Carbon Offsetting: Top 5 Countries in Africa
In this blog, we discuss the countries that have the most carbon offsetting activity across Africa.
Based on data from the last decade, African projects have retired over 63 million voluntary carbon credits. Of those credits, more than half were retired by Forestry and Land Use projects.
Another way to gauge the level of activity across a market is to look at how many individual transactions have taken place. The countries with the most offsetting transactions are:
- Kenya: 10,163 transactions
- Democratic Republic of Congo: 6,021 transactions
- Zimbabwe: 5,613 transactions
- Madagascar: 3,815 transactions
- Zambia: 3,101 transactions
These five countries have in total retired 37+ million tCO2e from 2011 to 2021.
They also host 296 of all projects within the continent, 138 of which are currently active. Additionally, the top three projects within the continent take place within Zimbabwe and Kenya.
The Kariba REDD+ Project of Zimbabwe has retired a total of 14,112,505 credits in just the last decade. This project focuses on protecting 785,000 hectares of forests and wildlife by focusing on community impact. They’re looking to accomplish the following goals: reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in the project area, ensure sustained availability of wood supply for domestic use to the local population while providing alternatives to wood harvested from natural forests, provide new sources of revenue, improve social, educational, and health related services, improve natural resource management, serve floral and faunal biodiversity, and ensure major benefits are sustained beyond the lifetime of the project.
The Kasigau Corridor REDD+ Project — Phase II The Community Branches of Kenya retired a total of 4,806,323 credits. This project focuses on protecting 500,000 acres of endangered Kenyan forest and wildlife. They’re aiming to achieve the following goals: avoid deforestation within the project boundary, provide new sources of revenue, and provide alternatives to subsistence agriculture to avoid leakage.
Lastly, the Sustainable Deployment of the LifeStraw Family in rural Kenya retired a total of 4,392,105 credits. This project provides clean and safe drinking water to over four million rural Kenyans via a special microbiological filter. The filter increases the supply of safe water and decreases the demand for electricity and firewood as water treatment. It is verified to be accomplishing the following three SDGs: 3. Good health and well-being, 13. Climate action, and 15. Life on land.
For more information, please visit our data visualization tool here or email us at carbon@alliedcrowds.com.
