At a time when sustainable aviation fuel is increasingly being framed as essential to the future of commercial aviation, Africa remains caught between promise and delay. The continent has feedstock potential, agricultural scale and a growing aviation market, yet it still sits far from the centre of global SAF production. This is the gap AfriSAF is looking to address.
In conversation with African Pilot, AfriSAF’s Kwame Bekoe sets out an ambitious but grounded vision for how Africa can begin building a SAF economy from the first mile of the value chain rather than the last. While much of the global conversation around sustainable aviation fuel has centred on refineries, offtake agreements and airline mandates, AfriSAF is focused on something more basic but no less critical: feedstock.
For Bekoe, the starting point is clear. Africa’s opportunity lies in the large volumes of unconstrained agricultural residue that currently go unused, are discarded, or are burned in the field. He pointed to IATA’s recent assessment that by 2030, Africa could have up to 500 million tonnes of unconstrained agricultural residue available as a potential feedstock base for SAF. In simple terms, that is, agricultural residue not already being used for animal feed, bedding, construction, soil cover, or nutrient return.
That unused residue, he argued, is where the continent’s SAF economy begins.
AfriSAF’s mission, as he described it, is to enable and develop a SAF economy in Africa. That mission has taken on added significance following the memorandum of understanding signed with AFRAA in December last year. For Bekoe, the agreement matters not only because of who AFRAA represents, but because it creates a route into practical execution with African airlines and the countries in which they operate.
He described AFRAA as a key partner precisely because early adoption will matter in a sector as complex and capital-intensive as sustainable aviation fuel. The aim is to work with AFRAA member airlines as potential offtakers, as enablers and as door openers in countries where projects can be developed. Ghana is currently the company’s local base of operations. AfriSAF is also working through partnerships in Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, South Africa and Nigeria. These, Bekoe suggested, are among the countries where early production opportunities could be realised.
Yet for all the talk of production, fuel, and scale, AfriSAF is not starting by building refineries or physically moving feedstock across the continent. Its initial focus is more specific. The company is building what Bekoe described as a digital feedstock platform designed to make feedstock bankable.
That phrase sits at the centre of AfriSAF’s business model.
To make feedstock bankable, in his view, means giving agricultural residue the data, traceability, chain of custody, emissions calculations and sustainability credentials required for it to become SAF-eligible. In practical terms, this means capturing where the feedstock comes from, how it is handled, what greenhouse gas emissions are associated with it, and whether it can meet recognised sustainability frameworks such as RSB or ISCC certification.
The business model is fundamentally a farm-to-plant model, but with a strong emphasis on the data architecture that sits behind the feedstock rather than on the physical logistics alone. Bekoe was careful to distinguish the different stages of the company’s approach. The first step is to create the identity and credibility of feedstock through the platform. The second, is project development based on eligible feedstock opportunities in specific regions. In his words, the business is about both enabling the market and developing the market.
This is where AfriSAF sees an early commercial pathway. The company’s minimal viable product is already ready, and it expects early customers to come on board in the near term. Those customers, Bekoe explained, are not individual farmers in the conventional sense, but large cooperatives, feedstock aggregators and economic actors along the value chain, who would pay to use the platform so that their feedstock can be brought into a certifiable system. Once certified, the value of that feedstock rises materially, giving those producers a commercial incentive to participate.
Credibility, of course, is central to any system of this kind. AfriSAF itself does not issue the certification. Instead, it works with recognised certification bodies that carry the authority to certify the feedstock. What the platform is intended to do is reduce the complexity, time and friction in that process.
At present, according to Bekoe, certifying feedstock can take around six months. It is labour intensive and data heavy, requiring field visits, assessments, calculations and multiple stages of verification. AfriSAF is aiming to reduce that timeline to less than one month by using AI tools, geospatial capabilities and layered sustainability analysis. These include the ability to demonstrate land-use change, deforestation, water quality indicators, yield analysis and precise field-level mapping through geospatial polygon tools.
The objective is to make it easier, faster and more credible to prove that residue is genuinely sustainable and eligible for fuel production.
