Adesina (AFDB president) named Leader of Africa’s Great Green Wall climate-adaptation initiative

Akinwumi A. Adesina who serves as the president of Africa Development Bank has been announced as a champion of Africa’s Great Green Wall (GGW) initiative.

This was made known at a forum (One Planet Summit 2021) to raise funds to support the project to plant an 8,000 km swathe of trees and other vegetation across the Sahara and Sahel regions of Africa.

The green wall will help stop the desertification and help create over 10 million green jobs in the region.

At the forum, Adesina said that the Bank would mobilize up to $6.5 billion over the next 5 years for the Great Green Wall Initiative.

The Bank will extend resources through a range of mechanisms, partnerships and operations, and draw on internal and external sources of funding, including the Sustainable Energy Fund for Africa (SEFA) and the Green Climate Fund (GCF), among others.

He added that, there are other ongoing Bank initiatives such as Desert to Power, a programme to build the largest solar zone in the world in the Sahel, will enhance and complement the Great Green Wall.