Category: News

Claim:

Images authentically show a sculpture of Jesus Christ holding two Uzi submachine guns.

Rating:

In September 2026, images circulated on social media purportedly showing a sculpture of Jesus Christ completely covered in red paint and holding an Uzi submachine gun in each hand.

“BLASPHEMY: Statue of Christ crucified holding machine guns triggers uproar from Catholics,” one Facebook post (archived) read.

(Facebook page LifeSite)

Photographs of the sculpture spread across Facebook, TikTok and Reddit. Snopes readers also searched our website for information about the images.

In short, the images were authentic. They showed a real sculpture by French artist James Colomina, who confirmed to us via email that he created and installed the artwork at L’Aérosol, a network of spaces devoted to hip-hop and street art in Marseille, France, in September 2026.

What we know about the sculpture

Colomina posted photographs of the sculpture to Instagram on Sept. 10, describing the work as “Tu ne tueras point,” which is French for “Thou shalt not kill.” The post’s description read in full:

Thou shalt not kill.
L’Aérosol, Marseille, 2026.

We invented religions, laws, and principles.
Then we invented a thousand reasons to break them.

In an email, Colomina confirmed that the photographs showed the actual physical sculpture, which he installed at L’Aérosol on Sept. 7. “The sculpture is made of resin and painted red,” he said, adding that it “measures approximately 2 meters (6.5 feet) from head to toe.” He also confirmed that the weapons depicted in Christ’s hands were intended to be Uzis.

At the time, French-language coverage also documented the artwork. On Sept. 11, La Dépêche du Midi reported on the sculpture and published photographs credited to Colomina. Toulouse7 published similar details and also credited its images to the artist.

Colomina told us he personally took all of the photographs of the installation that he posted online or shared with news organizations, including images showing the sculpture both outside and inside L’Aérosol.

Why was the sculpture moved indoors?

Some news articles suggested the sculpture was moved indoors in response to public outrage.

Colomina told us he installed the sculpture outside L’Aérosol on the morning of Sept. 7, where it remained throughout the day. At approximately 11 p.m. that evening, organizers moved it indoors. According to Colomina, the decision was precautionary:

As the day went on, concern grew among the staff and organizers. They were convinced that this image, visible from the public space, would provoke very strong reactions. They were concerned about the consequences for the venue, but also about the safety of the staff and the people working there. As a precaution, they ultimately decided to remove the work from the exterior and move it indoors.

Colomina said that, to his knowledge, the decision wasn’t made in response to a specific threat. 

“The decision was primarily driven by the concerns of the staff and organizers about the reactions they believed the image would provoke,” he said.

Le Parisien later reported that there were concerns the sculpture could be damaged if it remained outside and that its display could offend the religious convictions of some local residents.

Therefore, the artist’s account suggests that the sculpture was not moved because of a specific threat or protest, but because organizers were worried the outdoor display could cause a strong reaction.

Meaning behind the sculpture

Colomina told us the work was based on the contradiction between the biblical commandment “Thou shalt not kill” and acts of violence committed in the name of religion:

“Thou shalt not kill” begins with a contradiction that fascinates me. The biblical commandment is clear: “Thou shalt not kill.” And yet, throughout history and still today, people have killed and continue to kill in the name of their God, regardless of the religion they claim to follow.

He said depicting Christ holding two Uzis was intended to force viewers to confront that contradiction. “Christ is a symbol here, but the work is not aimed at Christianity or at any particular religion,” Colomina said. Rather, the artwork addressed a broader discrepancy between the principles societies establish and their behavior:

Through the religions, laws and principles that structure our societies, the work confronts us with our contradictions. We establish rules, values and prohibitions, and then find a thousand reasons to break them.

All in all, the photographs circulating on social media were authentic. They showed Colomina’s physical sculpture, which he installed at L’Aérosol in Marseille in September 2026. The artist also confirmed that he took the photographs himself and that the sculpture depicts Christ holding two Uzis.

In September 2026, a claim recirculated online that Ukraine had allegedly given the U.S. false intelligence that the United States then leaked to Russia, which revealed the U.S. as an unreliable intelligence partner.

Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, starting a war that is ongoing as of this writing.

For example, one X user, whose post had been viewed more than 8 million times at the time of publication, wrote (archived), “France and Ukraine fed Trump false intelligence to test whether he would leak it to Putin—and he did.”

An Instagram user then posted a screenshot of that X post (archived). The caption said the claim fueled “speculation that Trump or people around his administration were leaking intelligence to Moscow,” but added that it “has not been proven.”

(X)

The rumor first spread at the start of 2026, shortly after French President Emmanuel Macron said France was providing two-thirds of Ukraine’s intelligence on Jan. 15. Social media users then suggested the reasoning behind the French-Ukrainian intelligence partnership was the alleged leak of false Ukrainian intelligence from the U.S. to Russia. Posts making the claim featured on X, Substack, Medium, Bluesky and Reddit.

Several posts, including one on Facebook (archived), featured a screenshot of a since-deleted X post by user Luc Rombout, which read:

Interesting message on French newschannel LCI:

“Ukrainian intell services sent false strategic info to US intell services… and observed that the information had been relayed to RUS and was used by RUS forces.”

=> total replacement of US as Intell partner with FRA, GBR, DEU [France, the U.K., Germany]

“Trump is leaking intelligence about our allies to Russia,” the Facebook post’s caption read.

Snopes could find no evidence confirming the rumor Ukraine had shared false information with the U.S. Instead, this claim appeared to stem from a misunderstanding of an interview that aired on Jan. 16, 2026, on the French news television channel LCI. 

The interview subject was Vincent Crouzet, who formerly worked at the Directorate General for External Security (DGSE), France’s foreign intelligence agency. He said in the interview, without citing his sources, that Ukrainian intelligence officials suspected the U.S. had leaked information to Russia, causing Ukraine to stop sharing intelligence with the United States.

Asked to clarify his assertion that the U.S. had leaked Ukrainian intelligence to Russia, Crouzet said in a Jan. 18, 2026, X post (archived), which in English reads, “No, I did not say that: I said Ukrainians suspected risks of information leaks from the U.S. to the Russians.”

Snopes first contacted Crouzet in January 2026 and then reached out to him again in September to ask him what evidence he could provide that Ukrainians suspected intelligence leaks from the U.S. to Russia and whether there was any reason to believe Ukraine had fed the U.S. false information. We also contacted the White House for a comment on the rumor. We will update this report if we receive any responses. 

Due to the fact that we could not verify or disprove these details independently, we did not give this report a rating.

The interview that sparked the rumor

The rumor spread, in part, via the screenshot of the X post by Rombout, who identified himself on his LinkedIn page as the head of a crisis management center in Belgium. 

Rombout’s post appeared to reshare a video clip posted on the 24H Pujadas account. 24H Pujadas is a program on LCI, considered reputable in France. 

The clip itself was genuine and not created or altered using an artificial intelligence tool. Snopes identified an X post by the TV program 24H Pujadas with the video clip (archived) and a full video of the segment on the day it aired, Jan. 16, 2026. The presenter on that day was French journalist Yves Calvi.

Rombout seemingly deleted his original X post that made the claim. In a later post, he said in French that he was quoting the discussion in the French news program, implying that the claim did not originate with him.

A review of the televised interview showed Crouzet saying, in the context of discussing Macron’s speech announcing France was now providing two-thirds of Ukraine’s intelligence, that two Ukrainian intelligence officials had decided to stop sharing intelligence with the U.S. due to a lack of trust (emphasis ours):

So this announcement went a bit under the radar, yet it is essential. It is essential in two ways. First because it marks the divorce between Ukrainian intelligence and U.S. intelligence, because if we [France] supply two-thirds of Ukraine’s intelligence, I can well imagine that the last third is supplies by other European partners — in this case, Germany and the U.K.

