AfDB Economist Flags 'Double Standard' in EU Carbon Border Tax on African Exporters

An African Development Bank economist has described the EU's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism as a policy that penalises African exporters at a moment when the continent is least equipped to absorb the shock — and warned the design reflects a structural asymmetry the Global South has long flagged but rarely been heard on.

By Moemedi Michael Poncanaafrica4-minute read28 May 2026☆ Save ↗ Share ⎙ Print

Hanan Morsy, an economist at the African Development Bank, has delivered one of the sharpest public critiques yet from within African multilateral institutions of the European Union's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism — calling its current implementation a structural double standard that burdens the continent's exporters without adequately addressing the historical emissions record of wealthy nations.

Morsy's remarks, reported via the Africa Intelligence Telegram channel on 28 May 2026, target a mechanism that entered its transitional phase in 2023 and is set to become fully operational by 2026 for iron, steel, aluminium, cement, fertilisers, hydrogen, and electricity. The CBAM requires importers into the EU to purchase certificates corresponding to the carbon price that would have been paid under EU climate rules — effectively levelling a carbon cost onto foreign producers that EU domestic producers already pay.

The stated goal from Brussels is preventing "carbon leakage," the phenomenon where European industry offshored production to countries with weaker environmental standards. The AfDB economist's critique is straightforward: the mechanism assumes a parity of starting conditions that does not exist. African manufacturers, on average, operate with less capital, older equipment, and cheaper energy grids — not because they chose an inferior development path, but because industrialisation in many of these economies was delayed, in part by trade policies that kept agricultural and raw-material exports cheap for centuries.

"The EU is applying a carbon adjustment to exporters who have had no voice in setting the carbon price," one African trade official not authorised to speak publicly told this publication, paraphrasing a broader concern heard across capitals from Nairobi to Abuja. "The question is whether this is a climate instrument or a trade barrier dressed in climate language."

The EU has made some allowances. Least developed countries are exempt until 2032 under a revision to the initial design, and the European Commission has flagged support for capacity-building in partner nations. But critics, including economists at the African Development Bank, argue these provisions are insufficient to offset the structural disadvantage facing middle-income African exporters — nations that produce processed metals and fertilisers precisely because they are building industrial bases that remain carbon-intensive in the short term.

The framing from Brussels has consistently emphasised climate ambition. The EU's own impact assessments published during the mechanism's legislative passage acknowledged that developing nations would face disproportionate compliance costs — but characterised this as a necessary trade-off for global environmental goals. That language, say analysts who track trade between Africa and Europe, does not adequately reckon with the asymmetry baked into the instrument from the outset: the EU set the carbon price, designed the mechanism, and then applied it to others without offering a reciprocal adjustment for historical emissions embedded in the wealth of European industry.

This is not the first time African policymakers have flagged the tension between Northern climate architecture and Southern development constraints. At COP meetings from Marrakech to Baku, negotiators from the continent have pushed for carbon border adjustments to be calibrated against "common but differentiated responsibilities" — the principle in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change that holds wealthy nations to a higher burden given their longer industrial history. The principle has been consistently weakened in final texts, with binding enforcement increasingly centred on mechanisms like the CBAM.

The stakes for African exporters are concrete. South Africa, which exports roughly 3 million tonnes of steel annually and competes in EU markets with producers from Spain and Belgium, faces direct revenue pressure from carbon certificate costs. Egypt's fertiliser sector, a significant foreign-exchange earner, has already flagged compliance complexity as a barrier to maintaining EU market share. Nigeria's aluminium downstream industry, still nascent, faces a carbon cost it cannot yet pass on to buyers without losing contracts.

Morsy's critique lands in a context where the EU is simultaneously pursuing free trade agreements with African regional blocs, offering development finance through the Global Gateway initiative, and applying a carbon border tax that its own estimates suggest will cost Sub-Saharan African exporters between €1.3 billion and €2.4 billion annually by 2030. The gap between the partnership language in Brussels communiqués and the structural pressure of the mechanism itself is widening, and African economies are beginning to name it directly.

Whether the AfDB economist's intervention shifts the political calculus in Brussels is unclear. European trade officials have shown limited appetite to revisit the CBAM architecture before its full phase-in, citing World Trade Organization compatibility and climate commitments under the Paris Agreement. But the volume of public criticism from multilateral institutions with African membership is increasing — and that, in the slow machinery of trade diplomacy, can be the thing that forces a conversation.

Wire provenance

This editorial synthesis draws on the following public wire/social posts:

https://t.me/africaintel/14932
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_Border_Adjustment_Mechanism
https://climate.ec.europa.eu/eu-action/eu-emissions-trading-system-eu-ets/decarbonisation/cbam_en