OPINION | The Great Blue Wall: A New Axis of Maritime Cooperation Between Africa, Europe, and the Indo-Pacific

By Kagushtan Ariaratnam

At the Indo-Pacific Regional Dialogue (IPRD) 2025 in New Delhi, a concept first conceived in Africa captured the imagination of diplomats and defense thinkers alike: the Great Blue Wall. What began as a regional project to restore the Western Indian Ocean (WIO) has matured into a global proposition — that maritime ecology, security, and prosperity are indivisible.

An African Vision with Global Resonance

Launched at COP 26 in Glasgow in 2021, the Great Blue Wall (GBW) is an African-driven initiative coordinated by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the Western Indian Ocean Marine Science Association (WIOMSA). It seeks to protect 30 percent of the WIO’s marine area by 2030, restore two million hectares of mangroves, seagrass, and coral, and generate one million blue-economy jobs while sequestering 100 million tons of CO₂.

Speaking virtually at IPRD 2025, David Willima, a maritime researcher at the Institute for Security Studies, warned that the stakes could not be higher. “Most of Africa’s coastal cities and island states are in low-lying areas that are susceptible to flooding and inundation. By 2030, about 116 million Africans will live in those zones,” he said. “That will put enormous pressure on coastal resources.”

For African policymakers, the project’s appeal lies in its dual logic — ecological and strategic. The GBW is not simply about restoring reefs or mangroves; it is about restoring control over a maritime space long defined by external intervention and fragile governance.

Security Through Sustainability

The Western Indian Ocean is both rich and vulnerable. It contains 38 percent of global coral species and marine assets valued at over US$333 billion, generating more than US$21 billion a year from fisheries, tourism, and carbon sequestration. Yet less than eight percent of this marine area is protected. Climate stress, coupled with economic fragility, has turned many coastal regions — from Somalia to Mozambique — into incubators of instability.

The Great Blue Wall reframes this crisis. By linking ecosystem protection to livelihoods, it treats environmental degradation as a security threat. Mangrove forests shield ports and coastal installations from storm surges; seagrass meadows sustain fisheries that underpin food security; coral reefs attract tourism and create employment that draws young people away from piracy or smuggling.

In Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado, where insurgency and gas extraction intersect, this logic is already being tested. Community-based marine conservation offers a path to resilience that counterinsurgency alone cannot deliver. As Willima put it, “The goal is to restore ecological resilience while offering livelihoods that keep young people engaged in the formal economy instead of the shadow economy.”

Europe’s Stake in an African Ocean

For Europe — and for France in particular — the Great Blue Wall is not a distant experiment but a regional reality. The French territories of La Réunion and Mayotte sit within the WIO’s ecosystem, and European investments are already shaping blue-economy policy through the EU Blue Economy Partnership and Global Gateway infrastructure plan.

The GBW therefore offers a natural bridge between African priorities and European ambitions. It aligns with the European Green Deal, supports sustainable development under the African Union’s Agenda 2063, and complements the EU’s Indo-Pacific Strategy. In essence, it transforms Europe’s presence in the Indian Ocean from one of military projection to one of environmental partnership.

Toward an Indo-Pacific of Shared Stewardship

At IPRD 2025, analysts drew parallels between the GBW and India’s SAGAR vision — Security and Growth for All in the Region. Both approaches seek inclusive maritime governance grounded in trust rather than rivalry. For France and the wider European Union, engaging with the GBW means embracing a new form of Indo-Pacific diplomacy — one that merges security with sustainability and recognizes Africa as a full strategic actor, not merely a recipient of aid.

The GBW’s architecture of connected “seascapes” — regional corridors of conservation and commerce — could evolve into the first transcontinental network of climate-resilient maritime zones. These zones, monitored through joint surveillance and satellite data, could eventually feed into a broader Indo-Pacific system of ocean governance.

Challenges of Execution

The Great Blue Wall spans ten jurisdictions, from Comoros and Kenya to South Africa and the Seychelles. Their legal frameworks, financial resources, and enforcement capacities differ sharply. A 2023 concept note submitted to the Green Climate Fund outlines a roadmap for investment, but financing remains uneven, and competition from extractive industries threatens momentum.

Nevertheless, pilot projects in Tanzania’s Tanga–Pemba and Mozambique’s Quirimbas seascapes demonstrate the concept’s viability. Local communities are restoring reefs, attracting ecotourism, and establishing small-scale aquaculture enterprises. Each success story strengthens the argument that ecological governance can underpin security and growth simultaneously.

A Wall Built on Cooperation

For Africa, the Great Blue Wall represents self-determination through stewardship. For Europe, it offers a framework to pursue climate and security goals in partnership rather than patronage. For the Indo-Pacific, it signals that the future of regional order may depend less on deterrence than on shared ecological resilience.

Willima’s words at IPRD 2025 captured the essence of this vision: “It’s an economic and ecological lifeline that can keep the ocean — and the people who depend on it — alive.” If Africa and Europe can sustain that lifeline, the Great Blue Wall may become not only a symbol of restoration, but the foundation of a new maritime compact linking three continents through one ocean.

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About Author

Kagushtan Ariaratnam is a multi-skilled security, defense, intelligence, and counterterrorism analyst with over 25 years of experience. He is also a former Tamil Tiger intelligence cadre who later became a double agent for the Sri Lankan military intelligence, a subject about which he has written extensively.