN CCD, Tzani had a discussion with African Development Bank and United Nations Environmental Program UP to support the implementation of the National Plan.
For GGWI for Tanzania, of which they show interest to support.
The implementation of this ambitious plan requires approximately $546 million over six years, of which a total of $150,000 was provided to Tanzania through the United Nations Development Program in the form of small grants to support local communities in addressing the effects of desertification, land degradation, and drought.
Tanzania takes this opportunity to appeal to the institutions mentioned above, together with other development partners to continue supporting the country in sustaining and accelerating the implementation of the Great Great Knoll Initiative through its national action plan.
Such support will be potentially in ensuring that plan activities are implemented effectively and on time, contributing to land restoration, climate resilience, and improved livelihood for local communities.
Excellency, it has transformed DG WI intercontinental movement for restoration, resilience, investment, and hope.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, Excellency.
Landscape Alliance.
Mercy, moderator.
Thank you, the moderator Excellency all protocol observed.
The Landscape Alliance, formerly known as CIPO aircraft is standing by the side of the Great Greenwall.
Our support is done through two structured programs supported by the EU.
The one of them is for K for the Great Greenwall action implemented conjointly with FAO.
It's a knowledge program which answers partly the assessment that was indicated that identifying the different challenges identified by the Pan African agency.
We are intervening across three axes, strengthening technical aspect and developing capacity both at the Pan African agency level, but also via the different agencies.
Across the PAG GW.
A second axis of our contribution is about fostering the implementation of any monitoring tools and instruments as we talk about funding today and what is required is based data, data that shows and demonstrate that the actions being implemented are generating the impact.
We are implementing a number of tools and instruments across the 11 countries members of the Pan African Agency for the Great Green Wall.
The second aspect is we want to strengthen advocacy work.
It's extremely important to do so in order to progress with the objectives, down to write a list of anything which is obstructing the implementation of the restoration activities in order to reform the necessary reforms to fight these obstructions and these obstacles and to encourage the private sector to be involved and engaged, which was mentioned by my colleague from Shea Alliance.
We need a strong involvement of the private sector so that the activities can be on the ground and followed up by income generating activities so that the communities can choose the right species and can be used and leverage on.
We talk about the she species and other species which are being favorized across all area with the bait tree species and we are mobilizing and supporting all partners and actors in order to generate evidence based data that could lead to more resources.
Thank you.
Thank you so much to the Landscape Alliance for this very, very good data based intervention.
And as the Great Green Wall accelerator, we fully agree with this, and we'll continue these discussions in the Great Green Wall Pavilion.
Over to the World Resources Institute before we go to our two closers, OSS and iFD.
Your Excellency, colleagues, thank you so much, organizers of this event.
Thank you for Inviting World Resources Institute.
My name is Susan Chomba, the Director of Food Land and Water at WRI.
Restoration is a long term investment.
I first want to thank you.
Most of you who remained in the room up until now, shows and requires this resilience to actually do restoration on the ground.
Kudos.
Let's continue.
The World Resources Institute invests in providing technical support to our partners on the continent, both under the Great Green Wall, as well as under AFR 100 and we do that through four main ways.
The first one is by providing technical support on monitoring through our state of art remote sensing and GIS technologies.
The second one is through policy support, both policies at regional level, subnational level, and national level.
The third one is basically on mobilizing resources on the continent to support restoration.
I'd like just to emphasize on that capital or resources because that's what this session is all about.
On mobilizing capital, you've heard my colleague from Bakfan Rec here, mention about the partnership that enabled Bakafan to start investing in local businesses on the continent.
We mainly focus on working with philanthropic partners to get philanthropic capital to de risk investment for private sector actors to be able to come into play.
And so with that, that's where you're seeing Terrafun for AFR 100.
That's our signature finance delivery mechanism on the continent.
Through rafund for AFR 100, we've been able to deploy close to $70 million as both grants as well as debt and equity to businesses on the continent and civil society organizations see bills that are closest to the landscapes for restoration.
And we have started seeing real impacts for people, nature, and climate.
We are monitoring the carbon that is being restored, we are monitoring the number of jobs that these investments are creating, and above all, we are monitoring the ecosystem services such as water, soil health, biodiversity that is being restored as a result of this investment.
The second area that we invest on is on remote sensing and technologies, and I want to I want to demonstrate how that also attracts investment.
In Ethiopia, through our remote sensing technologies, we actually supported the government of Ethiopia and many countries in Africa through what we call restoration opportunity assessment methodology to map the areas that are ripe for investment in the country.
How did that result? In Ethiopia, the government of Ethiopia has committed 0.5% to 1% of its federal government budget to restoration.
That's the first one on the continent, a government in Africa committing its own budget to support restoration.
In closing, I just want to say that there are different ways we can look at finance from philanthropy to public finance, and I think Ethiopia is leading.
We want to see more African governments really investing our own resources in restoration.
Thank you so much and invite you to have more conversations in the corridor on how we can partner in Africa.
Thank you so much, doctor Chamba.
We also invite you perhaps on a joint panel with the Barco Fund on how we can make this investment with this strategy.
What you're talking about, I think, is evidence based resource mobilization.
We're mobilizing resources based on where investments can bear fruit.
That's what we try to do with the Great Greet M accelerator as well.
Without further ado, I'd like to give the floor to FAD to continue on this point.
Mr.
Juan Tos Mendoza, the floor is yours to close us out for this event.
Thank you so much for your patience.
Thank you very much, Excellencies, colleagues, partners.
Thank you, particularly for staying until now.
Today's discussion has reaffirmed one truth.
The Great Green Wall is no longer a collection of isolated projects.
It is a unified continent wide delivery platform for land restoration, economic resilience, and rural transformation.
