Namibia’s Green Hydrogen aspirations take shape
Clean Energy
Namibia will host the second edition of the Global African Hydrogen Summit from 9 to 11 September 2025.Damian Howard of dmg events made the announcement at the closing ceremony of the recently concluded three-day summit in Windhoek.
“We achieved our objectives. These include hosting two heads of state from Namibia and Tanzania, 20 ministers and representatives from Namibia and across Africa and indeed Europe, 125 industry expert speakers running concurrently across two programs, 100 youth participants, 75 exhibitors, 35 partners, 30 project investment roundtable meetings, seven deal signings, one leadership roundtable meeting, one high-level ministerial meeting and over 1,400 attendees over the past four days. We also handed over seven Global African Hydrogen Awards,” Howard said.
Milestones
James Mnyupe, Namibia's Green Hydrogen Commissioner announced some milestones on behalf of the Namibia Green Hydrogen Program, achieved through close collaboration with the Ministry of Mines and Energy.
‘The EU Commission partnered with the Dutch government, the German government and the Belgian government to support Namibia's efforts to create a green industrialization agenda. Team Europe put together an 8.8 million Euro package broken down into three million euros from the Dutch government, 1.25 million Euros from the EU Commission, and 4.6 million Euros from the German government.”
Mnyupe said that this grant funding will be used to fund a plethora of activities that will essentially help capacitate our Ministry of Mines and Energy to start incubating a green hydrogen economy and a green industrialization agenda in Namibia.
“Some of the initiatives include conducting a strategic environmental and social assessment in both the Southern Green Hydrogen Valley and the Central Green Hydrogen Valley. It also includes acquiring quite strategic assets such as meteorological (met) masts, which are used to measure the wind quality in a particular area. We would love to deploy up to 10 met masts, in the southern region. The issuing of tenders will create significant value for the Namibian government in areas where the met masts will be deployed.”
Studies
Some of this money will also be utilised to do common user studies.
“We are looking at developing common user best practice guidelines to help the Namibian government expand infrastructure such as pipelines and ports, and to make sure that multiple projects use that infrastructure openly and transparently. The funding will also be used to capacitate the Namibian Green Hydrogen Program institution from the current eight employees up to about 21 employees. This will bolster our ability to support the Ministry of Mines and Energy,” Mynupe explained.
Grant Facilities
He also announced that the EU Commission entrusted the SDG Namibia One Fund with a whopping 25 million Euro grant facility that will accompany a 40 million Euro grant facility from the Dutch government and Invest International.
Mnyupe hailed this as a very significant investment into de-risking developing green hydrogen assets in Namibia and said this brings the facility that the Namibian Hydrogen Fund managers are managing from the development fund perspective up to 65 million Euros.
“This funding will be used to de-risk the development of green hydrogen projects, and green hydrogen-related infrastructure in Namibia. This includes smaller projects such as High Iron or larger projects like Zero. The facility has been used to provide the development capital for the Hyphen Project. This is our 24% equity contribution into Hyphen.”
A partnership between German DNI and Namibia's NSI institutions also availed 430,000 Euros.
“These institutions develop the various standards and certifications for measuring the metrology or the quality of green hydrogen between the two countries as they look to trade,” Mnyupe said.
Blue Print
He added that a partnership between the Namibian Green Hydrogen Program and the Mars McKinney Molar Center for Zero Carbon Shipping will ensure that Namibia launches its Green Maritime Corridor Study at COP 29.
“This is a fantastic blueprint of how we can really turn Namibia into a sustainable logistics hub. This paper analyses how we can make low-carbon goods from source, transport them in a low-carbon manner, for example, with dual-fueled green hydrogen trains, put them on low-carbon ships that potentially use ammonia, and then take them to receiving ports around the world,” Mnyupe said.
Dialogue
The Green Hydrogen Organization and the United Nations High-Level Climate Champions will also be working with the Green Hydrogen Program in Namibia to champion biannual dialogues with civil society organizations here in Namibia.
“We have heard the call from civil society organizations for us to up the structured and informed manner in which we engage these very important stakeholders. The Green Hydrogen Organization and the UN High-Level Climate Champions have decided with us that we will put our resources together to hold this dialogue at least two times a year in Namibia, and then importantly, to share some of the learnings from those dialogues with the members of the African Green Hydrogen Alliance to see whether that could be replicated somewhere else,” Mnyupe said.
The Namibia Green Hydrogen Program and the Ministry of Mines and Energy will also be working closely with the International Energy Agency (IEA), to release a report titled Renewable Energy Opportunities for Namibia in November at the Africa Energy Weekend.
“This report will concretize a lot of the opportunities that the government has already recognized in the green industrialization blueprint. The Green Hydrogen Business Alliance and the GIZ released the Localizing Green Industries in Namibia research study at the summit,” Mnyupe concluded.