Africa gets its 2nd national carbon registry

From the newsletter

The Democratic Republic of Congo has launched the second national digital carbon registry in Africa to protect its forests. The registry uses satellite monitoring to track deforestation in the Congo Basin and a blockchain record to trace timber and other resources. This helps tackle illegal exploitation and supports compliance with sustainability standards.

• Launched at COP30 in Belém, the registry aims to protect Congo’s vast carbon stores, over 30 billion tonnes annually, after years of carbon uncertainty that has left millions of forest communities with little share of the upside. 

• Africa’s first registry was created by Ghana in 2022, followed by the first national REDD+ Registry, for forest-based projects only, in Kenya in July 2025.

More details

• DRC holds around 60% of the Congo Basin forest, the world’s second-largest rainforest and an important global climate regulator. It stretches across roughly 3.7 million square kilometres. Its peatlands alone store an estimated 30 billion tonnes of carbon, roughly equivalent to three years of global human-caused emissions. Yet the country has long struggled with transparency gaps and weak oversight in the voluntary carbon market, limiting the benefits local communities receive from conservation efforts.

• The new registry addresses these weaknesses and functions as a full monitoring system. Satellite imagery helps detect deforestation in real time, while blockchain tracking helps verify the origin of timber and other natural resources. This combination aims to deter illegal exploitation and strengthen compliance with global sustainability standards.

• The need for carbon integrity continues to grow in Africa. Ghana launched its national Carbon Registry in December 2022. The registry is a central digital system for tracking the full lifecycle of carbon credits, including issuance and transfer. Each credit receives a unique identification code to prevent double-counting and all activities undergo validation and independent verification. 

• Though mainly an administrative tool, the registry supports Ghana’s REDD+ efforts by directing carbon market finance to projects that reduce deforestation. It includes benefit-sharing mechanisms for forest communities and backs livelihood initiatives such as agroforestry in cocoa areas and large-scale reforestation on degraded reserves.

• In July 2025, Kenya launched Africa’s first REDD+ registry, a digital platform to verify and manage forest carbon projects. The registry was launched alongside the Kenya REDD+ Nesting Guidelines, which provide a framework and unified national system to integrate local communities and other partners in equitable finance sharing.

Our take

• Nature carbon registries solve two of the biggest challenges that have long slowed down forest protection and carbon finance on the continent: trust and equity.

• Carbon fraud has undermined Africa’s forests, with investigations showing brokers buying credits cheaply and reselling at triple the price, while communities see little benefit. 

• Flawed carbon projects have displaced Indigenous Peoples and restricted land access, with major controversies reported in East Africa.