How farmers across Africa are holding back desertification and land degradation

Our planet’s soil is in bad shape. Up to 40 per cent of all land is degraded, affecting half of the world’s population.

In Africa, land is being degraded at an ever-faster rate, making it harder for millions of rural people to farm. The Sahara, the world’s largest desert, is expanding as it swallows up arable land in the Sahel region.

But in every corner of the continent, rural people are finding ways to conserve natural resources, keep their soil fertile and grow enough food for their communities.

Small-scale farmers in southwestern Mauritania once watched, powerless, as the rains dwindled and the short growing season shrank further. When the rain did come, it was too heavy, bringing floods that swept away the exhausted topsoil.

As the Sahara took over their fields, some sought work in the capital, Nouakchott, or abroad. But today, many of these farmers have returned to their villages – and are giving new life to their fields.

Thanks to the IFAD-supported PROGRES initiative, communities have come together to restore lost arable land by building bunds and dykes. As well as protecting the land against flooding, these structures store water for irrigation during the long dry periods, during which they allow it to slowly infiltrate into the soil.

As land is gradually won back from the encroaching desert, more people are returning and farming well into the dry season. Plot by plot, field by field, their communities are coming back to life.

The prosperity of Zimbabwe’s dryland farmers is dependent on rainfall. But with climate change intensifying large-scale weather phenomena like El Niño, sometimes the rains simply don’t come when they are needed.

In Masvingo province, the IFAD-supported SIRP initiative is enabling farmers to cope. Here, the new Banga irrigation scheme has made the difference between food insecurity and the assurance they will have enough to eat.

The open channels that once carried water to the fields have been turned into a piped system, preventing wastage due to evaporation. There is now plentiful water for farmers to grow enough maize for their families – and even to sell to neighbours and to the national grain reserve.

In 2024, two years after the irrigation scheme was restored, a strong El Niño parched farmland across Zimbabwe. But the fields that are watered by the Banga scheme stayed green.

Sometimes one crop holds the key to restoring land. Ethiopia is home to Africa’s biggest bamboo forests, and rural people are using the plant to bring degraded soil back to life.

“Since bamboo is a fast-growing plant, it helps recover degraded environments fast, and it doesn’t require a lot of management,” explains Abraham Alaka, of the government’s Forest Development Directorate.

For example, rural people on the shores of Lake Hawassa are planting bamboo with the support of IFAD and our partner organization INBAR. This beautiful lake is endorheic. This means it has no outlets, so any contamination that flows into the lake simply stays there.

But bamboo is making all the difference. Well-adapted to arid climates, it not only holds onto contaminated soil and prevents it from flowing into the lake, but also restores soil fertility. As degraded land recovers, streams that had stopped running have also returned to life.

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By reversing land degradation and desertification, rural people across Africa are restoring the natural environment on which we all depend – and safeguarding the future for themselves and the planet.