Fact Sheet: Resilience in the Sahel-Enhanced (RISE)

Summary

West Africa’s Sahel is an arid band stretching 1.1 million square miles from Senegal to Chad with limited annual rainfall. This zone has a combustible mix of deeply rooted chronic poverty, food insecurity, recurrent drought, scattered conflict, and violent extremism that drives the same vulnerable communities into crisis year after year.

The Resilience in the Sahel-Enhanced (RISE) marks a groundbreaking joint humanitarian and development effort to end the region’s vicious cycle of crisis and help the Sahel’s most vulnerable stay firmly on the path to development. This USAID initiative based on joint analysis and planning, brings together our humanitarian and development assistance to address the root causes of persistent vulnerability. The five-year effort aims to build resilience in targeted zones in Niger and Burkina Faso to help communities get ahead of the next shock.

Key activities to support the RISE initiative's goals include: