Abstract
As a reaction to ongoing environmental change, many small-scale land restoration projects have emerged that aim to prevent or reverse land degradation, combat climate change through carbon sequestration or improve the local climate. However, the contribution of these projects to the greening of Africa at larger scales is still unknown due to the absence of a (public) complete database of restoration projects, the lack of monitoring and the low survival rate of planted vegetation. Here, we use climate independent greening time series to detect local greening hotspots in Africa. We find that 3% of Africa experiences local greening, especially in semi-arid environments. On top of that, we show that sustainable land management, especially active revegetation, leads to significant local greening. This study, therefore provides insight in the greening potential of land restoration, which is needed for a thorough understanding of positive and negative effects of sustainable land management.