Gallery: Africa's Great Green Wall
The Great Green Wall is a long-held African dream, currently taking root on the edge of the world’s largest hot desert: the Sahara. Dubbed the "next wonder of the world", the ongoing project will eventually see the growth of an 8,000km ‘green wall’ made from trees and plants across the entire African continent, from Senegal in the West to Djibouti in the East. The aim? To transform the lives of some of the planet’s poorest people. A fantastical and almost impossible-sounding initiative, it was first conceived in 2005 by the former President of Nigeria, Olusegun Obasanjo, as a way to create an ecological barrier against the expanding Sahara desert – ultimately, to contain it. It has since evolved into a more ambitious pan-African movement, which aims to provide food, agriculture jobs and security for millions of people across the region. Once complete, the Great Green Wall will be the largest living structure on the planet, three times the length of the Great Barrier Reef.
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center