Rwanda annually loses forty tonnes of fertile top soil per hectare due to erosion, the coordinator of Project d’ Appui a’ La Reforestation (PAREF) has revealed.

Speaking during a consultative meeting at Hotel Mille Collines, Claudien Habimana called on government to move quickly to solve the issue if the country is to be saved from becoming a desert.

The government has launched an aggressive tree planting campaign partly to address this issue.

According to the Food Agriculture Organisation (FAO), many African countries have already lost a significant amount of their soils to various forms of degradation.

Many areas on the continent are said to be losing over 50 tonnes of soil per hectare per year.

The countries mainly affected by erosion in Africa include; Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea, Ghana, Nigeria, Zaire, Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Senegal, Mauritania, Niger, the Sudan and Somalia.

Soil degradation has already reduced global agricultural productivity by 13 percent in the last half-century.

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