What Is the Africa Carbon Markets Initiative? The Coalition Targeting 300 Million Credits by 2030

The Africa Carbon Markets Initiative (ACMI) was launched at COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh in November 2022. It brought together African heads of state, development finance institutions, carbon market participants, and civil society with an explicit aim: to grow Africa's share of global voluntary carbon markets from under 10% to a level commensurate with the continent's potential as a carbon sink and emissions reduction opportunity.

What ACMI Is

ACMI is a multi-stakeholder coalition rather than a regulatory body or crediting programme. It is co-convened by the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet (GEAPP), Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL), and the Carbon Markets Taskforce — a group of voluntary carbon market participants coordinating on Africa-focused supply development.

The initiative operates through a combination of political endorsement, market facilitation, and targeted development finance. It does not issue carbon credits, validate projects, or set methodology standards. Its role is to create the enabling conditions — political, financial, and technical — for voluntary carbon markets to function at scale in African jurisdictions.

The Targets

ACMI published a roadmap at COP27 containing three headline targets.

These figures are aspirational and have been subject to significant scrutiny. The 2030 target would require African credit issuance to grow by an order of magnitude from current levels. Critics have noted that achieving it depends on a functioning global demand market, robust host-country authorisation frameworks, and the resolution of ongoing integrity questions in the VCM — none of which are guaranteed.

Country Participation

At launch, ACMI received political endorsements from the governments of Kenya, Gabon, Nigeria, Togo, and other African nations. Several of these countries have since developed or are developing national carbon market frameworks, including domestic carbon credit registries, Article 6 bilateral cooperation agreements, and DNA (Designated National Authority) capacity building programmes.

Progress and Criticism

The voluntary carbon market contracted significantly in 2023 and 2024, driven by negative press coverage of high-profile REDD+ investigations and growing buyer scrutiny. This created headwinds for ACMI's targets, and the initiative has acknowledged that the 2030 trajectory requires market conditions to stabilise and improve.

Civil society groups have raised concerns about ACMI's emphasis on market-led carbon development without sufficient attention to community rights, benefit-sharing structures, and the risk of carbon colonialism — the concentration of carbon revenues among international intermediaries at the expense of African landholders and communities. ACMI has engaged with these concerns in subsequent publications and has aligned itself with ICVCM and VCMI integrity frameworks.