In 2019, Abiy Ahmed Ali, Prime Minister of Ethiopia, launched a campaign to plant 6 billion trees as part of the so-called Green Legacy initiative. The initiative is part of the government’s policies to combat climate change and achieved, in its first phase, the planting of 25 million trees.
In recent days, Girma Amente, Minister of Agriculture, and Adanech Abiebie, Mayor of Adis Adeba, the country’s capital, launched the second phase of this initiative and announced the planting of 17 million trees. This second phase has been launched under the slogan “Plant our future today”. From the official perspective, the initiative not only contributes to curbing the consequences of climate change but is also an opportunity for job creation. The other aspect highlighted by the government is that a high percentage of the seedlings that have been and will be planted are edible. Therefore, official sources say, the initiative also has an important impact on food sovereignty.
In 2019, when Abiy announced the start of Legacy Green, he stated that “When I call on all Ethiopians to decorate Ethiopia, the call is to cover our nation in green; to see beyond the dividing lines: regional, ethnic, religious, sexual”, a message that was read as a reference to the ethnic conflicts still raging in this African country and the need to overcome them.
Opponents and critics alike draw attention to the concentration of this initiative in one part of the country, leaving vast desertified areas untouched.