Ghana Cocoa Belt consortium to nurture 1.9 million trees, restore 14,000 hectares
TerraFund for AFR100, a fund for locally led landscape restoration projects operating in Africa, has awarded $2.7 million grant to the Ghana Cocoa Belt, a consortium of organisations, to undertake remediation exercise.
The award is projected to grow 1.9 million trees, restore 14,000 hectares of land, create 4,500 temporary and full-time jobs, and benefit 29,000 people living in these regions.
The $2.7 million support to the Ghanaian consortium is part of a total fund of $17.8 million that will benefit other organisations in Rwanda, Burundi and Democratic Republic of Congo to undertake restoration.
Fifteen different organizations and enterprises would be working as a consortium under the Ghana Cocoa Belt, a statement issued by Ms Amanda Obuobi Amoako, Ghana Portfolio Specialist, TerraFund for AFR100, World Resources Institute Africa, and copied to the Ghana News Agency, said.
It said aside from Ghana, Kenya’s 36 champions would receive $7.5 million, Rwanda, 20 champions would receive $3.6 million, in Burundi, 11 organizations will receive $2.1 million; in the DRC, 10 projects will be awarded $1.9 million.
The statement said the decision to support landscape restoration was due to the valuable services – food and water provide for millions of people, yet humans activities continue to degrade them.
It quoted Ms Wanjira Mathai, the Managing Director for Africa and Global Partnerships at World Resources Institute, as saying, “In the final analysis, climate action is local. I am delighted TerraFund for AFR100 and partners are mobilizing finance and capacity for restoration champions”.
“We need both scale and speed for the restoration movement in Africa to improve the lives and livelihoods of smallholder farmers, their families and communities.”
She said the “restoration champions” were selected after TerraFund screened 601 applications gathered through an open call for proposals.
Mr Andrew Steer, the President and CEO of the Bezos Earth Fund, said local groups were at the heart of Africa’s restoration movement but historically had been viewed as too small or risky for investment.
He noted that the TerraFund champions would achieve incredible results with the use of new monitoring technologies, to track work progress.
“One Tree Planted is proud of our continued partnership with the World Resources Institute, Realize Impact, Barka Fund, and others to implement the TerraFund for AFR100 initiative. The initiative works to restore landscapes in Africa, including the Cocoa belt in Ghana,” said Peace Grace Muhizi, Regional Director of Africa Projects at One Tree Planted.
“At One Tree Planted, we are deeply committed to reforestation, and we believe that together with our partners and Restoration Champions, restoring degraded landscapes in Africa can have a powerful positive impact on local communities and biodiversity.”
TerraFund was established in September 2021 when it announced applications for its first cohort, the Top 100, which financed one hundred community organizations and businesses across 27 countries in Africa.
Since May 2022, the Top 100 cohort has begun to grow 12.5 million trees, provided paid work to 36,000 people, and improved the livelihoods of 202,000 people.
Goshen Global Vision, a TerraFund recipient in the Ghana’s cocoa belt, has used its funding to grow 200,000 native and fruit trees in a region that has progressively lost tree cover due to agricultural expansion, illegal mining, and logging. Now, it’s expanding that project.
“These trees have been seamlessly integrated into cocoa farms and forest reserves, effectively bolstering tree cover. Through TerraFund, we have impacted over 8,012 cocoa families,” said Mary Perpetua Kwakuyi, Executive Director of Goshen Global Vision.
“Beyond tree planting, we transferred restoration and technological skills to 1,065 individuals, while providing short-term employment opportunities that benefited 1,456 women and youth.”
To date, TerraFund for AFR100 has received 3,800 applications and has deployed $33 million in grants, loans, and equity investment to 192 landscape restoration projects in 27 African countries.
The impact of this investment is tracked through the TerraMatch platform, which uses cutting-edge monitoring, reporting, and verification techniques from Land & Carbon Lab that combine field-collected data with insights from satellite imagery.
By directly measuring the impact of their work, TerraFund is giving credit to these champions on the ground who are reversing the trend of degradation and building lasting resilience across Africa.
Source: GNA