Diamond Trust Bank joins PCAF carbon accounting initiative for climate risk disclosure in East Africa

Diamond Trust Bank has joined the Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials (PCAF), a global initiative that helps financial institutions measure and disclose the carbon footprint of their loans and investments. The move is meant to strengthen climate risk disclosure across East Africa, where banks are under growing pressure from regulators and investors to report financed emissions. PCAF provides a standardized methodology for calculating the greenhouse gas emissions associated with a bank's portfolio, which is a key step toward aligning with frameworks like the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). For East Africa, this is a notable development because most banks in the region have not yet adopted formal carbon accounting. Diamond Trust Bank operates in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and Burundi, so its decision to join PCAF could push other regional lenders to follow suit. The bank will now need to collect emissions data from its corporate borrowers, which is often the hardest part of the process. If done well, this could improve the quality of climate risk data available to investors and regulators in the region. The real test will be whether the bank publishes its first PCAF-aligned disclosure within a year and whether that data is granular enough to inform lending decisions.