Environment? It's a desert, you can hardly break it worse than it already is. Also, it's Africa. Concern for the environment is a luxury for rich countries where the people already have a good quality of life and can put more effort into secondary effects like pollution/etc. Ultimately, humans are more important than the environment so where you can give a big boost to the former at a moderate cost to the latter, it can be a worthwhile trade-off.

"Concern for the environment is a luxury for rich countries" because they have methods in place to deal with pollution. In agricultural societies it's not a luxury, but a necessity. Polluting the ground and water has very direct negative health impact, because people can't filter the water or use measures against ground pollution.

The African continent has deserts as well as millions of acres fertile land.

As with all ecosystems, deserts change over time. The fossil record shows, for example, that the Sahara desert once sustained aquatic animals and lush vegetation not present today.

It is environmentally prudent to avoid polluting all ecosystems whatever their appearance. Doing so ensures the longevity and continuation of all life on this planet, including that of humans.

EDIT: punctuation.

Try holding your breath while you count your money, and see how long it takes you to start appreciating negative externalities.

Looks like mostly not-desert to me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Ethiopia#/media/F...

Agree completely. My point was value-free. It simply makes a staggering difference in how much can get done in how short a time. By the way, the desert is an incredibly rich, complex ecosystem, no matter how bare it looks on the surface