The Knowledge for Great Green Wall Action (K4GGWA) program in Africa, is funded by the European Union and implemented by the Landscape Alliance and FAO in partnership with New Holland. This project has launched the K4GGWA Innovation Facility’s fifth call for innovation, seeking innovative tools and technologies that can help restore degraded land across Africa’s Great Green Wall region.
Launched on the World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought, this call for innovation focuses on regenerative tools for land preparation and soil health and aims to identify practical innovations that support farmers, pastoralists, and restoration practitioners in improving soil health, increasing productivity, conserving water, and restoring degraded landscapes.
The call is open to innovators, entrepreneurs, researchers, manufacturers, farmers’ organizations and restoration practitioners from the eleven Great Green Wall countries: Burkina Faso, Chad, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal and Sudan.
“Healthy soils are the foundation of resilient landscapes, food security and sustainable livelihoods,” said the K4GGWA team. “Across the Great Green Wall region, local innovators are developing practical solutions that can help communities restore degraded land while improving productivity and resilience. Through this call, we aim to identify and support innovations with the potential to deliver impact at scale.”
“In CNH we drive scalable solutions for land restoration and soil health. Through a joint technical committee with our partners, we share our know-how to support and empower local farming across the Great Green Wall region. At the same time, we invest in the future of sustainable agriculture by training young local people within CNH”, said Daniela Ropolo, Head of Sustainable Development Initiatives.
The Great Green Wall Initiative is Africa’s flagship program for combating land degradation, climate change and biodiversity loss. By 2030, it aims to restore 100 million hectares of degraded land, sequester 250 million tons of carbon and create 10 million green jobs across the Sahel and Horn of Africa.
The K4GGWA Innovation Facility supports innovators whose solutions directly contribute to these objectives by strengthening sustainable land management, landscape restoration and climate resilience.
The call welcomes innovations that address one or more restoration challenges, including:
- Land preparation and planting
- Soil health improvement and carbon retention
- Water harvesting and conservation
- Erosion control and soil conservation
- Vegetation establishment and restoration
- Labor reduction and productivity enhancement
Eligible innovations may include hand-operated tools, animal-drawn equipment, tractor-mounted implements, or other practical technologies that contribute to land restoration and sustainable land management.
Examples include:
- Tools for ploughing, digging trenches and preparing planting holes
- Water harvesting and erosion control equipment
- Contour marking and soil conservation tools
- Labor-saving devices that reduce physical effort and increase efficiency
- Technologies that improve soil fertility and support carbon sequestration
Particular attention will be given to innovations that are robust, affordable and easy to manufacture, maintain and repair locally, ensuring that solutions can be adopted and scaled by communities across the region.
Applications are open until 31 August 2026.