When did this divorce happen? It happened on Feb. 28, 2025, during the famous session in the Oval Office, which created a break in the trust between Ukrainian intelligence and U.S. intelligence, to the point where the two leaders of Ukrainian intelligence — so, Vasyl Malyuk for the SBU [Security Service of Ukraine] and Kyrylo Budanov … you can see them on the screen … for the GUR [Main Directorate of Intelligence, military intelligence] — decided to no longer share effective intelligence they had with their U.S. partner due to U.S. leaks to Moscow.

Rombout’s X post seemingly misinterpreted some details. At no point did Crouzet say Ukraine had fed the U.S. false information and then tracked that information to Russia. We first reached out to Rombout in January and then contacted him again in September for his response to our findings about the possible translation error. We will update this report if we receive a response.

For further reading, Snopes examined a rumor spread by Russian hackers that 1.7 million Ukrainians died or went missing during the war with Russia.

Claim:

A Facebook graphic authentically showed that the price of some household goods and utilities rose more during U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration than during President Donald Trump’s second term.

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Context

The graphic presented an unfair comparison of changes to the inflation rate for 12 household goods and utilities during the Biden and second Trump administrations. The graphic’s comparison wasn’t accurate because it compared Biden’s full 48-month term to only 20 months of Trump’s. Additionally, Snopes could not replicate the figures the graphic presented using the database it listed as a source.

In September 2026, a Facebook graphic (archived) circulated online that social media users claimed authentically showed that the price of some household goods and utilities rose more during the U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration than during President Donald Trump’s second term. 

In other words, social media users claimed the graphic showed that the rate of inflation, meaning the increase in prices over time, was higher during Biden’s presidency than during Trump’s second term.

For example, one Facebook user shared the graphic and wrote, “Inflation hit American families hard under Biden.”

The graphic also circulated elsewhere on Facebook, including on the page of the Denton County Republican Party in Texas (archived, archived). Social media users on Instagram, Threads and TikTok also shared the post (archived, archived, archived). Snopes readers contacted us to ask whether the numbers on the graphic were real.

While the graphics did purport to show that the price of some household goods and utilities rose less during the second Trump administration than during Biden’s presidential term, its figures appeared to be false (wrong), fake (fabricated) or both, and the comparison it made wasn’t accurate or fair.

We could not replicate any of the rate-of-inflation changes the graphic indicated took place between January 2021 and January 2025 or between January 2025 and August 2026 using the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) database. Importantly, it’s the same database the graphic said it pulled its data from.

The graphic also made an unfair comparison by directly comparing Biden’s 48-month presidency to the 20 months between January 2025 and August 2026 (both included) of Trump’s second term. Because inflation is measured over time, direct comparisons should use time periods of the same length. A “fair” comparison in this case might have compared either the first 20 months of Biden’s presidency to the first 20 months of Trump’s or Biden’s full term to Trump’s full first term.

The source of the graphic was unclear. We contacted the Denton County Republican Party, which posted an early version of the graphic, to ask where they got their data from and await a reply.

It’s worth noting that Pangram, a highly regarded artificial intelligence detector for images and text, found two versions of the graphic to be fully AI. Facebook also marked the Denton County Republican Party’s posting of the graphic as AI content. (It’s important to note that currently, no AI detection tool is regarded as 100% reliable.)

It’s unclear what the sources of the images we scanned might have used AI for. They could have used AI tools to find or conjure the data or merely to present it. 

What is the CPI?

The graphic listed the BLS’ CPI-U database as its source. According to the BLS, the CPI tracks “changes in prices of all goods and services purchased for consumption by urban households” — in other words, inflation. CPI-U covers urban consumers, which the BLS says accounts for 90% of the total population of the U.S. 

Because the CPI tracks price changes over time, it makes the most sense to use the index when comparing one point in time to another. According to the BLS website, most of its index series — meaning a data set that tracks prices for a certain item over time — use an average index from the 36 months covering 1982, 1983, and 1984. The BLS assigns that time period an index of 100, and all later periods show changes compared to that baseline. 

The BLS wrote:

An index of 110, for example, means there has been a 10-percent increase in price since the reference period; similarly, an index of 90 means there has been a 10-percent decrease.

Changes to the rate of inflation (what the CPI measures) are usually reported as a percentage. This is because a percentage most accurately reflects how much prices have fallen or risen between two points in time.

