Ecosystem Restoration South Africa Project #75491

Build Africa's First Living Seawall in Cape Town

by Action Change (Formerly GVI Trust)

Summary

Help us build Africa's first Living Seawall! We're installing 100 habitat panels at Cape Town's V&A Waterfront, turning bare harbour concrete walls into a thriving vertical reef for indigenous marine life. Each $650 panel brings award-winning ocean restoration tech to one of Africa's most visited places, with scientists tracking every result. Join us and make ocean history! Let's put life back into our oceans and this will be the first wall in all of Africa, help us launch this special project

$60,000
total goal

$60,000
remaining

0
donors

0
monthly donors

7
months

Challenge

Coastal cities are covering their shorelines in concrete. Seawalls protect harbours, but their smooth surfaces give marine life nothing to hold onto. Natural rocky shores are full of cracks and pools where seaweeds, mussels and small fish shelter and breed. Cape Town's V&A Waterfront is lined with bare walls, right beside some of the richest Atlantic waters on Earth. We're transforming concert walls by installing award winning designed panels that enhance ocean and marine life habitats

Solution

Living Seawalls is an award-winning innovation that turns flat walls into rocky reef habitat. We're fixing 100 textured concrete panels to the V&A Waterfront walls in early 2027, creating a vertical reef for indigenous seaweeds, mussels and fish. Leading marine scientists will monitor the wall every three months and share results with the global Living Seawalls team. $650 builds a panel. $520 funds a year of research times this by 100 and we're got a real living new reef on the harbour wall

Long-Term Impact

Millions of visitors a year will watch a working harbour come alive with sea life at the V&A Waterfront. Filter feeders like mussels help clean the water, and new habitat strengthens the food web. Our monitoring will produce the first Living Seawall data from the South Atlantic, shared across South Africa and worldwide to inspire more walls along Africa's coast. One wall, 100 panels, a new future for Africa's coastal cities!