The Great Green Wall (GGW) Initiative is also known as Africa’s Great Green Wall for the Sahara and the Sahel Initiative (GGWSSI) or Grande Muraille Verte pour le Sahara et le Sahel (in French).

Launched in 2007 by the African Union, the initiative has set a goal to restore 100 million hectares of degraded land, sequester 250 million tonnes of carbon, and create 10 million green jobs in the rural areas across the Sahel region by 2030. The intervention zones would span 8,000 kilometers from Senegal in the West to Djibouti in the East for a mosaic of trees, grasslands, vegetation, and plants across the Sahel on the southern edge of the Sahara.

The initiative currently involves more than 20 partner countries in Africa, out of which the following 11 countries are selected as intervention zones - Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Ghana, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sudan. While some countries started the implementation of the GGW activities as early as 2008, others joined as late as 2014, when the GGW declaration was ratified.