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Behold the new outlines of our wild safari landscape

Once a monetary backwater, nature conservation is becoming a hotbed of financial innovation

November 12, 2026

Welcome to Green Rising – A big part of my job is to watch what parts of Africa’s green economy and climate ecosystem are changing and how. There are obvious examples. Electric mobility is going through the roof. Solar energy and battery storage are possibly even more dynamic. 

But an area all too often overlooked is nature conservation. The first mistake that observers make is to say or think, “well, it’s not a business”. They’re wrong of course. Africa is acquiring a “wildlife economy”, where commercial interests play an increasingly important role in conservation. 

A key one is finance. The question of how wild places will be funded in future is not settled. (If you were a Maoist, you might be tempted to quote the murderous chairman saying, "Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend," which was the starting point in 1956 to yet another ideological purification campaign.) 

Back in the African now, we’ve seen all manner of experiments to pinpoint how conservation funding will work in future. Some answers here, but nothing conclusive yet.

Carbon credits are attracting money into restoring nature, but African developers still struggle to turn investor interest into funding. Nature restoration drew about $10 billion in credit-purchase deals globally in 2025. Yet only 10% of 149 African projects assessed by the Carbon Accelerator Programme for the Environment had signed financing agreements.

  • Developers must first pay to prove their projects can deliver credible credits. A feasibility study alone can exceed $70,000. The 149 projects identified at least $48 million needed before implementation. 

  • To tackle this challenge, Finance Earth and FSD Africa have launched Africa Nature Fund, which targets $100 million to finance project preparation and implementation, with an initial $20 million close planned for 2027.

  • Our take: Requiring projects to arrive fully investment-ready limits the chances of smaller organisations to access nature carbon credit funds…Read more (2 min)

TNC extends funding model with $160m Kenya deal

The Nature Conservancy is helping African governments secure longer funding commitments by negotiating funding alongside the actions needed to protect nature. Kenya’s $160 million Thamani Asili programme, launched on 21 October, extends this approach following TNC’s work on Gabon Infini, formally launched in August.

  • Known as Project Finance for Permanence, the model brings donors and government into one conservation agreement. Funding is released against agreed conditions, giving commitments a mechanism for oversight rather than relying on promises alone.

  • Kenya’s programme combines $80 million in philanthropic support with an equivalent government contribution over ten years. An independent trust fund will administer donor money and track progress.

  • Our take: Donor funding has more lasting value when it helps secure public spending that continues after the donation ends…Read more (2 min)

The Rob Walton Foundation has given African Parks a grant of $4.6 million to test a new funding model for the protection of nature. The model uses something called Verifiable Nature Units, with each unit representing one square kilometre whose ecological condition is maintained or improved over a period of one year.

  • Parks and conservancies could use this model to secure funding for ongoing conservation. African Parks is exploring the model’s use in community-managed landscapes.

  • Proving results requires satellite data backed by wildlife monitoring on the ground and independent verification. Smaller conservancies need funding and expertise to gather that evidence. It remains unclear how much of the resulting income would be left after covering costs.

  • Our take: Verified results could encourage funders to renew support. But without help paying for measurement, smaller conservancies risk losing out to organisations that can already afford to prove their conservation work is effective… Read more (2 min)

Conservation in Africa is becoming more investment-driven and proving what works is even more important than before. As investors place greater emphasis on measurable outcomes, conservation organisations need even better ways to track the results of their interventions. A new open-access platform could help organisations do this.

  • The Conservation Monitoring Effectiveness Techniques platform, or COMET, is a free, open-access library of field-tested monitoring methods. Developed by the Conservation Measures Partnership, it helps practitioners select practical and cost-effective ways to measure conservation results. 

  • The past 18 months have seen several major conservation-finance developments, including a $132 million bond listed in Johannesburg, a $180 million Project Finance for Permanence initiative in Gabon and a $500 million debt-for-nature swaps pipeline. These are signs that conservation can and is attracting sophisticated capital and needs strong ways to measure results. 

  • Our take: Measurable conservation outcomes are funding requirement and COMET makes credible monitoring easier to adopt and share…Read more (2 min)

Number of the week

…is the amount of solar capacity Africa could have imported using the extra $21.9 billion spent on fuel imports between March and August 2026. That is three times the continent’s current installed capacity.

Network corner

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👉 Esther Koimett appointed Chairperson of Lake Turkana Wind Power to help provide reliable, low-cost energy to Kenyan homes and businesses

Top green jobs from…

EVENTS UPDATE 

📆 Join the Africa Mining, Oil, Gas and Energy exhibition in Côte d'Ivoire (Nov 18) 

📆 Sign Up for the ESG & Climate Africa Summit in Kenya (November 24)

📆 Attend the Electric Mobility Conference and Expo in Nigeria (November 25)

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