Kenya, together with Singapore and the United Kingdom, launched a government-led Coalition to Grow Carbon Markets that on 24 June 2025 set out shared principles for the voluntary use of high-integrity carbon credits; the Coalition’s Shared Principles were presented again at the COP30 Business and Finance Forum in early November 2025 in Brazil to provide a single, government-backed framework intended to restore trust in voluntary markets and to mobilize private finance for climate projects, by aligning government policy, business purchase behavior and market infrastructure the initiative aims to make high-quality carbon credits a credible complement to corporate emissions reductions.
The document that anchors this effort is explicit about purpose and practice: companies must place emissions reductions first, use credits only in addition to deep decarbonization, retire credits that meet rigorous environmental and social safeguards, assure fair pricing and benefit sharing, report transparently, and make claims that are verifiable. Those six pillars form the spine of a ruleset designed to end the fragmentation that has dogged voluntary carbon markets and to create predictable demand signals for supply-side actors, many of them in Africa, that supply nature-based and technology-based mitigation.
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For Africa, and Kenya in particular, the Coalition’s timing and content are consequential. The continent hosts a disproportionate share of the natural capital assets that generate high-quality nature-based credits, forests, peatlands, savannas and restoration pathways, as well as growing pipelines of clean energy and methane-abatement projects.
Kenya has already signaled its role as co-chair and supply-side leader, and the clear government endorsement of shared principles could reduce perceived risk for international buyers and financiers. That reduction in perceived risk matters: banks and institutional investors routinely price policy uncertainty into financing costs, and clearer government recognition of credits and reporting protocols can lower the cost of capital for projects such as large-scale reforestation, cookstove programs and e-mobility fleets.
The financial stakes are large; The Coalition and its partners point to an enormous opportunity: if voluntary carbon markets scale with integrity, they could channel tens to hundreds of billions of dollars into climate solutions; one estimate cited with the Coalition envisages market growth on the order of USD 250 billion by 2050. That scale would materially alter the financing landscape for African mitigation projects, providing non-debt capital for interventions that deliver emissions reductions and social co-benefits.
At the same time, the Coalition underlines that credits must reflect “fair value” and equitable benefit-sharing so that host communities capture a meaningful return from projects on their land.
In Kenya, where electric two and three wheelers are being piloted in urban centers, carbon revenue can improve project bankability by topping up cashflows until domestic demand for low-carbon mobility reaches scale. Clean cooking programs, long championed for their health and gender dividends, often struggle to attract commercial finance; a consistent, verifiable flow of credits at market prices tied to measurable emissions reductions could underwrite wider distribution of improved stoves and scalable fuel supply chains.
For nature restoration, the ability to sell credits that meet international integrity thresholds increases the likelihood that protected-area and community-led reforestation initiatives will receive sustained financing rather than one-off grants.
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However, the pathway to that outcome has strict guardrails. The Shared Principles make clear that voluntary credit use should not be a license to delay emissions cuts or to claim reductions already accounted for elsewhere; they stress the need for transparent reporting, independent verification and, where relevant, host-country authorizations to avoid double counting. Those conditions respond directly to criticisms that have plagued voluntary markets, questions of additionality, permanence and social safeguards, and they oblige buyers to demonstrate that credits are not substituting for ambitious in-country decarbonization.
The institutional architecture the Coalition proposes is as important as its rules. By aligning government guidance, standard-setters and registries, the Coalition aims to reduce transaction costs and make cross-border investment simpler. For African governments, that alignment represents a new lever: policy recognition of high-integrity credits could be paired with incentives, tax treatment, matching funds, or streamlined permit processes, that attract long-term private capital into climate projects.
Several pan-African institutions and initiatives are already in the Coalition’s orbit, including the Africa Carbon Markets Initiative and the African Development Bank, and their participation will be critical to translate principles into national policy and project pipelines.
Price formation for high-integrity credits, mechanisms to ensure equitable community benefits, and the practicalities of integrating voluntary credits with Article 6 carbon transaction architecture will require sustained negotiation. But the Coalition’s plan of action, which calls for policy implementation, demand aggregation and interoperable infrastructure, offers a road map. For African project developers, the immediate task is technical: to bring forward projects with robust baselines, credible monitoring and clear social safeguards so they can compete in a market that will increasingly value integrity over volume.
This initiative reframes Africa’s role. No longer merely a host of conservation projects, the continent can be a generator of bankable climate solutions if the principles now being endorsed convert into predictable demand, fair pricing and accessible financing. For Kenya and its neighbors, the proof will be in the numbers: the volume and price of credits transacted, the share of revenues retained locally, and the extent to which private finance displaces grants and debt in funding climate action. The Coalition gives Africa a framework; turning that framework into measurable flows and local prosperity will be the test in the years ahead.
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