African REDD+ Learning Lab: Advancing Equitable Benefit Sharing

Dates: 24-27 Nov 2025
Location: Lusaka Zambia 
Languages: English and French

Overview

Building on the momentum of previous regional exchanges, the Abidjan workshop (2024), the Community of Practice virtual event on social inclusion (2024), and the global benefit-sharing exchange (2025). This Learning Lab follows immediately after COP30 and the Forest CoP. It is a timely opportunity to integrate fresh insights and strengthen collective action on equitable jurisdictional REDD+ (jREDD+) benefit sharing.

The Lab responds directly to African countries’ call for practical, peer-to-peer problem-solving that goes beyond lessons sharing to co-create actionable solutions, tools, and country-specific roadmaps.

Learning lab format

The Lab is an intensive, interactive, and participatory peer-exchange, where African REDD+ practitioners:

• Diagnose implementation challenges

• Test solutions in real time

• Build concrete pathways together

Through simulation games, country clinics, roleplays, and collaborative roadmap development, participants will tackle real bottlenecks in benefit sharing—from financing inclusion to meeting market requirements, to bridging governance gaps between national and local levels.

Focus areas

The Learning Lab centers on benefit sharing as a gateway to climate finance. Key sessions will address:

• Financing social inclusion at scale

• Managing consultation costs and processes

• Linking benefit-sharing mechanisms (BSMs) to carbon rights and tenure

• Bridging national frameworks to community-level implementation

• Meeting market and donor integrity requirements

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The Learning Lab builds on lessons learned across the project, providing a platform to share successes and challenges from African countries’ REDD+ implementation.

Why attend?

• Solve real problems: Work through country-specific BSM challenges with structured peer feedback

• Access practical tools: Co-develop checklists, templates, financing pathways, and governance models ready for adaptation

• Navigate integrity requirements: Learn how to verify equitable benefit-sharing to meet market standards

• Build regional solidarity: Strengthen connections with African peers facing similar challenges

• Leave with a roadmap: Develop concrete country action plans with immediate next steps (6 months), medium-term priorities (1–2 years), and identified technical support needs

• Showcase success stories: Share and learn from African case studies delivering real benefits for communities and forests

• Bridge national to local frameworks: Operationalize national benefit-sharing plans at the community level through practical governance structures and transparent financial flows

• Knowledge sharing: Capture lessons learned over three years of project implementation

Target participants

Africa National REDD+ focal points, safeguards specialists, and representatives from Indigenous Peoples and local communities

By Invitation only