The digital layer is not theoretical. Bekoe noted that the company has spent the past year working with hundreds and thousands of farmers, including through engagement with one of the largest farm cooperatives in South Africa and with other cooperatives across the region. The work so far has focused on building the tool with real ecosystem inputs and on gathering the data needed to support future project development.
AfriSAF has also run pilots in Ghana. One example he gave involved castor beans and castor oil. Castor oil, Bekoe said, is an excellent feedstock for sustainable aviation fuel. They currently process at low scale volumes, but at high grade quality. Following FDA certification in the next few months, AfriSAF will supply this feed into the cosmetics industry. The longer-term goal is to direct such feedstock into SAF production, where the demand opportunity is much larger.
That distinction between proving the traceability and reaching fuel production is important. AfriSAF is still in the early stages of deploying the platform for the specific purpose of SAF development, but the pilots have already allowed it to test the traceability component in practice.
Where Ghana is concerned, the company’s plans appear to be moving beyond feedstock mapping and digital proof points. Bekoe said AfriSAF has boots on the ground in Ghana through a local subsidiary and a team of around ten people working across platform development and feedstock analysis.
Ghana is being positioned as a testing ground for the company’s broader model. Recent feasibility work completed under ICAO has, in his view, reinforced what AfriSAF had already identified: that there is a real opportunity to create a SAF economy in Ghana.
The current concept under discussion in Ghana is for a modular-scale SAF plant capable of processing used cooking oil, palm oil mill effluent, or similar oil-based products into SAF. Bekoe used the term “modular” deliberately. He is not talking about a full-scale refinery from the outset, but about something smaller that can prove itself on the ground and then scale over time. Such a model would carry a higher per-unit cost at a small scale, but it would offer what Africa arguably needs most at this stage – a working example.
Africa’s SAF opportunity is compelling on paper, however, Bekoe was clear that bringing it into reality depends on more than feedstock alone. It requires governments, development agencies, financiers, airlines, technology providers, and certification bodies to come together in ways that reduce risk and unlock capital.
For him, the biggest hurdle to production is not feedstock availability. It is the cost of capital.
He referred to a recent World Bank report, which, he said, shows that Africa can leverage the low cost of its abundant feedstock if the right mix of stakeholders is assembled. Development agencies, banks, governments, sovereign support mechanisms, and offtake agreements all have a role to play in de-risking SAF production. If that de-risking happens effectively, the unit cost of African SAF can become competitive, even cheaper than the world average. But getting there will require coordination and sustained support.
Government support comes through as non-negotiable.
Bekoe acknowledged that Africa is very different from Europe in this regard. The EU has already put SAF blending mandates into law, starting at 2% from January 2025 and rising over time. The UK has moved in a similar direction. Africa does not have an equivalent framework, and because the continent is not centrally governed, any such move would be far more complicated.
He was careful not to argue for a simple transplant of the European model into Africa. African airlines already face significant structural pressures, and he did not suggest adding an immediate SAF burden through mandates alone. What he did argue for was policy that recognises the strategic opportunity of building a SAF industry on the continent.
Africa too often exports raw commodities and imports back the finished product at far higher cost. In his view, the same pattern cannot be allowed to define SAF. If the continent’s feedstock is simply exported while value-added fuel is produced elsewhere, Africa will once again have missed the industrial opportunity while retaining little of the upside. The real prize is to keep production on the continent.
This is also where the question of infrastructure becomes more nuanced. Africa does not begin from zero. Bekoe noted that sustainable aviation fuel can be produced through a number of processes, and that existing refineries can, in principle, co-process suitable feedstocks into low-carbon aviation fuels. Used cooking oil, palm oil mill effluent, castor oil, and other oil-based products can be converted through relatively mature pathways. In his view, one of the most important facts that should be better understood is that existing refinery infrastructure can form part of the answer.
He pointed to examples and possibilities in the Middle East, Nigeria, South Africa, and Kenya. Nigeria’s Dangote refinery, he argued, could process sustainable feedstocks into low-carbon aviation fuel. South African firms such as Sasol and PetroSA are looking at similar possibilities. In Kenya, dormant refineries could potentially be revived to support SAF production. Technically, then, the path is not speculative. The barrier remains economic.
