West African ministers came together to outline a course of action to accelerate progress on the Great Green Wall. The First Conference of the Great Green Wall for the Sahara and the Sahel Initiative was held from 2-7 May in Dakar, bringing together ministers from countries north and south of the Sahara as well as their development partners. Organised by the African Union, the high-level conference follows on the COP21 climate change conference, during which the international community pledged an additional USD 4 billion in support for the Great Green Wall over the next 5 years. Read on

The CILSS is implementing the regional component of an ambitious multi-stakeholder project which aims to more than double the irrigated areas of six Sahelian countries to 1 million hectares by 2020. Funded by the World Bank Group, the Sahel Irrigation Initiative Programme (SIIP) covers Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Senegal. Read on