Southern African Science Service Centre for Climate Change and Adaptive Land Management (SASSCAL) participated in the first Namibia Green Hydrogen conference. The event was organized by the Economic Association of Namibia (EAN), in collaboration with the Namibia Investment Promotion and Development Board of Namibia (NIPDB), with support from the Hanns Seidel Foundation (HSF). The conference took place on the 16th -17th August 2022 at Windhoek Country Club, under the theme ‘Towards a Green Hydrogen Hub in Africa’, SASSCAL was a platinum sponsor of this event.

The conference featured discussions around topics relevant to the developments in the green hydrogen sector including the expected impact of Namibia’s first Green Hydrogen Project, maximising green hydrogen benefits for the local market, and the required regulatory framework to govern this new sector, and Human Resources required to support the emerging industry among others.

During this event Mr. James Mnyupe, Presidential Economic Adviser, and Namibia’s Hydrogen Commissioner, announced the successful proposals under the Pilot Project to be funded from the N$500 million provided by the German government. All the 4 proposals will undergo several steps including a detail due diligence exercise by SASSCAL and our German partners before award of the grants. SASSCAL’s team of engineers, scientists, communication personnel and project managers are excited about this particular development.

This comes after the Namibia and German Governments signed a Joint Communique of Intent (JCOI) which availed a grant funding towards the development of the Green Hydrogen industry in Namibia on the 25th of August 2021. One of the key priority areas of this Agreement was “Pilot Projects”, where €30 million was allocated.

The grants provided under this directive are aimed at promoting international collaboration in the field of green hydrogen and the derivatives produced from it, in addition to storage, transport and the use of integrated application technologies.

The programme is fully funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and SASSCAL has been appointed as the implementing partner for the three programmes under the JCOI including the pilot projects. SASSCAL is responsible for administering the call, selection of the proposals that meets the minimum criteria, contracting process, award of the contracts and monitoring the projects until completion.

The call for proposals was advertised on the JCoI website (jcoinamger.sasscal.org) developed by SASSCAL. The call attracted 27 pilot project proposals which required Namibian and German partners to apply for funding to implement Green Hydrogen pilot projects in Namibia. This cooperation isn’t the first in SADC; BMBF has funded the production of Green Hydrogen generation potential in SADC through the H2Atlas Africa project (www.h2atlas.de/en/) which is also coordinated by SASSCAL in 12 SADC countries.

During the conference, speaker after speaker hailed the historical relationships between Namibia and Germany which continues to be strengthened in several other programmes. Being a proud brain child of this relationship, SASSCAL is in good hands.