The Sahel Renaissance: Enabling a Just Rural Transformation

A sustainable development, biodiversity conservation, climate change, and value chains development professional with over 16 years of professional experience in Africa, Asia and the United Kingdom. Elvis currently serves as African Union Commission Coordinator for the Great green Wall for the Sahara and Sahel Initiative. Previously, he held various National & International Development Organizations including UN FAO, TREE AID International, Watershed Task Group and others in the domains of research and projects cycle. He has also initiated and been a pioneering member of several initiatives including the Cameroon Traditional Rulers against Climate.

Professor Mbow served for a decade as an Associate Professor on remote sensing-GIS and climate change at the Institute of Environmental Sciences, Science Faculty; and Laboratoire d’Enseignement et de Recherche en Géomatique, Polytechnic Faculty of the University Cheikh Anta Diop of Dakar, where he was leading the research team known as Climate Change, Adaptation and Environmental Risks. He occupied various science leadership roles at the World Agroforestry centre in Kenya and the START-International Secretariat in USA. With more than 120 publications on various environmental sustainability fields, Professor Mbow has proven transdisciplinary skills and expertise on land use, disturbances of natural vegetative systems and sustainability of agricultural systems.

Sarah Toumi is the monitoring officer of the Great Green Wall Accelerator, a UNCCD-based team seeking to facilitate the coordination and collaboration of donors and stakeholders involved in the Great Green Wall Initiative. Involved since her younger age in farming activities in arid areas, she has been a witness of the impact of desertification on communities livelihood and human rights and got involved as an entrepreneur to develop agroecological value chains projects, and as an expert to design new programmatic approaches to solve complexe issues in arid areas empowering new collaborations based on innovation, tech4good and fairness.

Patrick Worms is the Senior Science Policy Advisor of World Agroforestry, the world’s only global institution devoted to the study of trees in agricultural landscapes. His work sits at the nexus of land restoration and human security. He is convinced that marrying traditional and advanced knowledge is the most promising pathway to rural prosperity, a giant help to mitigate our impact on biodiversity and the atmosphere and, tantalizingly, peace in a warming world. Patrick serves as President of the European Agroforestry Federation, Treasurer of the International Union of Agroforestry, on the steering committee of Initiatives for Land, Lives and Peace, is a Senior Fellow of the Evergreening Global Alliance, and serves on a number of advisory boards.