This landmark event will bring together key stakeholders, industry pioneers, and policymakers to explore bold ideas and forge lasting partnerships that drive sustainable climate action. With Africa emerging as a crucial player in global carbon markets, the forum will focus on integrity, innovation, and impact, fostering discussions on how East Africa can harness its potential in the voluntary carbon market.

But what is this phenomenon really? And how where does Africa as a continent come in?

According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), carbon markets are carbon pricing mechanisms enabling governments and non-state actors to trade greenhouse gas emission credits. The aims is to achieve climate targets and implement climate actions cost effectively. These can either be voluntary -- where a participant is are under no formal obligation to achieve a specific target or compliance -- where a country or region is responding to an obligation established by a regulatory body.

In other words, countries such as Uganda and most other African nations who have successfully met their own emissions reduction targets can sell their extra reduction credits to industrialised countries in order to finance enhanced climate action.

For instance, if one country cannot stop emitting CO2, it can ask another country to emit less so that, even as the first carries on producing CO2 the total amount of carbon in the atmosphere is reduced. That is how carbon credits work. 

In Uganda currently, some entreprenuers are persuading local farmers to abstain from clearing their forests in return for selling carbon credits from their land. This has saved both forest cover and prevented more than 10 million tonnes of CO2 escaping into the atmosphere. That is where the East Africa Carbon Markets Forum 2025 comes in -- to facilitate a collaborative, transparent, and innovative way of building a robust carbon market ecosystem that benefits both people and the planet.

With a shared commitment to achieving net zero emissions by 2050, the East Africa Carbon Markets Forum 2025 is set to be a catalyst for impactful climate solutions. As the region takes bold steps toward carbon market integration, the forum will serve as a key platform for shaping the future of climate finance and sustainability in East Africa.