The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) unveiled its National Digital Carbon Credit Registry Initiative at the COP30 climate summit in Belém, Brazil, in November 2025, marking a key moment in how African nations intend to manage and monetize their ecological wealth.
The move, spearheaded by its Ministry of Environment, Sustainable Development and the New Climate Economy, in collaboration with the Ministry of Digital Economy, M&M Greentech, and technology partner TRST01, signals a decisive shift toward establishing transparent, sovereign, and technology-driven governance over the country’s vast forest resources and carbon assets, firmly aligning its climate finance mechanisms with Article 6 of the Paris Agreement.
The urgency driving this initiative is rooted in the colossal environmental stake the DRC holds, particularly as the custodian of approximately 60% of the Congo Basin forest, the world’s second-largest rainforest. This ecosystem, spanning an area of roughly 3.7 million square kilometres across Central Africa, is a crucial global regulator.
Furthermore, the Congo Basin’s massive peatlands alone are estimated to store approximately 30 billion tones of carbon, a stock equivalent to roughly three years of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. For the DRC, protecting this planetary asset is inseparable from securing its own economic future, yet the country faces chronic hurdles in ensuring the integrity, transparency, and value retention of its carbon credits in the often-controversial voluntary market.
To counter these challenges, the registry is structured not as a simple digital ledger, but as a comprehensive digital ecosystem designed for verifiable impact. This infrastructure incorporates an AI-powered deforestation monitoring system utilizing satellite imagery and real-time analytics to safeguard the Congo Basin, alongside Blockchain-based traceability systems for timber and other natural resources to combat illegal exploitation and ensure compliance with international sustainability standards.
The Ministry of Digital Economy’s involvement underscores the commitment to data sovereignty, ensuring that all environmental data remains the property of the DRC, hosted securely within national infrastructure under regulator-controlled access. The technological architecture, provided by TRST01, employs a Web3 layer for cryptographic anchoring and decentralized verification, ensuring the immutability and transparency required to build trust among international buyers.
The development holds profound significance for African sustainability and finance at large. While the continent requires an estimated US$3 trillion to implement its climate action plans (Nationally Determined Contributions or NDCs), it currently generates only around 2% of its potential annual carbon credits. This immense financial gap exists despite experts predicting that Africa’s voluntary carbon market could reach a value of up to $1.5 trillion by 2050.
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By establishing a highly credible, nationally-controlled mechanism, the DRC is setting a new benchmark for asset integrity, demonstrating that it is ready to receive the high-integrity capital necessary to close this gap. This move effectively repositions carbon as a verifiable national asset rather than a fragmented, easily undervalued commodity managed primarily by external brokers.
Her Excellency Professor Dr. Marie Nyange Ndambo, the Minister of Environment, described the project as “a declaration of sovereignty and climate justice,” emphasizing that the platform ensures sustainable finance is based on measurable and verifiable impact. The initiative is set up as a Public–Private Partnership that mandates local capacity building, moving beyond the mere sale of credits to the establishment of an internal ecosystem capable of defining accreditation standards and project eligibility criteria.
This commitment to local control and verifiable standards is critical to ensuring that the revenue generated from Africa’s ecological service benefits communities on the ground and drives the continent’s green transition.
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