How The Sahara Desert Is Turning Into A Farmland Oasis

When you mention the Sahara Desert, most people think of extreme heat, vast stretches of scorching sand, and little sign of life, other than a few camels. True as that might be, we might soon be thinking very differently about this place.

In recent years, there’ve been a range of solutions focused on turning the Sahara green! Whether it’s eerie extraterrestrial crop circles, or even poop-powered forests, get your spades and shovels at the ready, as we uncover how exactly the Sahara Desert is turning into a farmland oasis!

Today, the Sahara Desert, which spreads through much of northern and central Africa, spans over an area of 3.6 million square miles, spreading over 11 countries. Even crazier, the Sahara makes up some 8% of the Earth’s total land area! That makes this the third largest desert in the world, behind the Antarctic and the Arctic, and the planet’s largest hot desert.

This supersized chunk of sand stretches from the Red Sea in the east, to the Mediterranean in the north, and to the Atlantic Ocean in the west. Southwards, the desert is bordered by the Sahel, a transitional zone of semi-arid land separating the Sahara to the north and the savannahs to the south.

So, the Sahara is truly gigantic! Yet, despite this place occupying such a large section of land, only around 2.5 million people live here, that’s less than one person per square mile! For some context, in New York you’ll find some 30,000 people per square mile!

But people aren’t the only thing to struggle to survive in the Sahara. The desert is known for its vast stretches of sand, and distinct lack of vegetation. Unsurprisingly, this is down to the Sahara’s extremely inhospitable conditions. In fact, over half of the Sahara is considered hyper-arid, meaning conditions are so brutal, there’s no vegetation.

So, how brutal really are the conditions here? Well firstly, temperatures here skyrocket. The average annual temperature is 86 °F, which is 27 °F higher than the global average. Meanwhile, the highest temperature ever recorded in this desert was a sizzling 136 °F!

If that wasn’t already harsh enough, the average humidity, which is the concentration of water vapor in the air, is just 25%. Compare that to northern European countries whose average humidity levels are over 3 times higher, at around 80%!

As clouds form when water vapor in the atmosphere condenses, the Sahara’s super low humidity also means there’s limited cloud coverage over the desert. That means the sweltering sun beams down without any hinderance.

And, no clouds means no rain too. In fact, much of the Sahara desert averages under three inches of rain per year. In contrast, London receives 2.4 inches of rain in November alone! With sky-high temperatures, few clouds, and barely any rainfall, the severe lack of water in the Sahara means it's no surprise no vegetation survives in this dry desert.

But it doesn’t end there! Due to a variety of factors, the Sahara Desert is actually getting larger too. And, as you’d expect, us humans are largely to blame. First of, farmers in regions around the Sahara are guilty of overpopulating the land with livestock.

According to the United Nations, the number of grazing animals in the Sahel is more than double the region’s carrying capacity. When livestock consume vegetation faster than it can naturally regenerate, this leads to a loss of plant cover, leaving the soil exposed to erosion from wind and water. Overtime, grazing reduces plant diversity and kills deep-rooted vegetation that helps retain soil moisture, causing the land to become increasingly barren.

You’d think planting more crops would help counter-balance overgrazing, but nope. In fact, overcultivation can be equally damaging. Continuous planting of crops exhausts the nutrients in the soil, reducing its fertility. On top of that, the old enemy, climate change, has also played a part in expanding the desert.

In the late 20th century, the Sahel, the strip of land just below the Sahara, experienced a 30% decrease in rainfall. Not only is rainfall decreasing here, but temperatures are on the up too. Temperatures here are climbing at a rate 1.5 times faster than the global average, with projections indicating a rise of as much as 7.2°F by 2080!

All that has contributed to the Sahara growing even larger. Shockingly, the desert’s grown by 10% since 1920! Libya in North Africa, which was mainly non-desert in 1920, has now experienced a 300 mile encroachment of the Sahara, making the country mostly desert now. Similarly, Mali, found in the west of the continent is seen the Sahara growing at a rate of 30 miles a year within its borders.

It doesn’t take a rocket-science to figure out that the Sahara growing is bad news. As we’ve seen, desertification renders the land useless, meaning animals can’t graze and crops can’t grow. This means people living in regions in-and-around the Sahara are prone to food security issues.

In fact, the situation is so severe that in 2014, the United Nations estimated 20 million people in the Sahel are at risk of hunger. Not only does the reduction in agricultural output increase the risk of famine, it also means farmers who rely on selling crops and livestock make next to no income.

Alright, so things aren’t looking too great. Not only have we seen that the Sahara Desert is practically inhospitable, but its also getting bigger by the year, destroying agricultural production, which affects the lives of millions of people!

