ABA Editorial · Feb 26, 2026 · 14 min read
The African Carbon Markets Initiative (ACMI) launched with ambitions to scale African carbon credit issuance substantially by 2030, targeting 300 million credits annually and USD 6 billion in revenue. Voluntary carbon markets have faced credibility challenges. Platforms including Acorn work with smallholder farmers on agroforestry-based credits. This report maps the African carbon market landscape.
African carbon markets are at an inflection point. The structural case for African carbon credit generation is strong: the continent has vast potential for nature-based sequestration (forests, agroforestry, soil carbon, blue carbon in mangroves and wetlands), emerging renewable energy displacement of fossil fuels, and energy-efficient cooking interventions that reduce biomass combustion. The African Carbon Markets Initiative (ACMI), launched at COP27 in November 2022, set ambitious targets for scaling African carbon credit issuance, targeting 300 million carbon credits produced annually by 2030 and potentially generating USD 6 billion in revenue while supporting 30 million jobs. At the same time, voluntary carbon markets globally have faced significant credibility challenges over the last two years, with investigative journalism and academic research questioning the additionality, permanence, and verification of many credits previously sold as high-quality. This report maps the African carbon market landscape, the operators active in it, and the questions about its credibility and scaling.
The African Carbon Markets Initiative (ACMI) was launched at COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh in November 2022, supported by a coalition of African leaders, development finance institutions, and commercial partners. ACMI's stated targets were ambitious: 300 million high-integrity carbon credits produced annually by 2030, rising to 1.5 billion annually by 2050, generating up to USD 6 billion in revenue by 2030 and USD 120 billion by 2050, and supporting 30 million jobs by 2030 and 110 million by 2050. The initiative was positioned as a framework for unlocking African carbon credit supply at scale while maintaining environmental integrity.
The practical progress toward these targets has been slower than the original ACMI announcement implied. Carbon credit issuance from African projects has grown but remains far below the volume that the 2030 targets would require. Several African countries have developed national carbon market regulatory frameworks, but the implementation has been uneven. The global voluntary carbon market downturn of 2023 and 2024 affected demand for credits generally, which reduced the commercial pull that might have supported faster African issuance growth.
Voluntary carbon markets globally faced a serious credibility crisis beginning in 2023 and extending through 2024 and into 2025. Investigative journalism (notably a major investigation by The Guardian and Die Zeit) and academic research raised serious questions about specific categories of carbon credits, particularly forest-protection credits and other nature-based projects, with findings suggesting that many credits previously considered high-quality did not represent additional emission reductions relative to what would have happened without the project. Rating agencies including BeZero, Sylvera, and others began downgrading specific projects and project types.
The impact on African projects has been mixed. African forest-protection projects faced the same scrutiny as projects elsewhere, and some were downgraded or retired from active sale. At the same time, African project developers and ACMI advocates argued that well-designed African projects with strong community involvement and rigorous monitoring could continue to deliver credible emission reductions even as the broader category faced questions. The outcome depends on how buyers respond: if they continue to purchase credits from rigorously verified African projects at acceptable prices, the continental carbon market can grow; if they retreat from the category entirely, growth stalls.
Among the most distinctive African carbon market operators is Acorn, the agroforestry-focused platform supported by Rabobank that works with smallholder farmers across multiple African countries. Acorn supports farmers to adopt agroforestry practices (planting trees alongside crops) and generates certified carbon removal units from the resulting biomass sequestration. The units are sold on voluntary carbon markets, and a portion of the revenue flows back to participating farmers.
The Acorn model addresses several specific credibility concerns. It emphasizes additionality by working with smallholder farmers who would not otherwise plant trees without the carbon payment. It emphasizes permanence through long-term relationships with participating farmers and monitoring of tree survival. It emphasizes verification through third-party certification processes. And it emphasizes benefit sharing by returning revenue to farmers rather than concentrating value capture at the project developer level.
Lenders including Rabobank have used data from the Acorn platform to support primary production finance decisions, treating the carbon revenue stream as an additional income source for smallholder borrowers that can be considered in credit risk assessment. This integration of carbon finance with commercial lending is one of the most interesting recent developments in African climate finance.
Clean cookstoves represent another potential source of African carbon credits. Approximately 900 million Africans lack access to clean cooking, relying on wood, charcoal, kerosene, or other traditional fuels that produce both indoor air pollution and carbon emissions. Clean cookstove projects generate carbon credits by measuring the emissions avoided when households switch from traditional fuels to cleaner alternatives (LPG, electric, or improved biomass stoves). Several African companies have built clean cookstove businesses that combine direct sales with carbon credit revenue, using the credit stream to subsidize the cost of stoves for low-income households.
The clean cookstove category faced the same credibility scrutiny as other voluntary carbon categories, with specific concerns about how emissions reductions were calculated and verified. The category has since developed more rigorous methodologies that aim to address these concerns, but buyer confidence remains uneven.
Three indicators will shape African carbon markets. First, whether voluntary carbon market prices recover from their 2023 to 2024 downturn, creating the commercial pull that would support expanded African issuance. Second, whether specific African projects and platforms (Acorn, clean cookstove operators, forest projects in Kenya, Madagascar, and elsewhere) achieve the credibility standards that skeptical buyers require. Third, whether Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, which governs international carbon trading between countries, produces operational mechanisms that African countries can use to access compliance carbon market demand from Europe, Asia, or elsewhere. African carbon markets remain the most ambitious and the most uncertain category of African climate finance, and the outcomes over the next two years will shape whether ACMI's 2030 targets become realistic or aspirational.