• The development plan for Ouagadougou includes the construction of a green belt to make the city more resilient.
• The aim is to promote urban agriculture and tree planting to counter heat waves and produce food for residents.
• The goal is to create, by 2040, an agroecological system that contributes to food, environmental and social security.

In Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, West Africa, the ambition is to build a green belt of gardens and trees encircling the city. The project was launched in the late 1970s with the aim of halting the advance of the desert, protecting the city from wind, dust and soil erosion, preserving biodiversity and producing food — but after the first 1,000 hectares of land were rehabilitated, it came to a standstill.

Over the past decade, however, following the Municipality of Ouagadougou's signing of the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact, the green belt has received fresh impetus: the intention is to combat urban heat and promote urban agriculture to help feed two and a half million residents.

The green belt of Ouagadougou to resist soil degradation and heat waves

According to FAO data, one third of Burkina Faso's territory is degraded, with an estimated average degradation rate of 360,000 hectares per year. In 2024, a heat wave pushed temperatures above 42 degrees Celsius with tragic consequences. To resist, Ouagadougou is today planting trees, building wells and organising training courses. City residents are entitled to a plot of land to cultivate, making agriculture their livelihood. And those who move from the countryside to the city can continue working as farmers.

Within the Municipality of Ouagadougou's strategic development programme for the green belt, the project Nutrire la città, funded by the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation and coordinated by Acra alongside Mani Tese and other associations, aims to improve urban agricultural production by fostering access to healthy, nutritious and locally grown food for the most vulnerable people, while raising public awareness of the importance of ecological and food sustainability.

The activities, reaching over 265,000 direct beneficiaries, include the testing of agroecological techniques for agricultural production across 15 hectares of Ouagadougou's green belt, the launch of a pilot system for school canteen management in twelve schools, the creation of an e-commerce platform to promote the sale of local products, and support for producers.

The development vision of the municipality and the stakeholders involved foresees that, by 2040, the green belt will be a well-developed agroecological benchmark, true to its vocation — a source of sustainable production of healthy and nutritious food and locally endangered species, capable of contributing to food sovereignty, and a site offering green jobs to women, young people and other vulnerable groups in Ouagadougou.