However, it’s not all as doomy and gloomy as it might seem. Efforts are being made to transform the Sahara into a farmland oasis, allowing crops and livestock to flourish, which in-turn, allows people to live off the land. Sounds like a lot of hard work.

So, how exactly has it been pulled off? To explain, let me first introduce you to the star of the show: Tony Rinaudo! Born in 1957, Tony’s an Australian agronomist, essentially, a scientific professional who advises farmers on how to improve crop production.

In 1981, Tony decided to move to Niger, in central Africa, determined to try and make a difference to the country’s increasing desertification. For two years Tony went about planting thousands of trees in an attempt to coax some life from the arid landscape. Yet, less than 20% of the trees would survive.

Overgrazing and overcultivation in the area led to soil that was depleted of nutrients, while droughts in the regions made it practically impossible to raise seedlings. Even the shrubs that did survive were eventually eaten by livestock, or chopped down for firewood. Good as Tony’s intentions were, it seemed he was facing an impossible task.

All hope of turning the dry, desert landscape into thriving farmland was lost, until one day in 1983, when Tony had a sudden eureka moment. While assessing the failed growth of his seedlings, Tony spotted a dry bush poking out the ground. That may not sound too crazy, considering he’d spotted thousands of these bushes dotted around the barren Nigerien landscape.

However, as he walked over to take a closer look, he realized this wasn’t a bush, but a tree that’d been cut down and was re-sprouting from the stump. The tree’s roots were still intact underground. With a bit of care and craft, Tony realized these trees he’d been so desperately trying to plant and grow weren’t the solution. Instead, he needed to make the most of this hidden underground forest.

So, Tony came to a realization, instead of planting new trees, the best way to stop desertification would be to nurture and regrow these deserted shrubs. The process, known as Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration, or FMNR, would not only boost crop yields, but improve the entire ecosystem.

The deep roots of regenerated trees would break up compact soil, improving and allowing better water infiltration on the rare occasions it did rain. While the roots would also stabilize the soil, preventing it from being eroded by rain or wind.

Speaking of erosion, when grown, the tree canopies would intercept rain and wind, protecting plants from being blown away by harsh weather. The regenerated trees would also shed leaves and organic debris, which, when they decompose, would enrich the soil with nutrients essential for plant growth.

Considering all that, it’s no surprise Tony was keen to quickly implement FMNR. He educated farmers in Niger, instructing them on identifying these surviving root systems. Even though the above-ground parts of the trees may have been cut or damaged, their roots often remain viable, offering a potential source of regeneration.

Weaker shoots would be selectively pruned to direct nutrients to the healthiest branches, with the removed sections available to use as firewood or food for livestock. From there, the regenerated trees would be fenced off, protecting them from livestock and human activity, allowing these FMNR trees to eventually create a lush landscape. Sounds easy, right?

Thanks to FMNR’s simplicity, the method quickly spread through peer-to-peer learning among farmers. Even better, this strategy of regrowing vegetation is dirt cheap, costing just $8 per acre. For comparison, the strategy of planting new trees cost as much as 36 times more than FMNR per acre! On top of that, FMNR trees and shrubs have a 100% survival rate, which is 5 times greater than just planting seedlings into the ground. What’s not to like?

Rinaudo’s brilliant discovery has helped almost double the percentage of arable land in Niger since the 1980s, regenerating over 12 million acres of land, and allowing 200 million trees to regrow. As a result of this, Nigerien farmers are now producing an additional 500,000 tons of crops per year, enough to feed some 2.5 million people.

Thanks to its success, FMNR is now carried out in plenty of other African countries affected by the expanding Sahara. In Korki, west Senegal for example, FMNR practices have seen tree density jump from 0.4% in 2002, to 5.2% in 2019, a 13-fold increase! God bless Tony Rinaudo! Yet, FMNR isn’t the only practice that’s seen a recent transformation of the Sahara. Starting more than 30 years after Rinaudo’s remarkable discovery, was the Great Green Wall, or GGW.

Launched in 2007 by the African Union with backing from the European Union, World Bank and the United Nations, this reforestation project aimed to create a tree barrier stretching from Senegal in the west to Djibouti in the east by 2030. In all, the aim was to create a lush forest ten miles wide and some 4,350 miles long, preventing the spread of desertification of the Sahara southwards into the Sahel.

With this ambitious effort, the aim was to restore around 250 million acres of degraded land by 2030. For reference, 250 million acres covers an area of land nearly twice the size of France! Sounds like quite the task, right? And it’s fair to say the project didn’t get off to the smoothest start.

Early plans involved large-scale tree planting without involving local communities in planning, implementation or maintenance, and that led to some issues. Firstly, as we’ve already seen with pre-FMNR strategies, the survival rates of newly planted trees and crops in the Sahara is only around 20%, meaning any chance of a fully fledged forest growing was impossible.

