From Burned Residue to Bankable Removal: Aggregation as the Financing Model for Biochar in Africa.

Across Africa’s farm belts, crop residues are burned in the open while the soil beneath loses fertility. Converted to biochar, the residue goes back on the field as a soil amendment and most of the carbon stays locked away for a century or more, a durable removal that buyers already pay for, at USD 100 to 250 a tonne on recent market data. A small fraction of that supply comes from Africa, because the finance does not fit: a single facility costs a few million dollars, and development finance institutions rarely lend below USD 10 million to a single asset. Isolated pilots seldom reach the scale at which the economics work. Aggregation is the approach the session tests: facilities sited on existing depot networks, residue weighed and paid for at the depot gate, one registry validation (the carbon standard’s sign-off on the design) and one purchase contract covering a portfolio of sites, with new sites added by proportionate, sampled inclusion reviews, the farmer paid in the first season before any credit is issued, and the community share fixed in the contract ahead of any developer return. Credits count only the carbon retained in the biochar, never the emissions avoided by ending open burning.

Scheduled on COP31’s Food, Agriculture and Health thematic day, this 60-minute session is for financiers, buyers, standards bodies and policymakers deciding whether and how to fund African carbon removal at smallholder scale. The question for the hour: who finances each stage of that chain, on what terms, and whether aggregation changes the answer. A moderated panel of four takes one stage each: first-season farmer payment, facility and portfolio finance, what a carbon removal funder needs before treating an aggregated portfolio as one counterparty, and the standards route for grouped validation and integrity. The panel tests the approach; no scheme is presented. Key terms are defined on first use and assumptions are stated on screen. The session closes with five propositions put to the room by show of hands. The result is offered to the pavilion organisers and sent to attendees as a short post-session note. Durable removal complements rapid emissions cuts and never substitutes for cuts. FSD Africa, the International Biochar Initiative, One Acre Fund and the Kühne Climate Center take the four seats.