Once lush and abundant, the “green belt” surrounding Niger’s capital of Niamey, created 50 years ago to try and halt the advance of the Sahara desert, is dying a slow death.
A rural exodus has taken its toll on Niger’s greenest project, as populations left destitute by low crop yields move to the capital and cut down its trees to make ends meet.
“I have cut down dozens of these trees here,” said Ali Moumouni, who lives in the downtrodden northern Niamey neighbourhood of Ouallam. “I sell the wood to survive.”
A few metres away, men equipped with axes are clearing an area where they can build huts, under the watchful eye of their families. They have abandoned the countryside for the capital to try and earn some money.
“We have had a poor harvest this year so we have come to set up home here,” explained Adamou Foumo, speaking in the local language, Djerma.
Land-locked Niger, one of the world’s hottest and poorest nations, is already largely desert with a subsistence-based economy. The capital is located in a small fertile region in the south, where much of the country’s 16 million population lives.
Niger’s green belt took nearly 30 years to grow. Tree planting started in 1965, five years after the country proclaimed independence from France, and ended in 1993.
Funding for the €4.5 million project came mainly from abroad, said Niger’s environment ministry.
“The idea was to make a wall of trees around the city to keep out the dust and stop the desert from advancing,” a former project advisor who did not give his name told AFP.
“And the job was done. A green wall 25 kilometres long and one kilometre wide crosses Niger from east to west.”
Man-made green belts are increasingly a subject of discussion in Africa amid concerns over desertification.
African leaders are pushing for the planting of a massive green belt, nicknamed the “Great Green Wall of Africa”, which would cut right across the continent from Senegal in the west to Djibouti in the east, covering 7,775 kilometres.
The African great wall has the same aim as the Niamey green belt – to hold back the mighty Sahara by planting drought-adapted species that would slow soil erosion and help rain water filter into the ground, effectively curbing the Sahara’s spread south.