On top of that, the lack of community involvement meant local farmers didn’t buy into the project. This made shrubbery survival chances even slimmer, as farmers felt a lack of ownership and responsibility. As a result, they didn’t maintain or protect the few trees that did survive.

Even worse, large chunks of the proposed "wall" were uninhabited, meaning even if farmers were keen to water and maintain the planted trees, there’d have no chance of being able to. Given all that, it’s no wonder that by 2020, 13 years after the project began, the GGW was only 4% finished ahead of its planned 2030 completion date. That led to a change in the program.

Instead of large-scale reforesting, land management policies would be implemented. These included water harvesting techniques, as well as agroforestry, a land management system that integrates trees with crops. Take this bizarre practice found in Senegal, known as Tolou Keur.

Senegal's circular gardens hold back the Sahara by Reuters

From the air, this landscape in the northeast of the country looks like some sort of eerie ecological eye. But down on the ground, this freaky formation is designed to help combat the Sahara encroaching on Senegal. The circular gardens integrate around 60 mixed species according to a precise design.

The outer walls are planted with drought-resistant trees and shrubs, including papaya, mango and moringa. Their large size protect the smaller food-bearing species of plants found in the inner circles. The leaves of the larger plants offer shade from the sun and shelter from the wind.

As for the strange shape, the circular beds naturally concentrate water towards the center. Since plant roots are naturally drawn to moisture, they will grow inward, following the path of the water, improving the water retention of these gardens.

You can imagine in 20 years time, when the Tolou Keur’s shrubs have had time to grow, these circular gardens will pop out of the desert landscape like some green golf balls! Positive as Tolou Keur looks, only 23 gardens were established in the first three years of its implementation.

With each garden requiring around $17,500 to set up, more funding is needed if this ingenious idea is really going to help turn the Sahara green. Even still, the promising success of Tolou Keur, has given some hope that the revamped GGW could work!

But Tolou Keur aren’t the only unusual method that’ve been implemented as part of the Great Green Wall in the fight against desertification. In Niger, farmers have been digging these crescent-shaped craters into the arid land.

The soil extracted during the excavation is then placed along the curved edge of these pits, forming a furrow. Constructed on a slight slope, their semi-circular, wide-open basins traps runoff water, capturing and retaining the little rainwater that falls in the barren landscapes in-and-around the Sahara.

As water collects in the half-moons, it allows for nutrient absorption into the soil. Over time, this encourages the growth of vegetation, including grasses and shrubs, which improve soil structure and prevent further desertification.

In Maradi, Niger, where half-moon intervention has taken place, satellite observations show that vegetation greenness is now 50% higher than before half-moons were constructed in the area! You’d be a lunar-tic for thinking the implementation of half-moons here was anything but an ingenious idea!

How the UN is Holding Back the Sahara Desert by Andrew Millison

Similarly, in Burkina Faso, found to the west of Niger, the GGW initiative has educated local farmers on an agricultural technique known as zai. Like half-moons, the method involves digging shallow pits in the ground during the rainy season to capture scarce rainfall and concentrate it in crop roots, allowing vegetation to flourish.

Some farmers have gone a step further, placing manure in these pits. Not only does manure improve soil fertility by replenishing the ground with nutrients, the smelly stuff also attracts termites. Incredibly, these critters eat their way through the manure, creating intricate underground tunnels in the process. In doing this, the termites break up the compact soil, making it easier for roots to grow, while also improving water irrigation in the soil. Who knew manure munching could be so useful?

So, the big question is, has the GGW’s new approach seen an upturn in greenery? In short, yes! Thanks to methods focused on water harvesting and agroforestry, 44 million acres of degraded land had been restored by 2023. Overall, that accounts for around 18% of the GGW’s 2030 target.

So it doesn’t look like this project is going to live up to its lofty 2030 ambitions. Even still, you can’t deny this initiative has seen some green shoots of recovery ever since more impetus was put on land management policies that put local communities at the center of the GGW.

Predictably, the main thing holding back the GGW is money. Estimates suggest, in total, at least $33 billion of funding is required in order to meet the initial goal of finishing the project by 2030. In 2021, President Emmanuel Macron of France announced the Great Green Wall Accelerator. This initiative seeks to facilitate the coordination and collaboration of donors and stakeholders involved in the GGW to secure the project the funding it desperately needed.

A total of $19 billion was pledged in new funding to be distributed between 2021 and 2025. But by March 2023, only $2.5 billion had been given out. Who knows whether that funding will ever come? One thing is for sure, if the revamped GGW is given enough financial backing, we could soon see the southern stretch of the Sahara turn into that lush, green oasis that was promised way back in 2007!

