Africa: UN Recognizes Restoration Initiative Feeding 4 Million Across the Sahel

What the report says

The UN has named the Sahel Integrated Resilience Initiative as one of three new World Restoration Flagships, highlighting a large effort to revive degraded land across Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger. The recognition was announced at a high-level event during the seventeenth session of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification conference in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, according to the publisher’s report.

The initiative, led by the UN Environment Programme and the Food and Agriculture Organization, has been operating since 2018. AllAfrica reported that it has helped more than four million people by rehabilitating over 335,000 hectares of land, with benefits for food security, livelihoods and agricultural production. The article also said the work has included improved soil and vegetation conditions at many resilience sites and a reduction in households needing humanitarian assistance during the lean season.

The reporting comes against a backdrop of worsening food insecurity in the Sahel, where millions are still projected to face crisis-level hunger during the 2026 lean season. The initiative uses measures such as water-harvesting infrastructure, agroforestry, wetland restoration, stone bunds and native planting to improve soil fertility and water retention. It is part of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration and is expected to keep expanding toward a 2030 target of restoring 470,000 hectares.