Inner Niger Delta Wetland Co-Management — Flood-Forest Restoration for 2 Million People (Mali)

Mali's Inner Niger Delta is the largest wetland in the Sahel and the second largest in Africa, a Ramsar site since 2004 on which roughly 2 million people directly depend. Although it covers just 1.6% of Mali's land area, the delta supplies about 15% of national cereal production, 30% of rice production, 80% of fish production, and dry-season grazing for up to 60% of the country's cattle herd, alongside roughly 3 million sheep and goats.
Since 2013, Wetlands International, CARE Netherlands (with technical support from the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre) and local NGOs AMPRODE-Sahel, ODI-Sahel and GRAT have run a community-based programme across 20 project villages. Interventions include restoring flooded forests and rehabilitating bourgou grass beds that serve as fish nurseries and livestock fodder, reducing grazing pressure on regenerating vegetation, distributing rain gauges so farmers can time planting decisions, commissioning hydrological analysis to advocate for sustained river flows, and piloting immediate livelihood support such as vegetable gardens, fruit-tree planting and micro-credit for women's groups. IUCN has run a parallel Support Project for Wetland Management in the same delta, and the work feeds into Mali's national Development Plan for the Inner Niger Delta.
No hectare totals for restored flood forest or bourgou grass, nor before/after fish-catch or livestock data, have been published, so the evidence here is descriptive rather than measured. The delta's future also depends on river flows that the project cannot control on its own: a case study for the Alliance for Global Water Adaptation documents Guinea's proposed Fomi Dam upstream and Mali's own plan to expand Office du Niger irrigation from about 1,300 km² to roughly 4,600 km² by 2045, both of which could reduce the flooding that sustains the delta's 8%-of-GDP economy even as local restoration work continues.

Read the full analysis: https://www.alliance4water.org/wr4er-cases/sustaining-the-inner-niger-delta-lifeline