So far we’ve seen how both FMNR and the GGW initiative have helped green the desert landscape around the southern section of the Sahara. However, even in the northern reaches of Africa, extreme efforts are being made to fight back against the dreaded desert. Take the Sharq El Owainat.

Found in southern Egypt, from above this place looks like some sort of eerie extraterrestrial base. However, what you’re actually looking at is one of the most impressive desert reclamation projects in the Sahara. Covering an area over 110,000 acres, are thousands of these 2,600 foot-wide crop circles.

It seems pretty strange that so many acres of crops can be grown here, right? Especially considering the area receives practically no rainfall through the year and is 180 miles from the nearest city. Maybe this is some sort of alien HQ?

In truth, these crop circles flourish thanks to all the water they receive. However, this isn’t rainwater. Instead, this stuff is found underground. Underneath these crops you’ll find the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System, the world’s largest known fossil water aquifer system, containing around 36,000 cubic miles of ancient groundwater.

Groundwater is drawn up from wells in the center of the crop circles, where it is then fed into a center-pivot irrigation system. This method involves a rotating sprinkler-equipped machine that waters the crops around a central pivot point, creating these large, lush circles.

According to the National Company for Reclamation and Agriculture in the Sharq El Owainat, the crop circles produce some 145,000 tons of grain, 35,000 tons of corn and 85,000 tons of potato per year. If that wasn’t impressive enough, the Sharq El Owainat also cultivates around 6,000 acres of fruit-bearing trees annually.

In fact, this farmland frenzy has exploded so much that an airport was constructed next to the crop circles in 2003. Serving only a few thousands passengers each year, the main function of these airport is to bring equipment to this farmland, as well as transport crops around Egypt. Fair to say the Sharq El Owainat project is really taking off!

Saying all that, there are some doubts that this project isn’t too sustainable. Researchers have estimated that, despite its seemingly limitless capacity, the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System could soon run dry. Experts suggests if water extraction rates continue to increase at the rates they have been, all that water could be used up in the next 350 years!

Safe to say that won’t be a problem for you or me. However, if we want to turn the Sahara’s sands into a lush greenery for the long-haul, looks like we’ll have to find some alternate approaches to the Sharq El Owainat project.

Worry not, though, because 500 miles north of the Sharq El Owainat crop circles, Egypt has another approach to greening the Sahara that doesn’t involve any underground aquifers. In Egypt, trees are a rarity. In fact, 96% of the country is covered by desert. For that reason, it’s quite the surprise to spot a lush green forest on the outskirts of Cairo. This is the Serapium Forest, a project launched by the Egyptian government in the 90s.

Covering 500 acres, the lush landscape is home to a variety of native and non-native trees, like teak, eucalyptus and mahogany. Even more impressively, these trees are growing rapidly. The tree’s trunks have grown three feet wide in just 20 years. According to agriculture researcher, Hossam Hammad, that much growth would normally take 100 years.

So, not only is a forest growing in the Sahara, but it’s flourishing. So, what’s the secret? Well, Egypt’s blazing sun is one reason for the rapid growth. The sun here radiates twice as intensely as it does in Central Europe, providing plenty of energy for photosynthesis, allowing the trees’ growth to turbo-boost.

Even more importantly though, is what these trees drink. Rather than using up the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System, the Serapium Forest relies on a slightly smellier approach. This thick forest is irrigated with treated wastewater, which is rich with nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus, providing the plants with a natural source of fertilizer.

It’s a short distance from the crowded Egyptian city of Ismailia. And with a population of 400,000 people, you can imagine the amount of sewage water that’s produced here every day. The sewage water arrives at the forest via massive microorganism-populated underground vats. Oxygen is fed into the system to accelerate the bacterial purification process. Finally, a network of pipes then spits out the wastewater throughout the forest.

Should we be impressed or disgusted? Either way, we might soon start seeing more of these sewage shrubs sprouting in the Sahara? Egyptian forestry science lecturer, Hany El Kateb, certainly thinks so. He claims Egypt’s inhabitants will produce enough wastewater every year to green some 1.6 million acres of desert! Who knew human waste could turn the Sahara green? Talk about a stinky solution!

Unsurprisingly, efforts to transform such a stupendously sized inhospitable environment like the Sahara into a farmland oasis, ain’t going to come easy. Whether it’s poorly planned policies, unsustainable solutions, or a lack of funding, much more work needs to be done to greenify this dry desert.

Saying that, with innovative approaches like Tony Rinaudo’s FMNR, the revamped GGW, as well as Egypt’s poop-powered forests, we might not have to wait too much longer for the Sahara’s green glow up to finally be complete!

If you were amazed at how the Sahara Desert is turning into a farmland, you might want to read about incredible city transformations. Thanks for reading!