History doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. The rhymes are predictive. On April 11, NPR published a field report from the Sahel asking whether Africa's Great Green Wall initiative, now eighteen years old, is working. The African Union launched the project in 2007 with a plan to plant a 4,350-mile belt of trees across eleven Sahelian countries, from Senegal to Djibouti. The target was to restore 100 million hectares of degraded land, sequester 250 million tonnes of carbon, and create 10 million jobs by 2030. The question NPR asked is worth asking. The timescale it implied is worth examining against the historical record.
The Four Precedents the Historian Consults
Timeline
2007: The African Union launches the Great Green Wall initiative to plant a 4,350-mile belt of trees across eleven Sahelian countries, from Senegal to Djibouti, targeting 100 million hectares of restored land, 250 million tonnes of carbon sequestration, and 10 million jobs by 2030.
Precedent one. South Korea's post-war reforestation, 1960 to 2020. At the end of the Korean War, South Korea's forest cover stood at roughly 35 percent of its pre-war extent. Most observers in 1960 concluded the country would never recover its forests. The Park Chung-hee government started a century-scale reforestation program in 1962, pushed it through successive military and civilian administrations, survived three economic crises and the Asian Financial Crisis, and reached 64 percent forest cover by 2020. At year eighteen of that program, in 1980, international observers called it "stalling." The 1980 assessment was wrong. The Korean precedent took sixty years to mature.
Precedent two. China's Grain for Green program, 1999 to present. Beijing committed to restoring 25 million hectares of sloped farmland to forest or grassland, with farmer compensation. At year eighteen, in 2017, the program looked like a success: 27 million hectares reportedly restored. By year twenty, scholars began documenting ecological debt in water-stressed zones where fast-growing non-native species depleted groundwater. At year twenty-five, the rollback began in several provinces. The Chinese precedent warns that year-eighteen success can be a false positive if the species selection and water balance are wrong. It rhymes in the opposite direction from the Korean case.
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Precedent three. Japan's Edo and Meiji forest policy, 1690 to 1945. When Tokugawa-era deforestation threatened the country's construction and fuel economy, the shogunate began strict forest management rules. The regime that succeeded them extended the practice through the Meiji restoration. By 1945 Japan held nearly 67 percent forest cover despite having the densest settlement of any large industrial economy. The policy ran across 255 years and two different governments. The Japanese precedent is the longest-running example of institutional reforestation that worked, and it teaches that the critical variable is institutional continuity across regime changes, not the technical details of any single decade.
Precedent four. The French Landes reforestation, 1857 to the present. Napoleon III's government drained the Landes marshes and planted maritime pines across 900,000 hectares of southwestern France to combat coastal erosion and malaria. At year eighteen, in 1875, the project was incomplete and criticized. By year seventy, the Landes forest had become France's largest and a backbone of the national timber economy. The French precedent is the closest rhyme to the Great Green Wall because both are state-led responses to land degradation across a geographically specific zone.
"Launched in 2007, the project to reinstate 100 million hectares of land is only 30% complete," Alain Richard Donwahi, president of the 2022 UN desertification conference, told Reuters in June 2024.
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Learn moreWhere Does the Great Green Wall Sit in the Pattern?
Who
Alain Richard Donwahi served as president of the 2022 UN Convention to Combat Desertification conference and has been the most cited voice on Great Green Wall accounting. His 30-percent-complete figure is the number most often quoted in mainstream media coverage.
“"Launched in 2007, the project to reinstate 100 million hectares of land is only 30% complete." Alain Richard Donwahi, president of the 2022 UN desertification conference, via Reuters in June 2024.
Line up the rhymes against the present case. Eighteen years in, the Great Green Wall is somewhere between 4 percent and 30 percent complete depending on what gets counted. The wide range is itself a historical rhyme. Historical mega-projects generate similar disputes at the same timestamps, because accounting for "hectares restored" versus "hectares planted" versus "hectares surviving at year five" produces different numbers, and the accounting method becomes a political question before it becomes a scientific one. The 2021 pledge of $14.3 billion produced only $2.5 billion of disbursed funding by March 2023. The pledge-to-disbursement gap is another familiar historical signature. Korea had it. China had it. France had it.
The dissimilar variables matter as much as the similar ones. The Great Green Wall crosses eleven countries with separate political systems, separate land-tenure regimes, and separate security situations. Three of those countries (Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger) have experienced military coups since 2020. The Korean and Japanese precedents had the advantage of single-state continuity. The Chinese precedent had a single authoritarian apparatus that could enforce implementation across provincial boundaries. The French Landes precedent had a 900,000-hectare target rather than a 100-million-hectare one. The Great Green Wall is the first case in the historical record of a trans-state reforestation project of this scale without a hegemonic state behind it. That is the dissimilar variable the Historian cannot look up in the archive.
As of 2024, the Great Green Wall was between 4 percent and 30 percent complete depending on accounting method. A 2021 pledge of $14.3 billion had produced only $2.5 billion of disbursed funding by March 2023.
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What the Historian Does Not Say
Three of the eleven Great Green Wall countries (Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger) have experienced military coups since 2020, complicating the trans-state political coordination required for a multi-decade land restoration program.
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The Historian does not predict success. History teaches patterns, not inevitabilities. The Korean precedent could turn out to be the wrong rhyme. The Chinese precedent could turn out to be the right one. The species mix in the Sahel is not the Korean pine plantation, and the hydrological stress in the Sahel is worse than anything Korea faced. A Nature study from May 2025 found that land productivity in the GGW zone is declining while human pressure rises. That is the kind of year-eighteen data that looked similar in China's 2017 provinces and in France's 1875 dunes before the curves inflected. The Historian cites the precedent and declines to predict. What the Historian does say is that the NPR question is not answerable in 2026.
Concede what should be conceded. The $14.3 billion pledge is not a century-scale financing instrument. The eleven-country coordination is not a single-state apparatus. The climate trajectory in the Sahel is worse than any historical precedent has had to absorb. None of those concessions make the NPR question answerable today. They make it more urgent to find the question the historical record can answer. That question is: does the institutional capacity exist to continue? In Korea in 1980, it did. In China in 2017, it did. In France in 1875, it did. In the Sahel in 2026, it partially does, and the partial answer is what the next ten years of political work have to turn into a full one.
Close with the lesson the past is trying to teach. Every century-scale restoration project looked stalled at year eighteen. Every century-scale restoration project that succeeded did so because the institutional capacity to continue survived the doubt of year eighteen. The Great Green Wall is at that year now. The question is not whether the trees are growing. The question is whether the institutions are still there in 2067 to prove the skeptics of 2026 wrong. The Historian cannot answer for 2067. The Historian can only point at the record and say the doubt is expected, the underfunding is familiar, the progress is within the historical range, and the verdict is not due yet.
