The opportunity for direct air capture in Africa

This report examines the potential for Direct Air Capture (DAC) and other carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies in Africa, with a particular focus on Kenya and the East African Rift region. It highlights the region's competitive advantages in geothermal energy and basaltic rock formations for permanent carbon storage, while outlining the technological, financial, and regulatory innovations needed to scale these systems.

• Africa possesses significant theoretical potential for carbon dioxide removal (CDR). Nature-based methods have a technical potential of 2.4 GtCO2e by 2030, potentially worth nearly $50 billion at $20/ton. Synthetic methods like DAC could provide an additional 400 MtCO2e/year. Utilizing approximately half of East Africa's unutilized geothermal potential (~20 GWe) could produce about 20% of the projected global CDR for 2035.
• Kenya is emerging as a global leader in DAC due to a combination of energy and geological assets: it has 10 GW of untapped geothermal potential, basaltic rock formations in the Rift Valley suitable for permanent storage, and a power grid where 91% of energy comes from carbon-free sources.
• Several CDR projects are active in Africa: the Great Green Wall in the Sahel, biochar pilots by NetZero (Cameroon) and Releaf (Nigeria), and enhanced rock weathering by Flux (Kenya). In 2025, Octavia Carbon commissioned Project Hummingbird, the first commercial DAC plant on the continent, and Cella, Sirona Technologies, and Octavia Carbon are pursuing in-situ mineralization storage in Kenya.
• Scaling DAC in Africa requires innovation in three primary areas: energy optimization (reducing the >2 MWh/tCO2 requirement through geothermal heat or electrochemical systems), geological storage (adapting drilling and monitoring for basaltic rock), and project development (integrating land, energy, and permits via models like Great Carbon Valley).
• Financial and market barriers persist for DAC startups, particularly the 'precommercial valleys of death' for first-of-a-kind projects. Growth depends on the maturity of voluntary carbon markets, which could grow 100-fold by 2050, and initiatives like the African Carbon Markets Initiative (ACMI).
• Regulatory environments can either hinder or accelerate DAC deployment. In Kenya, the government is developing a program for fast-track permitting and tax incentives, including a special economic zone authority to provide zero tax on shipping.

APA

RMI (2025). The opportunity for direct air capture in Africa. https://rmi.org/resources/the-opportunity-for-direct-air-capture-in-africa/

Chicago

RMI. The opportunity for direct air capture in Africa. 2025. https://rmi.org/resources/the-opportunity-for-direct-air-capture-in-africa/.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=RMI |title=The opportunity for direct air capture in Africa |date=24 November 2025 |url=https://rmi.org/resources/the-opportunity-for-direct-air-capture-in-africa/ |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{rmi2025opportunity, author = {{RMI}}, title = {{The opportunity for direct air capture in Africa}}, institution = {RMI}, year = {2025}, month = nov, url = {https://rmi.org/resources/the-opportunity-for-direct-air-capture-in-africa/}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }