Forest restoration company Rainforest Builder announced that it has signed a new multi-year agreement with Microsoft to deliver up to 1.8 million carbon credits to the tech giant, generated from a large scale ecosystem restoration project in Sierra Leone.
According to Rainforest Builder, the 15-year deal marks one of the largest carbon removal transactions in Africa to date.
Founded in 2022, Rainforest Builder restores forest ecosystems, with a focus on the Upper Guinean Forest, which is one of the most degraded forest landscapes in Africa, with 90% cleared. The company currently has four projects in place, and has planted more than 1.8 million trees to date.
The carbon credits under the new agreement will be sourced from Rainforest Builder’s Project Buffalo, which is anticipated to plant over 10 million trees across 15,000 hectares of degraded land, which, in addition to removing carbon, will also create new, protected habitat for threatened plant and animal species. The company added that the project will have significant social benefits as well, including providing direct employment for over 1,200 people, as well as through its benefit-sharing programme, providing smallholder agricultural improvement, road infrastructure, and a community development fund.
Edward Stephenson, Co-CEO of Rainforest Builder, said:
“West Africa has experienced extreme levels of forest degradation, but the region has been slower than some others to attract the focus of global carbon markets. This landmark agreement with Microsoft is a catalyst not only for Rainforest Builder, but also for the crucial role that Africa – and Sierra Leone specifically – can play in global carbon markets and combatting climate change.”
Microsoft’s carbon removal program forms part of the company’s climate commitments to become carbon negative by 2030, removing more carbon than it emits, and to remove the amount of carbon it has historically emitted by 2050. The company has emerged as the largest corporate purchaser of carbon removal credits – by a wide margin – recently revealing that it signed agreements to a remove record 45 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2025.
Phillip Goodman, Director, Carbon Removal at Microsoft, said:
“This agreement helps accelerate reforestation work, and carbon removal growth writ large, in West Africa. Project Buffalo is grounded in scientific rigor and supporting local communities, two priorities for Microsoft in our journey to be carbon negative by 2030.”