What I have heard from partners today is, yes, a strong sense of urgency, but also of hope and the strong willingness to incorporate the lessons learned from existing implementation efforts.
The African Union's Great Green World strategy for 2024 to 2034 is clear that delivering this vision at scale demands a step change in how we mobilize capital.
Public finance cannot alone bridge the gap, but private investment, on the other hand, will not flow simply because the environmental need is urgent.
Our shared responsibility as international institutions, governments, and development partners is to turn ecological imperative into bankable, market integrated opportunities.
That work begins at the first mile.
In Sub Saharan Africa, smallholder farmers, pastoralists, and producer organizations are custodians of up to 40% of agricultural land and 80% of farms.
If our investments do not connect these producers to viable value chains and protect them from climate shock, restoration will simply not be economically viable and the private sector will not follow.
Let me show you three priorities which I believe summarize today's discussions.
First, translate national intent into bankable pipelines.
Private partners need more than a list of restoration ambitions.
They need costed business models, structure market demand, and credible delivery institutions.
Second, allocate risk deliberately.
Blended finance is not public and private money placed side by side.
Grants should fund public goods such as climate information systems, land use planning, technical assistance.
Concessional capital, guarantees, and first loss layers should absorb early stage credit risk.
Commercial finance can enter where value chains generate cash flow.
Finally, third, design for markets and measure what matters.
Bring logistics, processing, uptake and technology actors in from day one and report the outcomes community and investors actually value.
Not only hectors restore but resilient incomes, enterprise growth, job for women and young people, and climate lossits avoided.
This connection to markets is critical to make our intervention sustainable over time.
The African Union strategy gives us the framework.
The task now is to build investment pipelines beneath it, the blended financing architecture around it, and the resilient local institutions to deliver.
EFAT is ready to accompany all of you on this because this is what communities across the Great Green World expect from us.
Thank you.
Thank you so much, Juan Carlos, for these remarks.
I would like to first thank you all for your patience.
We went 46 minutes over time over the time that was scheduled and yet more than half the room is still around.
It means this theme is very important and we're closing out finance day.
We talked about finance, we talked about funding.
Tomorrow, we have Water Day.
Yes.
Tomorrow, we have Water Day and OSS is one of our partners who represents the presidency of the African network of basin organizations, and we have the honor of asking them to close for us.
I seize this opportunity to also apologize to the country parties who were not able to speak on behalf of their ministers.
We were a bit optimistic on time and we stayed for a little too long.
But thank you for sticking around for the remarks anyway.
Nabil, you have the floor.
Thank you very much.
Excellence, Madame de Massieu Cher Coll Excellency, ladies and gentlemen, dear colleagues, at the end of this important exchange, there is one particular point that I keep.
We have come into a decisive phase.
We have gained maturity in the approaches and the countries do have a certain experience.
The financial commitments announced years after years have created a significant basis, but clearly not quite enough yet.
The priority is now to accelerate the transition of the pledges into operational products that can act as catalyst Into concrete tangible benefits for the population.
The African Union strategy for the Great Green Wall for the next period is developing a political framework in these new phases.
It has to enable the connection between the ambitions to the local realities.
The countries know their territories and the framework to develop them.
Our responsibility is to give them possibility to develop them and coordinate the different programs for the OSSD or Sahel and the Sahara Observatory is something we do on the long term supported initially by the Heads of State from Africa.
This project has little by little turned into a structured continent wide initiative.
We were given the task to develop the framework and work on the concept.
This work was a way to lay the foundation of the initiative which were then approved and updated by the Pan African Agency.
Since then, we've been supporting the countries in knowing their territories developing their capacities and the preparation and mobilizing resources.
This continuity enables to place knowledge and monitoring in the service of public services and preparing credible and tangible investments.
This experience is also highlighting a major condition for the success water in Sahel.
The majority of the project is dependent on how we manage water.
Hydric safety is dependent on the soil health and the quality of the watersheds.
These have to be addressed in the same logic, the same rationale.
As a president of the African Network Capacin organization, I want to insist on the role that those organization have to play or can play.
The, the streams, the rivers go across borders and offer a natural framework for cooperation between countries.
We can articulate land restoration, hydric safety and investment at the investment level.
The connection between investment and the next day, which is about between finance and water, it's relevant.
This is a way to look at sustainable management, what will be helpful in doing so.
At OSS and IMPO we are convinced this can be found in the integrated program close to the reality on the ground that can lead to outcomes that can be measured.
That capacity and our experience with transport management of natural resources can help us to scale it up.
The outcome can have to be demonstrated in a simple, credible and transparent way.
The amounts restored and restored can measure the efforts deployed.
The success can be measured by the land being restored.
Livelihoods being strengthened and more resilient communities.
To do so, monitoring systems and shared indicators are essential to guide investments and be accountable for the progress achieved.
Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen.
Welcome.
Africa supported the Great Green Wall and to keep the control of that.
The African Union is defining the legal framework for this and eight countries can define their priorities.
We are more than ever committed to continue our efforts alongside the states, financial institutions, private sector, and implementing development partners.
We will continue to support to do the service of the programs across territories.
If the financement funding is to be found within the framework and monitored on the long term, the Great Green World will be able to meet and answer the vision.
African wide initiative supported led by Africa that can restore land and opening sustainable prospects for the population living there.
Thank you very much.
I give the floor back to the president, ladies and gentlemen.
Thank you.
I would like now to invite you for a photo before we hand over the room to our colleagues from the Business for and team.
Please, if we can all join each other in the front, we will go ahead and have a final family photo.
As doctor Trump said, we've stayed resilient, so let's do it together with smiling faces now.
Yeah.
I