Background
Africa stands on the front line of the climate crisis, yet remains the continent with the lowest level of technological capacity needed to address its climate-induced challenges. Despite the promise of green technologies, most African countries still rely on green products and processes developed by external actors, often without meaningful access to the intellectual property (IP) rights that underpin them.
This continental challenge is clearly visible in Kenya, which has made strong formal commitments to green growth and is a regional leader in renewable energy and climate-smart development but whose green transition is still largely powered by imported hardware and embedded know-how, with current policy frameworks on trade, investment, IP, procurement and industrial development not yet fully aligned with an explicit goal of building domestic innovation capabilities and local value addition in green sectors.
The Event
On April 9, 2026, APRI’s Just Green Transition Programme convened a stakeholder consultation in Nairobi centered on the topic “Kenya in the Global and Regional Green Economy”. The closed session focused on Kenya’s position within regional and global green economy frameworks, shifting the discussion from domestic challenges to the country’s strategic engagement with continental and international systems. Discussions were also anchored by APRI’s research of the relevance of the AfCFTA and global IP frameworks within this shift. The event brought together senior government officials, investors, and green technology actors to examine how trade, foreign direct investment, and intellectual property frameworks shape technology transfer and to identify practical measures that build domestic capability. The high-level convening was designed to validate and inform APRI’s on-going research, enrich the content and recommendations of subsequent policy papers, and to co-develop policy directions for strenghtening the local green technology transfer ecosystem.
