Article 6 Bilateral Agreements: Which African Nations Are Moving First?

Article 6 of the Paris Agreement — the provision enabling countries to trade internationally transferable mitigation outcomes (ITMOs) — entered operational reality in 2024, and Africa is moving faster than any other region to capitalise on it. Kenya, Ghana, and Gabon have each concluded or are finalising bilateral Article 6.2 agreements with major buyer nations, creating the regulatory architecture for sovereign-level carbon credit exports that command significant price premiums over voluntary market transactions.

What Article 6.2 Actually Means

Article 6.2 allows two countries to agree bilaterally that verified emission reductions from one country's territory can be transferred to the other, with the host country making a "corresponding adjustment" to its own NDC accounting. This means the buyer nation — say Japan or Singapore — can count the purchased credits toward its own national climate targets, not just toward a corporate buyer's internal offset portfolio.

The corresponding adjustment requirement is what gives Article 6 credits their premium value. Unlike standard voluntary carbon credits that may be sold multiple times across different accounting frameworks, an ITMO is retired in the host country's national registry and simultaneously credited to the buyer nation. Double counting is architecturally impossible. For sovereign and corporate buyers operating under strict CSRD or national disclosure obligations, this traceability is worth paying for.

Kenya: Africa's First Mover

Kenya was among the earliest African nations to ratify Article 6 provisions and has since concluded bilateral ITMO agreements with Japan (under the Joint Crediting Mechanism framework) and Singapore (under Singapore's International Carbon Credit framework). The Kenya Carbon Markets Authority (KCMA), established in 2023, is the institutional body overseeing ITMO issuance and the associated corresponding adjustment process.

Under Kenya's framework, Article 6 transactions must meet additional safeguards beyond voluntary market requirements: enhanced community benefit sharing (minimum 40% of revenue to project-adjacent communities), biodiversity co-benefit verification, and annual sovereign-level reporting to the UNFCCC. These requirements increase project development costs but simultaneously justify the price premium — Article 6-eligible Kenyan credits are trading at $28–38 per tonne, compared to $16–22 for equivalent non-Article-6 credits.

Kenya has committed to making 30% of its NDC target deliverable through Article 6 ITMO exports — using the proceeds to fund domestic adaptation investments including coastal flood defences, drought-resilient agriculture, and urban heat reduction programmes.

Ghana's Forest Carbon Programme

Ghana has taken a different approach. Rather than building a bilateral exchange infrastructure from scratch, Ghana has integrated Article 6 compliance into its existing Forest Carbon Support Programme — a Verra VCS-registered programme spanning 1.6 million hectares of forest landscape across the Brong-Ahafo and Northern regions.

Ghana has concluded a pilot Article 6.2 agreement with Switzerland and is in advanced negotiations with the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. Unlike Kenya's project-by-project approach, Ghana's framework operates at the programmatic level, allowing the government to issue ITMOs against the aggregate verified emissions reductions across the programme portfolio rather than individual projects. This reduces transaction costs significantly — a critical advantage for a country seeking to scale rapidly.

Gabon's Blue Carbon Ambitions

Gabon occupies a unique strategic position: 88% of its territory is covered by tropical forest, making it one of the world's largest per-capita carbon sinks. Gabon has formally declared that its forests absorb more carbon than the country's total economy emits — giving it a structural surplus that makes Article 6 exports a natural fit.

Gabon concluded a bilateral Article 6.2 agreement with Japan in March 2026 and a second with Singapore in April 2026. Both agreements focus on blue carbon: Gabon's 900,000-hectare mangrove estate along its Atlantic coastline is the centrepiece of a planned national blue carbon programme under the Verra VM0033 methodology. Projected annual issuances, if the full programme is operationalised, reach 6–8 million ITMOs per year — making Gabon potentially the continent's largest single Article 6 supplier.

ITMOs: What Buyers Need to Know

For corporate buyers seeking Article 6-eligible credits, three practical realities apply. First, supply is constrained: the number of operationalised Article 6.2 agreements globally remains small, and African ITMO supply will not scale rapidly before 2027–2028. Buyers seeking allocation in 2026 will need to engage directly with programme managers or designated national authorities. Second, prices are set to rise: as more sovereign buyers compete for a limited ITMO supply, forward pricing curves indicate premiums expanding from the current $8–12 per tonne above voluntary market prices to $15–20 per tonne by 2028. Third, governance due diligence matters: the corresponding adjustment mechanism is still being operationalised in many countries, and buyers should verify that their host country's UNFCCC registry reporting is current and audited.

What Comes Next

Tanzania, Malawi, and Mozambique are each in active negotiations for their first Article 6.2 bilateral agreements. The African Carbon Markets Initiative has made Article 6 infrastructure a core deliverable for its member nations by 2027. For buyers and investors, the current window — in which African ITMO supply is available before the market fully prices in sovereign demand — represents an exceptional entry point. Green Earth Group is monitoring Article 6 developments across its operating countries and advising project developers on the additional requirements for ITMO eligibility.