CI-Atabey Foundation
A scalable carbon credit initiative restoring mangroves and creating sustainable income for coastal communities near Dar-es-Salaam.
Key Details
Project Lead: Action For Ocean (AFO)
Financial Innovation: Credits
Financial Support: Received mentoring, training, and capacity building support through ORRAA’s Ocean Resilience Innovation Challenge (ORIC). Direct financial support has been provided by the UK’s Blue Planet Fund and by the Government of Canada.
Location: Tanzania
Project Timeline/Status: Ongoing (2021-2027)
People Supported: 50,061 (52% women)
Summary
ORRAA is working with Tanzanian NGO, Action For Ocean (AFO), to develop one of the country’s first community-driven voluntary carbon market (VCM) initiatives. By conserving and restoring mangroves, coastal communities around Dar-es-Salaam are capturing carbon to generate tradeable credits, creating a new, long-term revenue stream that directly funds local priorities like clean water, education, and healthcare.
This innovative project began with support from ORRAA’s Ocean Resilience Innovation Challenge (ORIC). Mentoring and visibility from ORIC helped AFO to refine its business model and attract further investment from the UK’s Blue Planet Fund and the Government of Canada, unlocking the potential to scale this approach and expand its impact across the region. AFO is now working to take the project through registration and toward credit issuance, unlocking a durable source of finance for mangrove conservation and restoration and community livelihoods.
Challenge
Mangrove forests provide essential ecosystem services, storing up to ten times more carbon than terrestrial forests and providing vital protection for coastal communities.
Yet, they are disappearing at an alarming rate. In Tanzania, mangroves are often cut down for firewood, medicine, and construction, or damaged as people access floodplains for fishing and farming. Despite years of government action and community-led efforts, mangroves continue to be damaged and destroyed.
Solution
To reverse this trend, AFO is working with communities on the outskirts of Dar-es-Salaam and the southeast Mtwara region to secure long-term revenue from their local forests, while regenerating mangrove ecosystems and strengthening climate resilience. ORRAA has supported AFO to advance mangrove restoration, quantify carbon sequestration potential, and strengthen community livelihoods through Village Savings and Loan Associations (VSLAs). To date, the project has planted 290,000 mangrove seedlings and established 23 VSLA groups across the area, significantly increasing financial inclusion, particularly among women.
Building on this foundation, AFO is advancing the project from readiness to formal registration. It is strengthening village governance and benefit-sharing systems, aligning community management structures with national and international carbon standards, restoring priority mangrove areas, and establishing community-led monitoring and reporting systems capable of supporting future verification and carbon credit issuance.
Scalability and Next Steps
The project is advancing toward investment readiness, putting core building blocks in place such as carbon baselines and the institutional systems needed for credit issuance. The next phase of AFO’s work will focus on mobilising resources to support verification, strengthening monitoring systems, expanding restoration activities, and scaling conservation-linked livelihood models.
“When we started replanting mangroves here in 2013, we were doing it just for the love of our environment, without knowing what mangroves would do for us. But now I see blue carbon is much more important than we thought for the health of our planet. We hope that the establishment of this project will create an ecosystem where communities live in harmony with nature.” – Bernard Kaitira, Community Representative, Kunduchi
