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

​Across Africa, crop residues are often burned in open fields, releasing carbon and depriving soils of valuable organic matter. Converting these residues into biochar offers a different path: improving soil health while storing carbon for a century or more. The challenge is financing projects at the scale needed to make this opportunity work.

​Join Verst Carbon and experts from FSD Africa, One Acre Fund and the Kühne Climate Center at COP31 for a practical discussion on whether aggregation can make biochar carbon removal more investable. The session will explore how multiple production facilities can be brought together into financeable portfolios, how farmers can be paid before carbon credits are issued, and how grouped projects can maintain credible measurement, validation and community benefit-sharing.

​Designed for financiers, carbon credit buyers, standards bodies and policymakers, the discussion will examine who needs to finance each stage, on what terms, and what it takes to move from small pilots to a scalable model. The aim is to test practical propositions—not present aggregation as a proven solution—and identify what could help unlock investment while protecting carbon integrity and delivering value to farming communities.