EGX teams up with Agricultural Bank, Enara Group to form carbon credit company: An Egyptian Exchange (EGX) subsidiary has signed an agreement with the Agricultural Bank of Egypt and Enara Group’s Libra Capital to establish Libra Carbon, the first Egyptian company to develop and issue carbon certificates, according to a joint statement.

Expect a regional carbon exchange to follow: The move is a first step towards developing a voluntary, Africa-wide carbon credit exchange to encourage and diversify investment in the continent’s green economy, EGX head Rami El Dokany said in the statement. Environment Minister Yasmine Fouad last week said Egypt would announce the exchange — which has been in the works since 2018 — at COP27.

How will it work? The company will serve as the building block for “an organized market for the trading of carbon certificates, which includes all the necessary components not only for trading but also for issuance,” said FRA chief Mohamed Farid. We’re still waiting for the details on how the company plans to value, issue, and allow the trading of carbon credits. We took a look at what a local carbon exchange could look like in our recent Going Green vertical.

There’s a growing market for carbon credits — but it needs standardizing: “The volume of transactions associated with carbon certificates is growing at 20x annually,” Bloomberg Asharq quotes COP climate czar Mahmoud Mohieldin, who attended the signing ceremony, as saying. But trading prices vary widely, with a certificate for one ton of carbon emissions selling for anything from USD 2 to USD 100 across the continent, he added. The regional exchange will look to standardize prices.