Africa's Great Green Wall: A grand dream unraveling in the desert

An in-depth look at Africa's Great Green Wall shows a multi-country, multi-billion-dollar effort intended to halt desertification, but years of funding and planning have yielded minimal ecological benefits: by 2020 only about 4% of land was restored and by 2023 just 13% of pledged funds had been disbursed, with problems like poor planning, weak local participation, and fragmented financing limiting impact, though a few oases and farms offer temporary gains and some donors remain cautiously hopeful.