The mismatch between the cost of conventional fossil-based jet fuel and the current cost of SAF continues to be a challenge. But Bekoe argued that it is too simplistic to compare the two on fuel price alone. SAF, in his view, carries multiple value streams beyond the fuel itself: carbon reduction, improved air quality through reduced burning of residue, better waste management, green jobs, and additional income for producers who are not yet monetising that feedstock. Those benefits matter, even if they are not always directly priced into the fuel.
Again, government incentives would materially change that equation. Tax breaks, subsidies, or other support mechanisms could help bridge the cost gap, especially in the early stages.
Still, AfriSAF is not attempting to solve the entire value chain alone. Bekoe said the company is building consortiums that bring together different players across supply, technology, government, finance, and demand. This includes feedstock producers, airlines, and technology partners, some of whom want direct participation in the projects themselves. The company’s role is not to dominate every stage, but to help catalyse the conditions under which the ecosystem can take shape.
Demand, however, remains a central piece of the puzzle. African airlines are not in a position to buy SAF voluntarily at three or four times the cost of conventional fuel simply on principle. Bekoe knows that. He also knows that African carriers face a long list of more immediate operational pressures, from ageing fleets and financing constraints to deregulation challenges and limited access to new aircraft. Sustainability sometimes sits low on the list of priorities.
In his view, the future growth of SAF demand is already being structurally created by mandates in Europe and the UK, with further momentum likely elsewhere. He described SAF as a roughly US$1 billion industry today but one that could reach US$60 billion within five years, driven not merely by climate ambition but by binding regulatory requirements. Africa, he argued, has the feedstock base to serve part of that growth if it moves in time.
This is where it gets interesting – book and claim.
Bekoe sees this as one of the routes by which African-produced SAF can access mandated markets without having to ship the physical product across the world. Under a book-and-claim mechanism, the SAF is used where it is produced, physically displacing fossil fuel in Africa, while the certificate associated with that SAF is sold into a market where a buyer needs it to meet a sustainability obligation. In effect, the environmental attribute is transferred, while the physical fuel stays local.
He likened it to an offset-style mechanism. The value, in his view, lies in avoiding the absurdity of transporting sustainable fuel long distances only to meet an accounting requirement elsewhere, when the climate benefit comes from displacing fossil fuel regardless of where the SAF is burned. In that sense, an African airline could use the fuel while a European buyer acquires the certificate to help fulfil its mandate.
For AfriSAF, this matters because it potentially opens a commercial route into mandated markets without forcing African airlines to bear the full premium themselves. It also helps make early projects more bankable by connecting them to a deeper pool of demand.
Risk, naturally, remains a concern. Bekoe did not dismiss that. Instead, he argued that the company is deliberately focusing on the most mature and proven production pathways rather than untested technology bets. The processes AfriSAF is considering are already established elsewhere. The objective is not to invent a new fuel chemistry for Africa, but rather, to localise existing, commercially credible pathways under African conditions.
SAF and airline economics
Bekoe said that one airline had told him that, at current elevated fuel prices linked to Middle East instability, a sustained increase over twelve months would add US$250 million to its annual operating expenses. That figure, he noted, is roughly equivalent to the capital cost of a 250,000-tonne SAF plant, which in turn could produce a volume of fuel comparable to what such an airline burns annually. The comparison is striking because it reframes SAF not simply as an environmental compliance issue, but as a potential route to fuel security and strategic control over 40% of an airline’s operating cost base.
In that future, airlines are not only consumers of fuel. They become participants in the fuel economy itself.
This may still be some distance away, but it reveals the broader logic behind AfriSAF’s thinking. The company is not just trying to certify feedstock more efficiently. It is working from the premise that Africa must begin building the upstream foundation of a SAF economy now, before it becomes a passive price taker in a market shaped elsewhere.
In Bekoe’s view, too much focus has been placed on the last mile of the value chain. In Africa, he argued, the real leverage lies in the first mile. That is where the social and economic impact sits. That is where farmers can gain new revenue from what is currently wasted. That is where traceability, sustainability, and certification can begin. And that is where Africa has a chance not merely to participate in the global SAF market, but to shape its own place within it.
If Africa is serious about building a sustainable aviation fuel industry, it may well need exactly this kind of first-mile thinking.