What the data actually says

The Facebook post above claimed that the graphic used index series from the CPI-U database, using “U.S. cities average” to define the area where the BLS collected the data. 

We found index series for 12 out of the 13 items listed in the Facebook graphic. The BLS doesn’t publish an index series for “Natural gas” within its CPI-U database, meaning the figures the Facebook graphic used could not have come from that source.

The graphic didn’t say whether it used data that was “seasonally adjusted.” The BLS said on its website that such an adjustment attempts to remove “the influences of predictable seasonal patterns from time series data.”

We used seasonally adjusted data in our attempt to recreate the Facebook graphic (except for “baby food and formula,” which did not have seasonally adjusted data available). As the Facebook graphic said, we pulled data for “U.S. city average” from the database.

The data from the actual BLS CPI-U database showed that, for 12 goods or utilities, prices rose slower during Trump’s second term than during Biden’s first. However, that was to be expected given Biden’s term covered a time period more than twice as long as the initial 20 months of Trump’s second term.

The actual BLS CPI-U data also differed from the Facebook graphic that the Denton County Republicans posted for every good or service listed. In fact, the Denton County Republicans post short-changed Trump in some places, as the actual data showed inflation had fallen for four of the products listed — not just one, as the graphic claimed.

We used the Denton County Republicans post for comparison because the page posted an early version of the graphic.

A ‘fair’ comparison

For good measure, here is what a “fair” comparison of the rate of inflation for 12 products during the first 20 months of Biden’s presidency and the first 20 months of Trump’s second presidency would look like:

 

According to the CPI-U’s data for January 2021 to August 2022 and January 2025 to August 2026, the rate of inflation was lower for 10 of the 12 products during the first 20 months of Trump’s second term. 

It’s worth noting here that the start of Biden’s presidency coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic and the highest period of inflation recorded in the U.S. for at least 20 years. Experts disagree about the reason for the high rates of post-COVID inflation. 

The Brookings Institution, a think tank based in Washington, D.C, wrote in June 2023 that:

Most of the rise in inflation in 2021 and 2022 was driven by developments that directly raised prices rather than wages, including sharp increases in global commodity prices and sectoral price spikes driven by a combination of pandemic-induced kinks in supply chains and a huge shift in demand during the pandemic to goods from services.

It assigned a smaller role to fiscal policy.

Meanwhile, researchers from the MIT Sloan School of Management found in July 2024 that 42% of the inflation seen in 2022 “could be attributed to government spending.” Federal spending to bolster the economy during the COVID pandemic helped it bounce back but also caused a “surge” in inflation, according to the school’s experts.

In sum, the Facebook post that circulated online claiming lower rates of inflation for 13 products during Trump’s second term than Biden’s first appeared to use fabricated data and also presented an unfair comparison. It’s unclear whether various creators used AI to source, conjure and/or present the data. 

For further reading, Snopes has previously investigated other claims about inflation.

Claim:

Denver Broncos quarterback Bo Nix responded to U.S. President Donald Trump calling a female reporter a “pig” by releasing a video in which he said that “staying silent makes me part of the problem.”

Rating:

Throughout 2026, people shared a rumor alleging Denver Broncos quarterback Bo Nix responded to U.S. President Donald Trump calling a reporter a pig. According to social media users’ posts, the NFL quarterback publicly rebuked Trump, saying that “staying silent makes me part of the problem.”

For example, on Sept. 20, a Facebook post (archived) read, “BREAKING NFL NEWS: Broncos star Bo Nix breaks his silence in shocking video response after ‘Little Pig’ comment to a female reporter shocks T.r.u.m.p — NFL superstar condemns disrespect towards women and sparks nationwide outrage.”

The post featured a meme showing side-by-side images of Nix and Trump, with a purported Nix quote reading as follows:

When I watched that clip, something in me snapped. I play this game with fire and pride, but I was raised to respect every woman who cheers, works, and sacrifices behind the scenes. If a man with that much power can mock and demean them in front of the world, then staying silent makes me part of the problem. And I refuse to be part of that.

