Business Fights Poverty joined with the UNCCD (United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification) in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire this week to launch the Great Green Wall (GGW) Sourcing Challenge. The Challenge aims to bring together companies and other partners to help unlock the potential of the Sahel, the semi-arid region stretching across Africa just south of the Sahara, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea.
The GGW is a symbol of hope in the face of desertification, one of the foremost challenges of our time that is holding back livelihoods across the Sahel. Once complete, the Wall will be the largest living structure on the planet: a grown world wonder across the continent of Africa. Fuelled by natural ingredient innovation, the GGW will boost smallholder farmers’ incomes and enable the Sahel region to prosper.
The GGW Sourcing Challenge encourages global companies to bring sustainably produced ingredients from the Great Green Wall into their supply chains. The Challenge explores the opportunities to buy ingredients for health foods, beverages or beauty products, such as bambara nut, baobab, moringa, gum Arabic and fonio, from the Sahel’s small-scale producers. It aims to address some of the barriers holding back progress, and will help achieve the Great Green Wall’s ambition of restoring 100 million hectares of currently degraded land, sequestering 250 million tons of carbon, and creating 10 million green jobs by 2030.
Major companies and business alliances such as Aduna, What If Foods, Unilever, Evonik, Doehler, the World Economic Forum, the Pond Foundation, and the Global Shea Alliance have already committed to work with Business Fights Poverty and UNCCD on the Sourcing Challenge. At the launch event in Abidjan this week, companies committed to growing their innovative sourcing from the region, or to work with partners to grow the opportunities and tackle the barriers to this kind of innovation. Soil restoration was also high on the agenda, with selection of ingredients and cultivation methods that actively contribute to soil restoration.
“The GGW Sourcing Challenge has huge potential in helping to combat land degradation across the Sahel. By creating demand for the Sahel’s under-utilised ingredients, the private sector can play a pivotal role in the creation of local economic development and the subsequent environmental and social impact that new value chains will bring.” Nick Salter, Co-Founder, Aduna
We are keen to speak with more companies about how you might be able to engage, and how the Challenge could help with sourcing opportunities and fulfilling companies’ commitments on Regenerative Agriculture, Living Incomes, Zero Deforestation and Protecting Biodiversity. We’re looking to work with companies and others in three areas:
1. SHAPE
Help us shape a vision paper that will set out the scale of the opportunity and aims to inspire others with examples of innovative sourcing from the region.
2. ENGAGE
Engage with us on the enabling environment for innovative sourcing from the Sahel. We will have further virtual workshops and other conversations to map out priorities and develop collaborative strategies for overcoming some of the barriers that are slowing progress.
3. PARTNER
Join us in a wider global consultation and outreach involving civil society and technical partners, to strengthen the sourcing imperative behind the Great Green Wall and enable new partnerships and solutions for innovative sourcing from the Sahel region.
For more information on the Great Green Wall Sourcing Challenge, please get in touch with us on gg*@bu*******************.org
Links
BFP GGW page: https://businessfightspoverty.org/greatgreenwall/
Great Green Wall: https://www.greatgreenwall.org/
UNCCD: https://www.unccd.int/
UNCCD Abidjan meeting: https://www.unccd.int/cop15
