The European Union (EU) has committed to invest about N$20 billion towards the strategic partnership on sustainable raw materials and green hydrogen in Namibia.
The partnership is part of the endorsed roadmap for the EU-Namibia strategic partnership. The EU also committed to providing support for the planned study to develop the port of Walvis Bay into an industrial and logistics hub for the region.
The roadmap partnership, running from 2023 to 2025, is the culmination of a memorandum of agreement signed last November.
The partnership was agreed upon and entered into by President Hage Geingob and President Ursula von der Leyen at the ongoing, first EU-Namibia Business Forum in Brussels, Belgium.
The forum, which ends today (25 October), aims at promoting business-to-business and business-to-government linkages and facilitating trade and investment opportunities in the areas of renewable hydrogen and sustainable raw materials.
“Namibia recognises that its world-class renewable energy resources provide a strong foundation upon which we will build a sustainable and impactful green industrial base. Namibia is also cognisant that to fully capture the opportunity at hand, we will have to mobilise fit-for-purpose capital that appropriately prices risk to optimise the cost of said capital. This is a key element that will form the cornerstone of this transformative partnership with the EU,” President Geingob said.
Namibia is committed to developing a large-scale green energy sector while also taking a hard stance on the non-export of its raw mineral and rare earth materials as it pushes for industrialisation and value addition.
At the same forum, Geingob reiterated that Namibia will not export its natural resources in raw form, as witnessed by the ban on unprocessed lithium from the Erongo region.
“Thanks to its abundant renewable energy potential, Namibia is becoming a front-runner in the green hydrogen space. The EU is proud to be a partner in this transformative journey towards green industrialisation. Together, we can further decarbonise our economies, create jobs and ensure a more prosperous and greener future for our societies,” Ursula von der Leyen said.
She further stated that the EU will also support an upcoming study for the development of the Walvis Bay port, the entry point from the Atlantic side to the Walvis Bay to Maputo Corridor, which is one of the 11 Strategic Corridors the EU envisages to support as part of the EU-Africa Global Gateway Investment Package.
“Its location makes it a natural gateway for international trade to the Southern African Development Community, a region with over 300 million inhabitants. With EU support, the Port of Antwerp and Bruges International will develop a master plan that covers multimodal infrastructure, spatial planning and market organisation for the Port of Walvis Bay to carry out this transformation and become a regional logistics and industrial hub for the green hydrogen and derivatives economy.”
Through the implementation of the Global Gateway strategy, the EU aims to mobilise up to N$6 trillion (€300 billion) in public and private investments from 2021 to 2027 to boost smart, clean and secure connections in digital, energy and transport sectors, and to strengthen health, education and research systems, creating essential links rather than dependencies, and closing the global investment gap.
All this is in the EU’s efforts, seeking to secure a sustainable supply of raw materials, especially critical raw materials, as an essential prerequisite for delivering on green and clean energy objectives.
Besides Namibia, the EU has already established three strategic partnerships on raw materials with Canada and Ukraine in 2021, as well as Kazakhstan in 2022.
