Ditebogo Lebea, Implementation Manager for Article 6 Connect at GIZ, highlights Africa’s opportunity to build carbon markets with high-integrity, ownership and sustainable development outcomes. The project supports Ethiopia, South Africa and their regions in operationalising Article 6 of the Paris Agreement through strategies, regulations, registries and project pipelines. Key lessons include the need for strong institutions, technical expertise and piloting practical cases to identify and address bottlenecks. A6C emphasises institutional capacity, regional cooperation and knowledge exchange to ensure sustainability.
Carbon markets must deliver both environmental integrity and socio-economic benefits, with frameworks, safeguard standards and benefit-sharing guidelines ensuring alignment with national climate and sustainable development goals. African countries are encouraged to move from being a supplier of credits to shaping the global carbon market, bringing perspectives on sustainable development. Platforms like the Carbon Markets Africa Summit in Rwanda provide vital opportunities for collaboration, showcasing African leadership and fostering credible, investable markets.
Hello. My name is Ditebogo Lebea and I am responsible for the implementation of the Article 6 Connect: Sustainable Development through Carbon Markets in Africa global project in South Africa which is implemented by GIZ. The project is commissioned by the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development and supports African partner countries (namely Ethiopia and South Africa) and their respective regions to establish and operationalise high-integrity carbon markets in line with Article 6 of the Paris Agreement.
My work involves coordinating technical, policy and capacity building support to government institutions to strengthen institutional capacity and support to put in place some of the practical building blocks that countries need to operationalise Article 6. This ranges from strategies, regulations and standard operating procedures to registries, methodologies and the development of project pipelines. To do this, we work with a range of stakeholders across the carbon market value chain.
What I find particularly exciting is that this is not just about carbon markets. It’s about ensuring that international carbon market participation can contribute to countries’ broader climate, economic and sustainable development objectives. As GIZ, and as a project, we pride ourselves on doing our part to building a future worth living.
One of the biggest lessons for me is that Article 6 readiness requires several pieces to come together. It is not enough to have a policy or strategy on paper. Countries also need the right institutions, technical expertise, systems, processes and private-sector capacity to actually implement Article 6 effectively.
Another important lesson is that countries learn much faster when they are able to work through practical cases rather than only through theory. Piloting gives us an opportunity to identify where the real bottlenecks are (whether those are institutional, technical or procedural) and address them before we move to scale.
This is also where the link between Article 6 readiness and real mitigation activities becomes important. For example, programmes such as the Cooling Programme for Southern Africa (CooPSA), which is implemented by GIZ in Southern Africa, demonstrates how practical sectoral interventions can contribute to emission reductions while addressing development needs. As countries develop their Article 6 systems, there is an opportunity to consider how interventions like these could be supported and, where appropriate, scaled through carbon finance.
The biggest contribution of the support we provide as GIZ is helping countries move from readiness to implementation; from “we understand Article 6” to “we are confident of how Article 6 will actually be implemented in our national context and that we can benefit from it”.
A key principle of our work is that capacity needs to sit within African institutions and be owned by them. Working on behalf of the German Government, we aim to build lasting and sustainable capacity that continues beyond the life of the project. That means working directly with government counterparts, providing technical assistance, supporting institutional processes, and developing practical tools such as Article 6 strategies, standard operating procedures (SOPs) and registry systems.
We also place a lot of emphasis on knowledge exchange both between government institutions within a country and between countries. There is tremendous value in African countries learning from one another because, while every national context is different, many of the challenges around Article 6 are shared. Regional initiatives like the Southern Africa Alliance on Carbon Markets and Climate Finance give countries a space to share experiences and learn from one another. These platforms are valuable because countries can learn together while still developing approaches that work for their own national contexts.
Ultimately, the objective is institutional ownership: countries should have the people, systems and processes to manage Article 6 themselves over the long term.
We should not see environmental integrity and socio-economic development as two competing objectives. A well-designed carbon market intervention should be able to deliver both. For GIZ, this starts with ensuring that activities are aligned with national priorities and that environmental integrity is protected. But we also need to ask: What does this project mean for communities? What economic opportunities does it create? Who participates, who benefits and how are those benefits distributed? That is why strong national governance is so important. Countries need processes that allow them to assess proposed activities not only in terms of the tonnes of emissions reduced, but also in terms of their contribution to sustainable development.
Through Article 6 Connect, we support countries in developing an Article 6 framework, legislation and regulation, including safeguard standards and benefit-sharing guidelines on behalf of the German Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development. We also support the development of SOPs, which explain how these frameworks are implemented in practice.
The objective should not simply be to generate the largest number of credits. It should be to develop a pipeline of high-integrity activities that also deliver meaningful development outcomes for people, their communities and their environment.
I believe that regional cooperation is one of Africa’s biggest opportunities. We are already seeing the value of regional initiatives such as the West African, Eastern Africa and Southern Africa Alliances on Carbon Markets and Climate Finance, because countries are recognising the value of regional exchange, learning and collaboration. This can help countries learn from one another, build capacity and strengthen their ability to benefit from carbon markets while gaining access to climate finance.
There are many areas where countries can benefit from greater cooperation, whether that is through sharing knowledge and experiences, developing tools and guidance, strengthening capacity or learning from different approaches to project assessment and market development. At the same time, cooperation does not mean that every country needs to have the same system. National circumstances, climate priorities and institutional arrangements remain important, and countries need to retain flexibility and sovereignty to develop systems that respond to their own needs.
