[padraic7a]

Unfortunately the Great Wall doesn't seem to be doing so well.

This article is from 2024. I looked for updates and found the Wikipedia page.

It contains some contradictory statistics but this is the most recent: "In September 2020 it was reported that the Great Green Wall had only covered 4% of the planned area".

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Green_Wall

[Someone]

https://catalogue.unccd.int/1551_GGW_Report_ENG_Final_040920... says they pivoted a bit:

“The aim of the GGW was originally to create a long vegetation barrier between the 100 and 400 mm isohyets, including ramps, and over a length of at least 7000 km along the Sahel, being roughly 15 km wide. In recent years this vision has evolved into an integrated ecosystem management approach, striving for a mosaic of different land use and production systems, including sustainable dryland management and restoration, the regeneration of natural vegetation as well as water retention and conservation measures”

I think that makes it hard to report % completed. Also, 4% is a lot of land (that same PDF says they currently target about 1½ million km² of land. That’s a lot more than that 7,000 by 15 km band originally envisioned (For comparison, the USA and Canada each are about 10 million km², so that would be about 7½% of North America), in the poorest part of the world.

As https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-05-02/africas-great-green-w... says “it will take at least a generation to make it a reality”

[woofie11]

That's common in the region. You announce major new projects, start them, and don't finish them. New leadership comes in, ignores the old projects, and starts a new set. You don't fix or finish old things started by your predecessor. You start building new ones.

[vulcan01]

> in the region

Nah, that happens everywhere (at least where governments change every few years).

[woofie11]

There's a difference of scale. EU, US, China, Korea, Japan, etc. have some of this, but also successfully have long-running projects. Things build up over time. You have major institutions and infrastructure maintained over multiple administrations.

This problem is common everywhere, but it's extreme in most ECOWAS countries.