In sub-Saharan Africa, approximately half the population depends on primary agriculture for its livelihood. Smallholders are central to the potential for deploying regenerative practices, but it is not demonstrated that hundreds of millions already apply them or that they systematically reduce chemical inputs. Under an assumption of 50% adoption of regenerative practices, the soil carbon stock in sub-Saharan Africa could increase by 4.4 GtCO2e by 2040; this figure is not an estimate of income.
The Essentials
- African regenerative agriculture could sequester 4.4 GtCO2e by 2040, nearly ten times South Africa’s annual emissions (AgroCentric / Sasakawa Africa Association, 2026).
- Smallholder farmers produce 80% of African food, but carbon market certification requirements favor formal operations and exporters.
- The European CBAM, effective since January 2026, intensifies pressure on export supply chains and reinforces capture by certified intermediaries.
- Cooperatives and public programs are building direct-access mechanisms, but remain embryonic compared to the current market architecture.
- African agricultural carbon rent could generate $150 per household per year; the question of how this income is distributed remains open for the next decade.
80% of African Food Comes from People Who Have No Carbon Contract
African agriculture rests on small farms. Less than two hectares on average, no tractor, sometimes no land title. Yet these peasants produce most of what the continent eats. According to IFAD data, 80% of African food comes from these small family units scattered across millions of plots.
The practices of these farmers store carbon in soils and biomass. Agroforestry, cover crops, reduced tillage, and legume rotation are techniques often inherited or adapted. These methods are not new. The market now assigns them a financial value.
The distribution of this value among actors in the chain is not established. Voluntary carbon markets operate on certification, measurement, third-party verification. These steps are costly, require accounting, traceability, and secure land tenure. A farmer growing maize interspersed with acacias may struggle to meet these requirements. He sequesters carbon.
He does not monetize it.
Regenerative Agriculture Advances, African Soils Respond
The movement is real. The Sasakawa Africa Association documents the diffusion of regenerative practices in sub-Saharan Africa. Direct seeding, agroforestry, integrated soil fertility management: these approaches reduce erosion, improve water retention, and increase yields on degraded soils.
African soils respond particularly well. Largely depleted by decades of monoculture and deforestation, they have high sequestration capacity precisely because they have lost much of their organic carbon. The estimate of 4.4 GtCO2e by 2040 is attributable to the 2021 IUCN/Vivid Economics report, under the assumption that 50% of cultivated land in sub-Saharan Africa adopts regenerative practices.
This potential is considerable. For comparison, South Africa, the continent’s leading emitter, emits about 460 million tons of CO2 per year. The carbon potential of African regenerative agriculture thus represents, over fifteen years, almost ten times this volume. In the context of global climate commitments, this is a strategic asset.
However, we should note the limitation of any model of this type: the figure aggregates dispersed potentials, measured under variable conditions, for practices whose permanence is never guaranteed. It should be read as a credible order of magnitude, not as an accounting promise. The debate on the real sustainability of carbon storage in agricultural contexts is far from settled: what soils absorb, climate disruptions or changes in practices can release again.
Carbon Certification, a Filter That Excludes the Smallest
Voluntary carbon markets rest on documentation requirements. Verra Standards, Gold Standard, Plan Vivo: each demands baseline measures, monitoring protocols, periodic audits. The transaction cost of an agricultural carbon project can be an obstacle for a village cooperative before the first saleable ton.
Agricultural carbon projects in Africa are carried by aggregators, notably specialized companies, NGOs, and agricultural traders. These intermediaries can ensure certification and resale of carbon credits. The distribution of payments between producers and final buyers varies by project.
This is precisely the dynamic that difficult access for small farmers to regenerative agriculture documents: technical innovation can diffuse without the economic value following. Practices change. The accounting remains elsewhere.
The European CBAM Adds Another Layer to Capture
The European Union’s carbon border adjustment mechanism entered into force in January 2026. Its principle: importers of certain products—steel, aluminum, cement, fertilizers, electricity, and progressively other sectors—must pay a duty corresponding to the carbon price they did not pay at production. The objective is to prevent European decarbonization efforts from being negated by carbon-intensive imports.
The CBAM does not target common agricultural exports such as coffee, cocoa, flowers, fruits, and vegetables. Coffee and cocoa are, however, covered by the EUDR, whose requirements concern the absence of deforestation and geographic traceability. For products covered by the EUDR, operators must demonstrate the absence of deforestation and legal compliance; they are not required to demonstrate a low carbon footprint under the CBAM.
Regulatory requirements may necessitate teams, systems, and relationships with certifiers. No mechanical effect of the CBAM on aggregators in non-covered agricultural supply chains is established.
It would be inaccurate to present the CBAM as a policy designed to extract African value. Its climate objective is legitimate, and its proponents work on support mechanisms. The CBAM imposes administrative obligations on importers in covered sectors; its distributive effects on poorly formalized actors must be demonstrated empirically and do not directly affect non-covered agricultural supply chains. This is a design problem, not an intention problem.
