Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn said Wednesday that his country would soon endorse a pan-African initiative aimed at combatting desertification.
The announcement came during a meeting in Addis Ababa between Desalegn and Mauritanian Environment Minister Amedi Camara, Ethiopia’s state-run ENA news agency reported.
The scheme, dubbed “the Pan-African Agency of the Great Green Wall of the Sahara and the Sahel Initiative,” was originally established by 11 African countries.
The initiative aims to plant a wall of trees across the southern edge of the Sahara Desert as a means of preventing desertification.
Only seven of the 11 countries have officially endorsed the pact. While Ethiopia is one of the initiative’s co-founders, it has yet to formally endorse the agreement.
Ethiopia, the news agency quoted Desalegn as saying, “will endorse and implement the pact soon in relation to its food-security and environmental protection strategy.”
The Initiative aims to combat soil degradation and reduce poverty in Africa’s Sahel-Saharan region, focusing on a strip of land – 15km wide and 7100km long – from Dakar to Djibouti.
The initiative’s 11 founding states are Burkina Faso, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sudan and Chad.
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