East African businesses will need to adopt mechanisms that mitigate carbon emissions or face the risk of being shut out from trading on the global scene.

Speaking at a recent workshop for policy makers and managers of private firms, Godwell Nhamo, programme manager at the University of South Africa said aligning African businesses with carbon risks was important in a fast changing international trade environment that is grappling with the dangers of climate change.
Dr Nhamo also asked countries to guard against being used as the dumping grounds for obsolete technology.
“Companies will increasingly come under scrutiny over their activities and will be required to account for their carbon print,” said Dr Nhamo.

“Those that will not limit their carbon emissions face the prospect of their products being boycotted.”

As the developed world is moving fast to adopt the new environment world order, experts said African countries are being left behind.

Some countries they noted, had already began carbon disclosure — companies display the levels of greenhouse gasses they emit.

He said carbon compliance considerations were picking up in Britain and China. In South Africa, the government has adopted a policy that makes it mandatory for companies to account for their levels of pollution, in the hope it will cut carbon emissions by 45 per cent by 2025.

He said countries like Kenya and Tanzania will have to deal with the massive imports of carbon emitting cars from Japan through appropriate policy. Others are old discarded computers, some of which were finding their way to learning institutions as donations.

However, he warned that aligning businesses with acceptable carbon levels will come at a cost but the benefits will be felt in the long term through reduced energy costs.

Some advanced countries, he said, had adopted the Social Responsibility Index, a measure that includes industrial waste disposal, among other issues for acceptance of products in the market.

Experts attending the workshop at the East and Southern Africa Management Institute in Tanzania also noted that trade in carbon credits from forests on the continent had become attractive, but cautioned that if not well managed, communities might not reap much from it.

“Multinationals will end up taking most of the benefits like in Congo River Basin where benefits to communities are insignificant,” said Dr Nhamo.

He added: “The policies in Africa are donor driven. The multinationals are making an investment which could lead to driving indigenous people out of business. African policy on carbon is adaptation.”

Dr Chungu Mwila, the director, Investment Promotion and Private Sector Development at Comesa secretariat said: “Climate change has implications on agriculture and food security.”

Dr Nhamo said the challenge lay in formulating a policy framework to guide small and medium enterprises and multinationals in Africa.