Cooperatives Attempting to Capture Rent at the Source
The story does not end at identifying capture. Actors are actively seeking to build alternative architectures, and some are making progress.
In Kenya, the Treedom platform aggregates thousands of small farmers under a simplified carbon registry, paying them directly for each tree planted and maintained. In Ethiopia, the Humbo program, certified Gold Standard through the World Bank, distributed carbon revenues to rural communities through collective certification at the territorial level rather than for individual plots. In Zambia, direct-seeding cooperatives negotiated collectively with aggregators, obtaining reference prices above market rates thanks to their combined volume.
These models share a simple idea: collective certification reduces the unit cost per farmer and restores some negotiating leverage. A cooperative of 5,000 members can finance an audit that would be inaccessible to each member individually. It can also contract directly with carbon credit buyers, short-circuiting an intermediation layer.
The chronic undercapitalization of biodiversity and agricultural carbon instruments constitutes a structural obstacle. Current experiments show that this obstacle is as organizational as it is financial, and that solutions exist.
Two Trajectories for African Carbon Rent by 2035
The architecture of the African agricultural carbon market is not fixed. It is being built now, shaped by the decisions made by states, donors, international standards, and peasant organizations. Two coherent trajectories are emerging for the 2030-2040 horizon.
In the first, African agricultural carbon markets could remain structured around private aggregators and formal exporters. Certification standards could remain costly and complex. Payments to smallholders and their negotiating capacity vary by project. The distribution of value associated with the 4.4 GtCO2e potential between farms and other actors is not established. The effects of regenerative practices on yields and their carbon compensation depend on the practices, sites, and implementation conditions.
In this scenario, the additional income potentially reaching $150 per household per year remains a projection.
In the second trajectory, carbon standards adapted to small farms emerge, notably driven by African states. Cooperatives gain strength as collective certification intermediaries. African governments condition access to their national carbon registries on mechanisms for sharing revenues with base producers. Carbon credit buyers—European and American companies seeking to offset emissions—accept a traceability premium for peasant-certified projects. In this trajectory, part of the carbon potential could be transformed into direct income for farmers.
These two scenarios do not entirely exclude one another. The most likely outcome is an intermediate situation: a few countries and a few supply chains build inclusive mechanisms, while the rest of the market remains dominated by aggregation logic. The extent of rent-sharing will depend notably on the governance of certification standards and the capacity of peasant organizations to participate in their design.
A signal to watch: the evolution of European rules applicable to African agricultural supply chains. The CBAM does not apply to common agricultural supply chains.
A second signal: the evolution of prices on voluntary carbon markets. A certified agricultural carbon credit currently trades between $5 and $15 per ton depending on standards. If this price rises significantly, driven by increased corporate demand linked to net-zero commitments, the profitability of cooperative models for collective certification improves, making these architectures more attractive to investors and donors.
Whoever Builds the Rules Decides Who Wins
The real variable is not agronomic. Regenerative practices are known, they work on African soils, they are diffusing. The variable is institutional.
Several major standards are administered from Europe or North America, but carbon standards are not all written solely from Geneva, London, or Washington. CBAM rules are negotiated in Brussels. The representation of African peasant cooperatives in these processes varies by organization. The effects of rules on actors with limited administrative capacity must be established empirically.
Correcting this requires several things simultaneously. Streamlined standards for collective peasant projects, with accepted proxy measurement methods. Public funds to finance the first years of certification, the entry ticket that blocks cooperatives today. Governance mechanisms that give African peasant organizations a seat at the table where rules are defined. And a willingness from European carbon credit buyers to accept certifications adapted to smallholdings rather than demanding the same standards as for large operations.
None of these levers is inaccessible. Some are already being engaged. The FAO and UNDP SCALA program, operational in about ten African countries, works precisely on adapting payment mechanisms for environmental services to smallholdings. IFAD finances collective certification experiments in East Africa. A few African states, Ghana, Kenya, are building national carbon registries with mandatory revenue-sharing mechanisms.
These initiatives could move beyond pilot stages and become the reference architecture depending on political choices made now, at the moment when the African agricultural carbon market is taking shape. The rules of this market are still being negotiated.
Sources
- AgroCentric / Sasakawa Africa Association, “Regenerative Agriculture: Top Trends Shaping Africa in 2026”: https://agrocentric.com/2026/04/09/regenerative-agriculture-top-trends-shaping-africa-in-2026/
- IFAD, Data on small agricultural producers in Africa: https://www.ifad.org/en/smallholders
- European Commission, Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), entered into force January 2026: https://taxation-customs.ec.europa.eu/carbon-border-adjustment-mechanism_en
- IUCN, “Regenerative Agriculture in Africa”, 2021
- FAO / UNDP, SCALA Program (Scaling up Climate Ambition on Land Use and Agriculture)
- World Bank, Humbo Project (Ethiopia), Gold Standard carbon certification
