IPRD 2025: Can Africa’s ‘Great Blue Wall’ Protect Both People And Planet?

As rising seas and shrinking coastlines threaten Africa’s maritime economies, experts at the Indo-Pacific Regional Dialogue (IPRD) 2025 turned their focus to the “Great Blue Wall”, an African-led project that aims to fuse conservation with economic revival.

Speaking virtually at the conference on Tuesday (October 28, 2025), David Willima, a maritime researcher at the Institute for Security Studies, said the initiative could transform how Africa and the wider Indian Ocean region address climate-linked security risks.

“Most of Africa’s coastal cities and island states — especially the big ones like Lagos, Abidjan, Dar-es-Salaam, Cape Town, Luanda, Alexandria — are in low-lying areas that are susceptible to flooding and inundation,” Willima said. “When you look at Africa’s population and migration projections, a lot of these cities will each hold more than five million people by 2030. That translates to about 116 million Africans living in low-lying coastal areas — a huge number that will put enormous pressure on coastal resources.”

What is the Great Blue Wall?

Launched at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP 26) in Glasgow in 2021, the Great Blue Wall (GBW) is an African-driven plan to protect and regenerate the Western Indian Ocean (WIO) through a connected chain of “seascapes” — large marine and coastal conservation zones.

Backed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and regional partners such as WIOMSA (Western Indian Ocean Marine Science Association), the GBW aims to protect 30 percent of the WIO’s marine area by 2030. It also targets the restoration of two million hectares of degraded ecosystems such as mangroves, coral reefs and seagrass beds, while creating one million blue-economy jobs and sequestering 100 million tonnes of CO₂.

Willima noted that the initiative is “locally driven, youth-inclusive and women-inclusive,” scaling existing national projects into a regional network. “It’s about scaling wide, not just scaling up,” he said.

Why does Africa’s coast matter for security?

Africa’s coastal belt faces both environmental and security pressures. The northern Mozambique province of Cabo Delgado — the site of an Islamist insurgency since 2017 — sits along the same coastline as the GBW’s proposed conservation zones. Further north, Somalia’s piracy and illegal fishing in the Gulf of Guinea illustrate how ecological stress can fuel maritime crime.

The UN Economic Commission for Africa estimates that marine assets in the WIO are worth over USD 333 billion, generating around USD 21 billion annually from fisheries, tourism and carbon sequestration. Yet less than eight percent of this marine area is under protection. The region also hosts about 38 percent of the world’s coral reef species, many already threatened by warming seas and pollution.

Willima warned that mangrove degradation could lead to “extinction within 50 years” if current trends persist. The GBW’s goal, he said, is to “restore ecological resilience while offering livelihoods that keep young people engaged in the formal economy instead of the shadow economy.”

How could the initiative shape the Indo-Pacific?

Although conceived for Africa’s western seaboard, the Great Blue Wall’s framework has drawn attention from Indo-Pacific policymakers seeking scalable models for climate-resilient blue economies. The initiative has been endorsed by the United Nations, the European Union, and several Indo-Pacific partners who see it as a test case for linking biodiversity protection with maritime stability.

Experts at IPRD 2025 said that if successful, the GBW could inspire similar cooperative seascape corridors across the Indian Ocean — from East Africa to South and Southeast Asia — aligning with the “30 by 30” global conservation goals under the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.

For millions along Africa’s fragile coasts, Willima said, the Great Blue Wall is not abstract policy but survival itself. “It’s an economic and ecological lifeline,” he said, “that can keep the ocean — and the people who depend on it — alive.”