Beating Famine 3: The Sahel Meeting the AFR 100 Challenge

The third in the series of “Beating Famine” Conferences is being planned for the Sahel. The focus has shifted from building awareness of FMNR (Farmer-Managed Natural Regeneration) and EverGreen Agriculture practices, to taking proven successes to massive scale. Invited participants from across the Sahel, along with financial and technical partners and representatives of governments, universities, CBO’s and civil society will come together to share, learn, plan and accelerate the regreening and restoration movement for food security and nutrition in Africa.

THEME & OBJECTIVES

Themes

 • The regeneration of rangeland/pastoral landscapes

• Meeting the AFR100 restoration commitments costeffectively at a mass scale – the role of natural regeneration and evergreening/agroforestry practices

• The role of FMNR and evergreening as a window to managing conflict, reducing migration, and promoting youth employment

• Beating Famine – restoration for resilience and disaster risk reduction

Objectives

• Share existing successful restoration strategies and their and seek roadmaps for subsequent national level FMNR and evergreening / restoration planning processes. 

• Formalize a regreening movement in West Africa using the appropriate restoration strategies which will link on the ground realities and implementers with government institutions, policies, and strategies, and with the support and guidance of international donors for widespread land restoration (galvanizing support for the AFR100 Initiative, the Great Green Wall and the UN Action plan for the Sahel).

• Create a supportive network of practitioners to support further spread FMNR on farmlands, assisted natural regeneration on degraded rangelands and forestlands, and other restoration strategies including planting, within West Africa, and to share lessons from and to other regions.

• Provide a platform to reflect on and disseminate key successes and challenges of the spread of evergreening and restoration strategies in West Africa, and extract lessons applicable in other regions. • Mobilize technical & financial partners to expand the evergreening movement, with donors and governments committing new funds to scale up activities in > 3 Sahelian countries.

• Further raise awareness and enthusiastic participation.