Ethiopian Farmer Who Planted Thousands of Trees Turns Neighbors Into Allies

BERBERE, Ethiopia - Halima Kedir has lost count of the trees she has planted on her plot in the Berbere district of Ethiopia's Oromia region, a patience that once drew mockery from neighbors and now helps anchor a broader local restoration drive backed by WaterAid Ethiopia, according to reporting published this month.

In a garden lush with banana, olive and grevillea, Kedir, 35, told The Guardian she began planting while neighbors discouraged her. "They thought I was striving for nothing, but with time, many are realising that trees can be part of the solution to our problems as a way to fight climate change and food insecurity," she said. As the trees took hold, she added, "Those who tried to dissuade me are envious of my effort and commitment."

Water is scarce in her area. To keep seedlings alive she sometimes walks about an hour to fetch it, she told The Guardian, linking that care to guddifachaa, the Oromo tradition of adopting a child into the family: "Just like we adopt a child in our tradition, I see them like my own children." Her neighbor Fate Abdulahi said Kedir had become a role model. Kedir's 13-year-old son, Anwar Hassen, said he hoped to follow her lead.

The household story sits inside a measured project frame. Alebachew Adem, director of WaterAid Ethiopia, told The Guardian that about 55,000 indigenous tree seedlings have been distributed to households and community institutions across the area, and that about 85 percent of those seedlings have grown successfully. "In dry land and climate-vulnerable areas such as Berbere, these efforts help communities build resilience against the increasing impacts of climate change," he said.

Jersey Overseas Aid, which funds the ECOSAVE project implemented with WaterAid Ethiopia and MELCA Ethiopia in Berbere woreda of Bale Zone, described in a May 2026 field account how guddifachaa has been applied to tree adoption around homes as well as planting in community conservation areas. More than 5,000 seedlings had already been adopted under that approach, the commission said, with three women-led nursery sites training 45 women to grow indigenous and endemic species for reforestation and adoption, feeding into a planned restoration of nearly 300 hectares of community land. A JOA visit caption from August 2025 named Halima Kedir watering an olive seedling she had adopted from MELCA Ethiopia in Haro Dumal Town, Berbere district.

Nationally, Ethiopia's Green Legacy Initiative, launched in 2019, claims tens of billions of seedlings planted and a rise in reported forest cover, while The Guardian noted that independent survival data remain harder to verify and that some earlier reforestation schemes elsewhere in Ethiopia achieved less than 50 percent success. Yitebitu Moges of the UN Environment Programme's REDD+ work in Ethiopia told the paper a systematic survival assessment is under way and that the clearest gain so far may be a shift in public attitudes from deforestation toward forestation.

For now the local claim is bounded and countable: one farmer's thousands of trees, a WaterAid Ethiopia tally of about 55,000 seedlings with a reported 85 percent success rate in Berbere's climate-vulnerable drylands, and a culturally grounded adoption practice that project partners say has already placed more than 5,000 seedlings under household care. "They should give the issues of water and trees, which many in such communities lack, the priority they deserve," Kedir told The Guardian, looking ahead to Ethiopia's hosting of the UN climate summit in Addis Ababa in November 2027.

Sources

1. The Guardian: 'I see them like my own children': reforesting Ethiopia with 50bn trees, one step at a time (Amanuel Gebremedhin and Karen McVeigh, 17 Sep 2026)
2. Jersey Overseas Aid: Rooted in responsibility - How guddifachaa is strengthening environmental stewardship (Meredith Richards, 12 May 2026)
3. WaterAid Ethiopia / JOA LinkedIn project visit note on ECOSAVE in Berbere Woreda (May 2026)