Jansenville is a dot on the map in the Sarah Baartman District — a Karoo town better known for mohair than global capital. It lies in the Eastern Cape, the province with South Africa’s highest unemployment rate.
In the first quarter of 2026, the province’s official unemployment rate was 44.6%. The expanded rate was 54.4%; in non-metro areas it reached 63.1% [Stats SA, Quarterly Labour Force Survey, Q1 2026].
It is not the most obvious place for a global retail and technology giant to plant its flag. Yet Amazon has placed a large bet on a restoration programme with a major operational base near Jansenville — and on a small indigenous succulent capable of turning degraded land into a valuable carbon asset.
Amazon’s purchase commitment has helped unlock a US$91 million blended-finance package, worth roughly R1.5 billion.
What the money is buying
Amazon has agreed to purchase carbon-removal credits representing 1.95 million tonnes of carbon dioxide expected to be removed over more than a decade [Amazon, 2026].
The credits will be generated by a restoration programme designed and operated by Imperative, with support from NatCarbon Africa. Amazon did not supply the entire US$91 million directly. Its promise to buy future credits provided the revenue certainty needed to attract investors.
That commitment helped Imperative secure US$25 million through a World Bank outcome-bond structure and US$66 million from Mirova, GenZero, Rubicon Carbon and Bregal Sphere [Imperative; World Bank, 2026].
Across the first two phases, the programme aims to plant 180 million spekboom cuttings and restore about 60,000 hectares by the end of 2028. Phase one, under way since 2024, covers 10,000 hectares and about 30 million plants, while Phase two adds more than 50,000 hectares [Amazon; Imperative, 2026].
Why a succulent rather than a forest?
The project relies on Portulacaria afra, better known as spekboom or elephant bush. Native to southern Africa and well adapted to the Eastern Cape’s dry conditions, it can be propagated from cuttings placed directly into the soil, allowing restoration at considerable scale.
Its value extends beyond carbon. Spekboom can stabilise damaged soil, improve water retention and create conditions in which native vegetation and animals return. Amazon says 165 plant and animal species have been recorded in the project area [Amazon, 2026].
Research has measured substantial carbon accumulation at restored spekboom sites, while modelling suggests that restoration could increase water storage in many of the region’s sandy soils. Results vary with rainfall, soils, grazing pressure, planting methods and plant survival [Mills and Cowling, 2006; Mills and De Wet, 2019].
Restoration is therefore not as simple as inserting cuttings and counting carbon. The plants must survive, spread and rebuild an ecosystem over many years.
As Amazon sustainability chief Kara Hurst put it: “Spekboom is a natural wonder, but it can’t heal the land without help from the people who call the Eastern Cape home.”
Seeding jobs
The Eastern Cape government says the project has already created about 1,600 employment opportunities. That wording matters: these are not necessarily all permanent jobs. They include work in nurseries, land preparation, planting, monitoring, transport and administration [Eastern Cape government, 2026].
Amazon projects that the programme could support about 11,000 employment opportunities by around 2030–31 and generate more than US$500 million in local economic value through wages, procurement, landowner payments and community investment [Amazon; Imperative, 2026].
Those are forecasts, not benefits already secured. Delivery depends on planting, plant survival, verification and the sale of carbon credits, as well as the ability of local firms to enter the supply chain.
Carbon markets meet the Karoo
The commercial logic is straightforward. Companies seeking to address emissions are willing to pay for credible projects that remove carbon from the atmosphere. Properly restored and independently monitored, degraded Eastern Cape thicket can therefore generate a scarce commodity: verified carbon removal.
Imperative and Amazon report that the project has received a high pre-issuance rating from BeZero Carbon, placing it among BeZero’s more highly rated afforestation, reforestation and revegetation projects. The rating assesses expected performance before credits are issued; it is not proof that 1.95 million tonnes have already been removed [Amazon; Imperative; BeZero Carbon, 2025–26].
Amazon’s commitment changed the project’s economics. By promising to buy future credits, it helped unlock the capital needed to fund nurseries, workers, planting and monitoring at scale.
The model is neither pure philanthropy nor guaranteed environmental success. It is a commercial wager that degraded land can be restored, carbon stored and local communities included in the value created.
The lesson
Whether it pays off will depend on what happens after the ribbon-cuttings: whether the plants survive, the carbon remains locked away and the promised jobs and spending materialise.
More important than the results of this one example, there is a lesson for the despondent. This is happening in a deeply troubled province, within a country experiencing real economic growth of roughly zero. Poverty and opportunity, it turns out, are not always opposites. Sometimes they share a postal code.
