Two announcements out of Nairobi — one from February, one from earlier this month — add up to the most important carbon market story on the continent this year. In February, Kenya switched on its National Carbon Registry, a sovereign digital ledger for every carbon project in the country. And on July 10, Carbon Pulse reported that Kenyan regulators are now working to launch a carbon credit exchange serving Kenya and the wider East African market within the next 12 months.
Registry first, exchange second. That is the correct order of operations — and it is exactly the infrastructure African carbon markets have been missing.
The registry: fixing the double-counting flaw
On February 17, 2026, Environment Cabinet Secretary Dr. Deborah Barasa and Principal Secretary Eng. Dr. Festus Ng'eno officially launched the Kenya National Carbon Registry (KNCR) in Nairobi, joined by the EU Ambassador to Kenya, Germany's head of cooperation, and Kenya's environmental regulator NEMA — which hosts and administers the platform as the country's Designated National Authority under the Paris Agreement.
The registry exists to fix a flaw that has dogged carbon markets everywhere: the risk that the same tonne of carbon gets claimed twice. As CS Barasa put it at the launch, the registry "addresses a long-standing challenge where a single ton of carbon could be claimed twice, undermining our credibility." From now on, every carbon project in Kenya must be registered, tracked, and authorized on one national platform — established under the Climate Change Act and the Climate Change (Carbon Markets) Regulations, 2024.
Why does that matter beyond Kenya's borders? Because double counting is precisely the kind of integrity problem that has kept carbon credit prices volatile and buyers cautious. For years, projects in Kenya — like everywhere in Africa — relied entirely on international standards such as Verra, Gold Standard, and Plan Vivo for their bookkeeping. A sovereign registry does not replace those standards; it adds a national layer of accounting that aligns every credit with Kenya's climate commitments and makes it visible to the state, the buyer, and the market at the same time.
The exchange: a regional marketplace by March 2027
The registry was the ledger. The next step is the marketplace. According to Carbon Pulse and Bloomberg, Kenya is working to launch a carbon credit exchange for the domestic and wider East African market within 12 months. Business Daily reports that the Nairobi International Financial Centre (NIFC), the Capital Markets Authority, and the Nairobi Securities Exchange have set end of March 2027 as the deadline to have the exchange operating.
The ambition is not small:
- ~$5 billion in investment by 2028 is the government's target for what the exchange and stronger trading rules can attract, according to NIFC chief executive Daniel Mainda.
- A regulated, transparent marketplace — bringing buyers, sellers, project developers, and investors onto one platform for price discovery, instead of today's opaque bilateral deals.
- Regional reach — the exchange is designed to serve East Africa, not just Kenya, positioning Nairobi as the continent's environmental-finance hub.
- Tax incentives already in law — NIFC-certified firms operating a carbon exchange pay a reduced 15% corporate rate for their first ten years.
- Carbon Credit Regulations in drafting — announced by Treasury CS John Mbadi in the June budget speech, to give formal legal footing to trading credits generated in Kenya and the region.
What this means for the rest of Africa
Our read, in four points:
- Infrastructure precedes investment. Buyers pay more for credits they can trust. A national registry plus a regulated exchange is how a market earns trust at scale — and Kenya is now one of only a handful of African countries with carbon market regulations in force at all.
- Price discovery lifts everyone. Today, most African credits are sold in private bilateral deals where the seller rarely knows the fair price. A visible exchange price for African credits becomes the reference point for every certified project on the continent, whether or not it lists there.
- The playbook is replicable. Registry under national law, NEMA-style national authority, then an exchange. Nigeria, Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire and others watching Nairobi now have a working template — and competitive pressure to follow it.
- Supply still has to come from somewhere. An exchange is plumbing, not product. The credits that flow through it must come from real projects — and durable removal credits, like those from converting agricultural residues into biochar, are exactly the high-integrity supply this new infrastructure is built to showcase.
The takeaway
Kenya spent 2024 writing the rules, 2026 switching on the ledger, and is now racing to open the marketplace by early 2027. For agro-processors and project developers across Africa, the signal is clear: the era of informal, unverifiable carbon deals is ending, and the infrastructure for a credible African carbon market is being built right now. The projects that will benefit most are the ones that are registered, certified, and generating verifiable removals when the exchange opens its doors — not the ones that start thinking about it afterwards.
Sources: Carbon Pulse (July 10, 2026), Kenya plans East African carbon exchange by 2027; Nation Media Group (February 26, 2026), Kenya just fixed major flaw in the carbon market — Here's how, by Wambui Mbuthia; NEMA Kenya (February 19, 2026), Kenya National Carbon Registry Launched; Business Daily Africa, Regulators plan to open Kenya's carbon exchange in early 2027; Bloomberg (July 10, 2026), Top East African Economy Kenya Plans Carbon Exchange by 2027. Illustrations are BIG's own.