Other examples of the claim appeared on Facebook, Instagram and Threads. Snopes readers also searched this website in September 2026, specifically asking, “Did Bo Nix stand up for a female reporter?”

We first used search engines such as DuckDuckGo, Google and Yahoo to locate possible evidence from credible sources about Nix publicly commenting on Trump. If the story was true, journalists with reputable news outlets, such as The Associated Press or Reuters — or sports blogs — would have widely reported on it. That was not the case. 

The rumor about Bo Nix responding to Trump was fictional, and as a result we’ve rated the claim false.

The claim appeared to take inspiration from a real remark Trump made in November 2025 while aboard Air Force One, when he told a female reporter asking a question, “Quiet. Quiet, piggy.” Snopes previously investigated that quote and found Trump genuinely said it.

People.com, citing a journalist’s X post, reported the female journalist Trump addressed as “piggy” was Bloomberg reporter Catherine Lucey. The subject matter of Lucey’s question pertained to asking Trump about his past relationship with deceased convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

We emailed the Denver Broncos to ask if the organization would like to address the fake Nix quote and will update this article if we receive further details.

Digging into the rumor

In addition to social media posts, the untrue rumor about Nix publicly rebuking Trump appeared on a handful of generic-looking WordPress blogs. Those blogs lacked author names and credible information about their founding. An examination of the blogs found they were not reputable outlets, for example such as well-known newspapers or established news websites, or websites for local or national TV channels.

A scan of the text in one blog article with the artificial intelligence detection tool Pangram displayed the results, “We believe that this entire text is AI,” as well as, “100% of this text is AI.”

Snopes doesn’t depend solely on AI detection tools, which vary in reliability, and instead considers the tools’ results as one of several data points toward judging an image’s authenticity. For Pangram, we bear in mind the platform’s strong performance in third-party and internal evaluations, as well as criticisms of the tool.

Creators of content like the fabricated Nix quote capitalize on social media users’ willingness to believe and share the made-up stories, profiting from advertising revenue on external websites to which the posts link. (Snopes has previously reported on the business strategy.)

The fictional story about Nix standing up for women resembled glurge, which Dictionary.com defines as “stories, often sent by email, that are supposed to be true and uplifting, but which are often fabricated and sentimental.”

For further reading, we previously reported about whether Broncos head coach Sean Payton fired two players for refusing to stand for the U.S. national anthem.

Sources

Claim:

Joe Biden’s administration cut 442 reporters from the White House press pool in 2023.

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What’s True

In 2023, the Biden administration tightened the requirements for obtaining an all-access White House press credential called a “hard pass.” After the stricter requirements went into effect, the number of hard passes issued dropped from 1,417 to 975, in part because many journalists chose not to renew them.

What’s False

The Biden administration’s changes did not cut or replace reporters in the “press pool,” a small group of journalists historically selected by the White House Correspondents’ Association to receive privileged access and travel with the president at almost all times. Trump’s administration announced that the White House would be in charge of picking that group in 2025.

What’s Undetermined

It’s unclear how many journalists were made ineligible for hard passes by the Biden administration’s tightening of the requirements.

On Sept. 18, 2026, U.S. President Donald Trump announced he was banning journalists from the outlets CNN, MS NOW and Politico from accessing the White House. Journalists from the three outlets had their White House access revoked the following day, according to The Associated Press. The three outlets publish “fake news,” the president said of his unprecedented decision, which is already being challenged in court on First Amendment grounds. 

It’s not the first time Trump has sparked backlash over his efforts to meddle with the way the media covers him and his administration. 

For instance, on Feb. 25, 2025, then-White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced that members of the White House press pool, a small group of rotating journalists who travel with the president at almost all times, would no longer be selected by the independent White House Correspondents’ Association, which was created specifically to prevent the president from restricting press access. 

Members of Trump’s administration now pick the press pool journalists themselves. 

Amid the 2026 controversy, posts popped up on social media purporting to compare Trump’s actions with those of his predecessor, Joe Biden. Snopes previously covered the claim in February 2025, and we are refreshing our reporting accordingly. At that time, the main source of the rumor was a Fox News article titled “FLASHBACK: Biden also changed White House press pool, cutting off more than 440 reporters’ credentials.” 

