CLIMATE URGENCY, INSTITUTIONAL SEQUENCING AND CARBON SOVEREIGNTY: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF GHANA, KENYA AND NIGERIA.

Abstract

African governments increasingly look to carbon markets as a source of finance for mitigation, adaptation and economic diversification, and readiness programmes and project pipelines have expanded accordingly. The institutions needed to govern transfers, however, have not always kept pace. Under the Paris Agreement, authorising an internationally transferred mitigation outcome carries consequences beyond project revenue: it alters national emissions accounting and can remove a comparatively low-cost option from a host country’s future mitigation portfolio. This article examines how the sequence of market expansion relative to institutional development shapes governance and accounting exposure in Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria, drawing on legislation, regulatory frameworks, nationally determined contributions, Article 6 submissions, official implementation records and scholarship published between 2015 and 12 August 2026. Ghana built an Article 6 framework, a Carbon Market Office, a registry and bilateral arrangements comparatively early, though questions about reporting and benefit-sharing persist. In Kenya, voluntary-market activity expanded well before statutory rules on approval, registration and community contributions were consolidated. Nigeria adopted a Carbon Market Activation Policy in 2025, yet public evidence of transaction-level registry and authorisation activity remains scarce. Reflexive securitisation, developed here as an interpretive extension of work on securitisation, riskification and policy feedback, is used to identify conditions under which a climate-security response could generate liabilities or conflicts that later constrain climate action, not to claim that such consequences have already materialised. Carbon sovereignty, in turn, is defined as informed control exercised through jurisdictional, analytical, distributive and strategic capacities.