React project

The first core objective of Regreening Africa is to scale-up evergreen agriculture, using locally appropriate techniques including Farmer-Managed Natural Regeneration, tree planting and other forms of agroforestry and complementary sustainable land management interventions.

The second core objective of the program focuses on strategic decision making for scaling which entails working across the eight countries to collect and apply evidence in multi-stakeholder engagement and policy processes. Through these engagement processes and technical advisory, we aim to equip eight countries with the surveillance and analytical tools for land degradation that support strategic decision-making and monitoring.

Main objectives

The REACT project focuses on Natural Regeneration (NR) as a nature-based approach to ecosystem restoration across Sub-Saharan Africa, pursuing three interconnected scientific goals: understanding how NR develops over time and what ecological benefits it delivers; identifying the optimal social-ecological conditions under which NR-based restoration performs best; and mapping current and future NR restoration potential across the region under changing climate conditions. To achieve these goals, the project combines fine-scale field monitoring with large-scale data analysis. Woody vegetation will be tracked in 150 agricultural fields — both managed and unmanaged — across three ecoclimatic zones in Kenya, measuring plot-level environmental and social variables that shape species performance. A trait-based approach will be used to disentangle the relative importance of different regeneration mechanisms and their consequences for multiple ecosystem functions. Mechanistic insights gained from this fieldwork will then be scaled up using large regional datasets to identify the broader drivers of NR abundance, functional composition, and diversity, ultimately enabling predictions of how climate change will affect NR dynamics across Sub-Saharan Africa. The overarching ambition is to develop an integrated social-ecological framework for NR that embeds social dimensions into ecological theory — providing a scientifically grounded basis for predicting where natural regeneration alone is sufficient for restoration, and where it needs to be complemented by active tree planting. This is considered essential for effectively scaling up restoration efforts during the current UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.

Main results

The Regreening Africa programme generated significant policy and governance outcomes across seven countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, demonstrating that farmer-led natural regeneration can drive change not only at the landscape level but also in institutional and regulatory frameworks. In Niger, advocacy efforts contributed to the adoption of a presidential decree in July 2020 granting land managers greater use rights over areas restored through Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR), making Niger one of the first countries globally to enshrine this practice in national law. In Senegal, where farmer-herder conflicts had long undermined restoration efforts, the programme facilitated the creation of five local multi-stakeholder committees in the Kaffrine region to govern pastoralism and agroforestry systems, proving effective in reducing conflicts and promoting FMNR adoption. In Mali, advocacy with local authorities secured land registration certificates for 30 women’s associations, granting them formal access to two-hectare agroforestry plots — a concrete step toward equitable benefit-sharing from restored ecosystems. Rwanda saw the institutionalisation of agroforestry within national policy through the establishment of a dedicated Agroforestry Task Force, designed to coordinate investments and interventions across government, NGOs, and civil society. In Ghana, the programme supported the formation of a District Environmental Management Committee to enforce existing environmental bylaws on forest protection, charcoal processing, and bush fire management. Ethiopia integrated FMNR into national and regional restoration campaigns led by key government ministries, marking a significant shift away from conventional large-scale tree planting approaches. Finally, in Puntland, Somalia, where tree planting is both costly and ecologically ill-suited to dryland conditions, FMNR and Pastoral Managed Natural Regeneration (PMNR) were mainstreamed into government policy at all levels, supported by capacity building, community champions, and a dedicated FMNR manual.

React

Context

Main objectives

Main results

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React

Context

Main objectives

Main results

Website and resources

All projects

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