“73% of Africa’s agricultural dry land is severely and moderately degraded.
Desertification costs the world about US$42 billion annually, affecting about 3.6 billion hectares of land, approximately 70% of the world’s dry land or a quarter of the total land surface.”

Desertification is wreaking havoc in most countries of Africa, and is the underlying reason for several high-profile disputes over land and environmental preservation. Communities are being displaced; many people are becoming ill, disabled or living at reduced capacity. In several thousands of cases people are dying. The strain on urban areas is palpable and is the direct result of the migration of individuals, herds and wildlife in search of food and vegetation.

Background

FADE (Fight Against Desert Encroachment) is an international non-governmental and non-profit making organisation accredited to the United Nations World Summit on Sustainable Development. FADE has established offices in the United Kingdom and Nigeria in 2000 to carry out its work with agencies in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Israel. FADE seeks to build partnerships with the public and private sectors as well as other NGOs in order to share best practices to prevent further destruction of the world’s human and economic capital.

FADE is the culmination of business executive Newton Jibunoh’s powerful obligation to take better care of the planet. Coming from a devastatingly local Nigerian perspective, Jibunoh has spoken out for forty years about the grave impact that the spread of the desert is having in destroying the livelihoods of several thousand communities in the Border States. As he approached retirement, Jibunoh made his second solo cross-Saharan journey in 2000 at the age of 60, in order to drive home the issues of encroachment. The Saharan desert was not unfamiliar territory. Jibunoh had had first-hand experience of its ravages during his first expedition in 1965, and as a result of his training and skills as a specialist soil mechanics engineer over the intervening years. After the second hazardous trip, Jibunoh wrote and published “Me, My Desert and I” to illustrate the problems of desertification on a more human scale and therefore, more widely accessible scale. Former Chief Executive and current Costain (West Africa PLC) Chairman, Jibunoh raised the issues at the UN World Summit in Johannesburg after which South African Deputy President, Jacob Zuma commented: “This is a true reflection of the world we live in today, it is becoming very clear that there is a serious problem with regards to the challenges of sustainable development.”

Aims and Objectives

FADE is committed to the prevention and control of environmental degradation in Africa by putting a greater emphasis on the impact of desert encroachment. Increasingly, desertification is becoming the prime reason for environmental destruction in Africa, bringing a host of natural disasters ranging from bio-diversity losses, declining soil fertility, causing massive damage to arable land, the depletion of water resources and making significant contribution to the global climatic anomalies.

FADE’s ambition is to play a leading role in the prevention and control of desertification, so that in the long-term of life and vegetation throughout Africa will be longer at the risk of destruction through these controllable causes.