The opportunity is therefore less about creating one common system for the continent and more about developing systems and approaches that can learn from one another, share knowledge and experience, and reduce unnecessary duplication where appropriate. If Africa can strengthen this kind of regional cooperation, it can improve the continent’s collective capacity and position when engaging with international buyers, investors and development partners, while allowing countries to pursue approaches that reflect their own national circumstances.
I would really like to see Africa move from being primarily a potential supplier of carbon credits to being an active shaper of global carbon market rules and norms. Africa has a very important perspective to bring to the Article 6 conversation. We are dealing with significant development needs, but we are also highly vulnerable to climate change and have enormous potential for mitigation, including through nature-based solutions. This gives African countries an important perspective on what an effective, equitable and development-oriented carbon market should look like.
Over the next five years, I would like to see more African countries participating confidently in international negotiations and technical discussions, sharing evidence from implementation and influencing how issues such as environmental integrity, corresponding adjustments, benefit-sharing and sustainable development are approached. I would also like to see principles such as the African Principles for Integrity and Equity on Carbon Markets increasingly inform how carbon market activities are designed and implemented on the continent.
There is also an opportunity for Africa to demonstrate what innovative and sustainable carbon market interventions can look like in practice. Some of the projects and approaches being developed in Africa could provide examples of how carbon finance can support broader sectoral transitions and potentially offer lessons for other regions facing similar challenges.
Ultimately, African countries should not only be asking, “How do we participate in the global carbon market?” They should also be asking, “What should a fair, effective and development-oriented global carbon market look like, and what role can Africa play in shaping it?”
Our message is really about moving from ambition to implementation. Africa has enormous potential and a role in driving credible carbon markets. We need strong institutions, clear governance frameworks, technical capacity, credible project pipelines and, most importantly, confidence in the integrity of the market.
As a knowledge partner, GIZ wants to contribute practical experience from the work we’re doing with governments and partners across all our various projects, while also learning from what others across the continent are doing. For us, the summit is an opportunity to ask a very practical question: How do we build African carbon markets that are credible, investable and deliver real climate and development outcomes?
Platforms that create space for exchange are important because carbon markets do not develop in isolation. They require governments, project developers, investors, buyers, technical experts and development partners to engage with one another and share perspectives. CMAS is one of these platforms, along with the upcoming COPs (particularly COP32 that is taking place on the African continent in Addis Ababa next year) as well as the Africa Climate Summits. These platforms, specifically where there is a dedicated focus on carbon markets, create an opportunity for policy discussions to connect with developments and realities in the market, while also providing space for African stakeholders to contribute to and shape discussions around the future of carbon markets on the continent.
The networking element is an incredibly valuable opportunity. Sometimes the missing piece isn’t another report or another workshop, it is about getting the right people in the room to identify partnerships, solve challenges or move opportunities forward.
CMAS taking place in Rwanda provides an opportunity to have this conversation from an African perspective and within an African market context. Rwanda has also made considerable progress in building its readiness for carbon markets, particularly in relation to government frameworks and its approach to Article 6.2. It is therefore useful to look at Rwanda as an example of a country that is moving towards early transaction implementation, while still developing its market.
The location also reinforces the idea that carbon markets are not simply something being designed for Africa from outside the continent. There is growing African leadership, innovation and institutional experience that deserves to be showcased. Rwanda can provide both a practical example and inspiration for other countries that are on a similar journey, without suggesting that there is a single model for developing carbon markets in Africa.
Bringing the summit to Rwanda also creates an opportunity to connect East African perspectives with those from Southern, West and Central Africa. That regional exchange is important because Africa’s carbon market story should not be fragmented into individual countries. We need to increasingly think about the continent as a network of markets, institutions and expertise, while recognising that countries are at different stages of readiness and market development.
We need to move beyond seeing women simply as beneficiaries of climate projects but as valuable contributors to the design and delivery of climate projects. Women need to be participants, decision-makers and leaders in the carbon market itself. That starts at the policy level: women need to be represented in the institutions developing Article 6 frameworks, in technical working groups, in negotiations and in leadership positions. It also needs to extend to the project level: women should have meaningful opportunities to participate in project development, entrepreneurship, finance and the wider carbon-market value chain.
We also need to think carefully about benefit-sharing. A benefit-sharing mechanism may look equitable on paper but still fail to reach women if it doesn’t consider differences in access to land, finance, information or decision-making. For me, gender-responsive Article 6 implementation means imbedding gender considerations into the system from the beginning rather than adding them at the end. Ultimately, we should be aiming for a situation where women are not just saying, “this carbon market benefits us”, they are also able to say, “we helped design it, we lead it and we are shaping where it goes.”
Africa has a very significant opportunity to benefit from Article 6, but we need to approach that opportunity strategically. The question should not simply be, “how many credits Africa can generate,” it should be, “how do we build carbon markets with environmental integrity, strong African ownership and meaningful sustainable development outcomes?” We have an opportunity now to put the right foundations in place and if we do that well, Africa can move from being a participant in global carbon markets to being one of the voices shaping their future. And that is exactly the conversation we should be having at CMAS.
Africa's Green Economy Summit connects industry professionals and organisations to information and each other in a carefully curated live environment. Its purpose is to support in mobilising investments for green projects to scale up and industrialisation, which will have a significant impact on environmental sustainability and economic growth.
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