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Good practice Imported

Ouagadougou's Ceinture Verte — Four Decades On, a Cautionary Tale in Sustaining an Urban Green Belt

Burkina Faso · Ouagadougou · See the Burkina Faso profile · See the Ouagadougou profile

Evidence: Observational / pre–post Top 96% 20/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Ouagadougou's 1976 green belt reforested only about half its 2,100ha target before German funding ended in 1990, and half the surviving area has since been lost to informal settlement -- a EUR332k, 2021-2023 AIMF-backed rehabilitation of 12ha shows what re-investment can recover.

2,100 hectares
Original target area
~1,032 hectares
Area actually planted by 1990
~1,050 hectares
Area lost to informal occupation (by early 2020s)
EUR 332,000
2021-2023 rehabilitation funding
12 hectares
Area rehabilitated 2021-2023
Ouagadougou's Ceinture Verte — Four Decades On, a Cautionary Tale in Sustaining an Urban Green Belt

Details

Maturity
Discontinued
Promoter
City of Ouagadougou; Association Internationale des Maires Francophones (AIMF); federation of vegetable growers and nursery operators
Period
1976-2023
Keywords
urban forestry, agroecology, land-use governance, urban heat mitigation

Context

Ouagadougou began planting a 2,100-hectare green belt in 1976 with West German forestry support; funding ended in 1990 after only about 1,032 hectares were planted.

Results

By the early 2020s, roughly half the planted area (about 1,050 ha) was under informal occupation. A 2021-2023, EUR332,000 AIMF-backed rehabilitation replanted thousands of trees/shrubs on 12 hectares, drilled four boreholes and trained a growers' federation — a small recovery against the original scale.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Medium (€50k–€500k)
Time to results
Long (> 3 years)
Staffing & skills
City of Ouagadougou urban forestry staff, AIMF (Association Internationale des Maires Francophones), federation of vegetable growers and nursery operators

Conditions for success

  • durable local financing or enforcement mechanism beyond initial donor funding
  • women's economic empowerment integrated with canopy restoration

Common failure modes

  • donor-funded planting collapsed once external funding ended in 1990
  • about half the original planted area lost to unmanaged urbanisation

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes

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