AFR100 2020 African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative

he African Forest landscape Restoration initiative (AFR100, https://afr100.org/) is a country-led effort to bring 100 million hectares of land in Africa into restoration by 2030. Presently, it cuts-across 34 African member states through Sida contribution. Under this contribution, the following specific results were achieved: - A database of 189 institutions Working on AFR100 has been developed. A copy of the data base has been shared with the Embassy of Sweden in Addis Ababa and is uploaded in Trac. - A user-friendly data collection tool for monitoring and tracking AFR100 implementation developed (uploaded in Trac). - The AFR100 Implementation Monitoring Platform has been developed and was launched at the 6th AFR100 Annual Partnership Meeting in June 2022, in Malawi. AFR100 Monitoring & FLR Registry training was conducted in conjunction with the 6th Annual Partnership Meeting of AFR100 . https://geospatial.nepad.org/portal/apps/sites/#/monitoring-afr100-forest-landscape-restoration-portal - The data collection tool for monitoring was piloted in 6 AFR100 countries: Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Malawi, and Niger. - The 2021 First AFR100 State of Restoration Report was produced and disseminated (uploaded in Trac) - The beneficiaries of the Land Accelerators program received the following package: (a) three months of exclusive weekly trainings from experts; (b) three months of access to Fledges online lessons for start-ups. Fledge is an experienced big business enterprise based in the USA; (c) Templates to create content to help beneficiaries business thrive; (d) Weekly office hours with mentors who lend their expertise; (e) Weekly networking sessions peer to peer engagement and knowledge sharing. Women entrepreneurs represented 22 percent of 100 beneficiaries in year 2021 and over 50% in year 2022, where 89% of the businesses had women and youth as co-owners. - 84 women and youth entrepreneurs received USD 5000 innovation grants towards scaling up their land restoration businesses. - Bootcamp training was conducted for the Top 15 restoration women and youth entrepreneurs.

AFR100 Goals AFR100 is an African owned and country-led initiative to restore 100 million hectares of deforested and degraded landscapes across Africa by 2030. The Initiative connects participating African countries with technical and financial support to scale up restoration on the ground and capture associated benefits. It provides a platform for: 1) Coordinating and streamlining Forest Landscapes Restoration (FLR) activities across the continent. 2) Enhancing knowledge exchanges and cross-learning amongst AFR100 Partner Countries and between AFR100 Technical and Financial Partners. 3) Amplifying the impact of FLR activities by encouraging stakeholders to work together in order to realise large-scale FLR in Africa Objectives of the project under consideration The proposed Swedish contribution to AFR100 will support two specific areas of work that are presented below. Work Area 1 - AFR100 Implementation Progress Tracking System The overarching aim is to establish an AFR100 implementation progress monitoring system which includes an effective and user-friendly tool that facilitates the sustainable generation of data and reports on the progress of AFR100 implementation activities at the national and local levels of participating countries. Key objectives of the AFR100 implementation progress tracking system include: 1.1 To develop a sound and numerical understanding of institutions/entities working on or supporting AFR100 implementation activities in Africa 1.2 To strengthen the coordination, communication, implementation, monitoring and reporting capabilities of the AFR100 Secretariat 1.3 To generate visualisations and develop a comprehensive mapping of AFR100 activities across the continent as well as opportunities for restoration 1.4 To establish indicators and to develop a sound data collection tool to track progress of AFR100 implementation activities in a systematic and standardized manner, including the collection of information on socio-economic and environmental factors; 1.5 To establish a Progress Tracking Framework defining methodologies of data collection and data analysis across all partner countries as well time frames, required resources and reporting schedule; 1.6 To design a comprehensive and recurrent (with a set periodicity) AFR100 reporting mechanism; 1.7 To become a gateway and point of interface for reliable data for tracking and measuring progress as well as for understanding challenges, opportunities and trajectory of FLR in Africa.   Work Area 2 - AFR100 Land Accelerator programme: Empowering Women and Youth Restoration Entrepreneurs Key objectives of the Land Accelerator Program are: 2.1 Empower female and youth entrepreneurs to pitch to impact investors and sell their products more effectively; 2.2 Enhance knowledge and upskill female and youth restoration entrepreneurs to improve access to markets;  2.3 Encourage women and youth to participate and engage in green and circular economy opportunities. 2.4 Enhance representation and involvement of women and youth in restoration entrepreneurship opportunities in order to raise Africa’s gender and youth profile in green economy ventures.