In September 2026, the conservative One America News Network, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., and the White House itself spread the rumor.

In a news release on Sept. 21, the administration called press access to the White House access a “privilege, not a right,” and listed several examples of Barack Obama and Joe Biden’s administrations purportedly attempting to curtail press access. 

(Snopes previously reported on the allegations against the Obama administration.)

The actions simply are not comparable.

The Biden administration’s change tightened the requirements for obtaining a certain press credential. According to Fox News’ White House reporter Jacqui Heinrich, who is also the president of the WHCA, presidential administrations have always been in charge of press credentialing. 

Trump’s administration, meanwhile, first took control over which White House reporters travel with the president in the “press pool” (something a presidential administration had never previously been in charge of), and then banned specific outlets from the White House, something a presidential administration has never officially done.

What the Biden administration did

In 2023, the Biden administration tightened the requirements for the so-called “hard pass,” a yearly credential that allows a White House journalist to “come and go at will” when the White House is open, according to The Washington Post. That article listed the revised eligibility requirements under Biden as follows: 

• Employed by a news organization.
• Live in the Washington, D.C., area.
• Have gone to the White House for work at least once in the last six months.
• Have a press credential for either the Supreme Court, the Senate or the House of Representatives. 

Crucially, one-day press passes still remain available for all journalists, even those who do not meet the above requirements. 

According to Politico, the number of hard passes dropped from 1,417 to 975 after the new requirements came into effect simply because many journalists chose to not renew the pass — despite the stricter requirements, only one application was denied. A White House spokesperson told Politico that just before the change that “roughly 40 percent of hard pass holders had not accessed the White House complex in the prior 90 days.”

As such, it’s misleading to claim that the Biden administration “cut off” the credentials of more than 440 reporters. Reporters had the chance to renew their credentials, but some decided not to. It is unclear how many of the journalists who did not renew their hard pass credential did so because they wouldn’t qualify under the new guidelines (and again, such reporters could still attend news briefings with a day pass). 

What the Trump administration did

The Trump administration decided in February 2025 to put government officials in charge of picking the small rotating group of journalists who travel with the president — the people that “relay the president’s activities to the public,” as The New York Times wrote. 

The press pool, historically set by the WHCA, has been traveling with the president since Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration in the 1930s and 1940s, according to the organization’s website. 

Because the general public might misunderstand the term “press pool” to mean “the large group of reporters covering the White House” instead of the small group of rotating journalists that travel with the president, it’s misleading to suggest that a change affecting the requirements for press credentials is comparable to giving the White House sole control of the makeup of the press pool.

The White House’s announcement that it would control the press pool itself came not long after the Trump administration barred The Associated Press from the White House for not following its demand to replace the term “Gulf of Mexico” with “Gulf of America.” The AP sued to rejoin the pool, and a judge ordered in favor of the AP in April 2025.

Then, in September 2026, Trump pulled the press credentials (read: hard passes) of CNN, MS NOW and Politico reporters.

There have certainly been cases where the president and the media find themselves at odds. Richard Nixon is said to have ordered a ban on The Washington Post after the Watergate scandal, which arguably served as precedent for Trump’s actions in 2026. 

However, Nixon’s administration never confiscated Post reporters’ credentials, according to a 2016 report from NBC News. George Condon, a long-term White House reporter and former WHCA president, told NBC News he could not think of any instance of a publication having its credentials pulled by an administration. According to Watergate reporter Bob Woodward, the Post simply was excluded from covering social events at the White House. 

Sources

Claim:

More than 20 African countries banded together to combat the spread of the Sahara Desert by planting a giant wall of trees to run across the continent. This wall will stretch for around 7,000 km coast to coast.

Rating:

Context

In 2007, more than 20 African countries partnered up in a project to tackle desertification through the spread of the Sahara Desert, which was conceived as a giant wall of trees meant to stretch from coast to coast of the continent. Over time, the focus shifted to smaller-scale planting programs that go beyond just trees. The official goal for the length of the “wall” was 8,000 km. Today, however, reports show that the project has done poorly.

