The Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and World Agroforestry (ICRAF) operating as a single entity is a global research organization and has recently launched the second phase of the Regreening Africa Project. The project which aims to restore degraded lands through involving vulnerable communities in greening activities would be implemented in 7 African countries including Ethiopia.
CIFOR-ICRAF would execute the project from 2025 to 2029 with 15 million Euros funding from European Union (EU) and in partnership with the governments as well as international development organizations namely Catholic Relief Service (CRS) and World Vision Ethiopia (WVE).
According to Niguse Hagazi, Country Representative of CIFOR-ICRAF, the Regreening Africa Phase II project is a continuation of Phase I, which was implemented from 2017 to 2023 in 8 African countries including Ethiopia.
Beatrice Neri, Human Development Team Leader and Acting Head of Cooperation with the Delegation of European Union to Ethiopia, said the first phase of the project was able to reach over 500,000 small holder African farmers with Regreening techniques and kick started the restoration of almost 1 million hectares of degraded lands.
“In 2024 the project was recognized as a UN World Restoration Flagship project,” she added. Expressing EU’s satisfaction with the overachievement of the first phase of the project Neri disclosed the Union’s keen interest to do more in Phase II, scaling up the commendable achievements of the first phase.
“Regreening Africa Phase II aims at strengthening the resilience of communities in the face of climate change, land degradation and food/nutritional security through Regreening – learning from successes and challenges of Phase I,” she elaborated.
As climate change, the number one and imminent threat to human society in our time, has shown its toll over developing countries especially Africa. By causing land degradation and depletion of natural resources, climate change has incurred impact against vulnerable populations. Degradation of land leaves vulnerable people to poverty and without livelihoods.
“Climate change takes the lion’s share of the factors that contribute to the challenges people face. To overcome this, we work to create a tree-based landscape, regreening degraded lands through scientific solutions and capacity building,” said Niguse.
This calls for the global efforts of environmental protection and preventing climate change to take into consideration the urgency of empowering communities or households to overcome the impact via involving them in the interventions of building their resilience for food security.
By engaging vulnerable communities in the Regreening works, the project has attempted to achieve two interconnected objectives, addressing the impending food insecurity or livelihood problems of the households and in the long run curb the threat of climate change through restoring degraded lands.
As such, the project Regreening Africa has demonstrated the possibility to tackle the nexus of land degradation and poverty by combining technological innovations, strong inclusive community engagement, and collective learning and adaptation approaches among key partners to build livelihood resilience in ‘regreened landscapes’.
The project is highly acclaimed for its success in demonstrating the possibility of Regreening degraded land in the Sahel and East Africa, which is one of the world’s most vulnerable places for climate change and desertification.
Accordingly, reports indicate that the first phase of the Regreening Africa Project was able to restore close to 1 million hectares of land and improve the livelihood of about half a million households in the eight African countries including Ethiopia.
In Ethiopia, during the first phase of implementation, the project was able to restore 217 hectares degraded land where the plan was to restore only 200 thousand hectares while in terms of households reached out, it succeeded to benefit 156 thousand households where the plan was 150 thousand, Neri indicated.
The Regreening Africa Project aims to achieve its objectives through involving the vulnerable community in integrated agroforestry activities to improve their livelihood and build resilient food systems.
According to Niguse, in Ethiopia forest, agriculture and pasture are interconnected with each other. So, Agroforestry is a science and practice that minimizes the trade-offs of the different sectors and a means in creating a healthy environment by improving the livelihood of people and animal welfare.
As a research and development partner, CIFOR-ICRAF works to contribute to the environmental protection and food security ensuring efforts of the country through promoting technologies and best practices among farmers.
“We conduct research on how we can improve and conserve forest and landscape restoration technologies and practices that benefit farmers. We especially focus on technologies and practices that can withstand climate change while improving livelihoods,” Niguse indicated.
Strong partnership with government and international organizations was also a key success factor in the implementation of the project. According to Niguse, Ethiopia is very suitable for the implementation of the project as it is working strenuously to discharge its national and international commitment for environmental protection and climate change prevention activities.
“Ethiopia’s commitment for national and global initiatives is very rich as it pursues initiatives like the Green Legacy and others,” he noted.
Director General of Ethiopian Forestry Development (EFD), Kebede Yimam, also indicated that the government already is engaged in a large-scale afforestation and land restoration works by aligning with various domestic and global initiatives.
“Ethiopia has committed to restoring 22 million hectares of degraded land and forests by 2030, as pledged under the Bonn Challenge and the New York Declaration on Forests. The country has taken bold steps to meet these commitments through initiatives such as the Green Legacy Initiative, participation in the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative (AFR100), and the Great Green Wall Initiative. These efforts reflect Ethiopia’s determination to combat desertification, enhance food security, and build a more sustainable and resilient economy,” Kebede elaborated.
Kebede further indicated the government’s commitment for environmental protection and land restoration as it has recently launched the Green Legacy and Degraded Landscape Restoration Special Fund, allocating 0.5% to 1% of the annual federal revenue.
Neri on her part lauded the strong collaboration of government institutions and local communities as an important factor for the success of phase I of the project.
To reach out to the grassroots, CIFOR-ICRAF has been working with international development organizations namely Catholic Relief Service (CRS) and World Vision Ethiopia (WVE) in implementing the goals of Regreening Africa during the past seven years.
“CRS is a lead organization in the Consortium of NGOs working on improving community resilience for food security or building livelihood,” says Malefia Tadele, Regreening Africa Project Manager with CRS.
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She elaborated that the community resilience activity is part of the organization’s 10 years strategic plan to support vulnerable members of the community.
“In addition to addressing the global threat of climate change our central focus are the community or vulnerable people. Land restoration is key for building food security resilience. When we restore land we can build household resilience for food security,” says Malefia.
In addition to CRS, World Vision Ethiopia (WVE) is the other implementing partner in the Regreening project. WVE has been implementing the project as it aligns with its 10 years strategic plan of empowering vulnerable sections of the community especially women and children.
“Women and children are the most vulnerable members of the community. Especially when lands are degraded women and children face the brunt of the problem. So, we work on empowering women and children,” says Addisu Abebe, Climate Change expert with WVE.
Malefia explained that in Phase II of the project CRS and WVE together would engage some 60 thousand households in livelihood programs and restore 100 thousand hectares of land.
CIFOR-ICRAF provides research based advises, technologies and other supports to CRS, WVE – as implementing partners and to the people in selected project areas. Accordingly, the farmers are given support to engage in agroforestry development activities so that they can reap adequate income there by restoring the degraded land in their vicinities.
Neri underlined the need to focus on Regreening works by integrating them with value chain development partnership with the private sector who are vital actors to create better market linkage.
BY ZEKARIAS WOLDEMARIAM
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD TUESDAY 8 JULY 2025