For several years, an image of a stretch of green trees across the African continent has spread online purportedly showing an ambitious inititative called the “Great Green Wall.” 

Such a plan has been in the works since 2007 and involves the participation of numerous African countries. Its aim was to have trees extend like a belt across the Sahel region, which is at the base of the Sahara, in order to prevent the expansion of the desert due to climate change.

According to social media posts on Facebook and other platforms, more than 20 African countries are a part of this effort to plant trees across the continent from coast to coast:

(Facebook user Culture Collective)

The posts are mostly true, in that this is a real effort being carried out by African countries, though the stated length of the wall upon completion varies. According to recent news coverage, the initiative is perceived as an overall failure with only small success stories. 

According to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, the project aimed “to restore Africa’s degraded landscapes and transform millions of lives in one of the world’s poorest regions, the Sahel. Once complete, the Wall will be the largest living structure on the planet – an 8,000 km natural wonder of the world stretching across the entire width of the continent.”

The goal was to have the “wall” extend from Senegal in the west to Djibouti in the east, by 2030. The now-defunct official website of the Great Green Wall inititative detailed the reasons behind all their efforts:

The catalyst for the Great Green Wall is the daily impact of desertification and climate change that is undermining the futures of millions of communities across Africa’s Sahel region.

Since the 1970s, the Sahel has been heavily affected by recurrent periods of drought. These droughts have threatened the livelihoods and future of entire populations across the region.

The lack of rain has led to the disappearance of livestock and the destruction of cereal crops. The great famines that rocked the Sub-Saharan region in the 80s each affected millions of people. In addition, the high population growth rate is increasing demand for food and pressure to gain access to other natural resources which are the basis for livelihoods and the survival of the rural population.

Millions of people – particularly rural youth – are currently facing an uncertain future due to the lack of decent rural jobs and continuous loss of livelihoods due to land degradation and falling yields.

But according to a 2021 Associated Press report, since the project’s inception in 2007, millions of the planted trees have died due to diminishing rains and rising temperatures. Only 4% of the project’s original goal has been met and around $43 billion is needed to complete it. Given these challenges, the focus of the project has shifted from planting just a wall of trees to a “mosaic” of smaller and more durable projects that emphasize community-focused solutions that support agriculture and prevent desertification.

The Great Green Wall’s old website claimed a number of successes. Senegal planted around 12 million drought-resistant trees in less than a decade, while 5 million hectares of degraded land was restored in Nigeria, and 15 million hectares in Ethiopia. A November 2021 report in the journal Nature Sustainability assessed the economic effect of the program and concluded that it was economically worthwhile:

The Great Green Wall programme is a colossal initiative to restore 100 million hectares of degraded ecosystems across 11 countries in the region […] We evaluated the economic costs and benefits of future land restoration projects under this programme. We applied different scenarios that account for both market-priced and non-market benefits from restored ecosystems and consider the heterogeneity of local decision-making contexts in terms of investment planning horizons, discount rates, and the time needed for the restored ecosystems to start yielding their benefits in full. The results show that every US dollar invested into land restoration yields on average US$1.2 under the base scenario, ranging from US$1.1 to US$4.4 across the scenarios. At most, ten years are needed for land restoration activities to break even from the social perspective, accounting for both market-priced and non-market ecosystem benefits. To fund all proposed land restoration activities, an investment of US$44 billion is needed under the base scenario (US$18–70 billion across scenarios). 

The report added that “violent conflicts in the Sahel are estimated to reduce the accessibility to these degraded ecosystems from 27.9 million hectares to 14.1 million hectares.”  

While originally only 11 countries were a part of the effort, more than 20 African nations have participated. This video from September 2020 detailed some of the projects and their effect:

A 2026 NPR report called the inititative a “cautionary tale” of poor planning and a lack of local participation. The report investigated 15 projects in Senegal, Djibouti and Chad, finding some more successful than others. A majority of the sites visited were unable to survive in the long term.