Namibia’s hydrogen superpower dream

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1:11Johannes Dell:Now I've just come to what was once a railway station called Grasplatz, or grassy place in the middle of the Namibian desert. The old station building with just crumbling, empty window frames. and it's the only building for miles around as far as you can see.

1:33Johannes Dell:Over 100 years ago in this spot, a railway labourer called Zacharias Lewala found a shimmering stone. His discovery led to a diamond rush in this remote corner of southwest Africa. Prospectors flooded to the small harbour town of Lydoritz nearby, bringing a boom that lasted a few decades and then it all faded away.

2:00Johannes Dell:I'm Johannes Dell and in this edition of the documentary from the BBC World Service, I'll be asking whether after decades of being a sleepy backwater, Lüderitz is in for another boom, this time one based on green hydrogen and fuelled by the abundance of sun and wind in this part of Africa. We're seeing new energy, new investments, new opportunities, new services and amenities that never would have come down to lose this. It is European countries who are pushing a multi-billion mega project here in a bid to cut dirty emissions from their heavy industries. I want to know whether Namibia's ambition to become a green hydrogen superpower can succeed.

2:41Johannes Dell:Will it harm one of the world's most fragile ecosystems? And will the profits benefit a legion of young unemployed hoping to become part of a sustainable future? At the end of the day, Luderitz is a good town for investors to come benefit, but the people from the town, we don't benefit from the kings. People don't know what big project it actually is. Follow me to one of the remotest spots in southern Africa to find out whether it could play a key part in the fight against global warming while bringing prosperity to its people.

3:16Johannes Dell:Landing at Lüdritz Airport is a little different. After an hour's flight over an inhabited desert, the South Atlantic appears. Ladies and gentlemen from the planet, welcome to Lüdritz. How's it going to be a pleasure to be with us? And just be advised, the wind is quite, it's popping quite heavily on the outside. So just be, take care as you're descending down the stairs. Bye-bye, thank you so much. Thank you.

3:42Johannes Dell:It's sound advice. This place is famous for its fierce wind that greets you as you make your way to the terminal, a single-storey building in the middle of nowhere.

4:00Johannes Dell:The road to Liederitz passes a jumble of sand-filled ruins left over from the diamond heyday, a reminder that boom can quickly turn to bust, which begs the question, is green hydrogen, a cleaner fuel aimed at cutting emissions from heavy industry, a genuine prospect for the long term, or just the next set of ruins waiting to happen?

4:27Johannes Dell:The ghost town of Kolmanskop is worth a stop for a guided tour. In the early 1900s, this was one of the wealthiest towns in the world. Its citizens enjoyed surprising comforts in the most inhospitable of places, with well-stocked shops, a theatre, a bowling alley and even a small tram. Ice was available to cool the champagne, and those luxury goods were brought in from Lüteritz harbour.

4:57Johannes Dell:The port town provided the lifeline for Kormanskop, and its own fortunes rose and fell with the diamond trade. It went back to being a sleepy fishing town, so that economically the town has been struggling. That's Phil Balhau. Until the autumn of 2025, he was the mayor of Lüderitz. When I visited, he had just resigned and could not speak on the record, so I caught up with him later, connecting remotely. He says what makes the town special are its people who call themselves Buchtas, a term derived from the Afrikaans' word for bay. This town was so isolated and cut off from the rest of the world.

5:36So this community had to become self-reliant. And it didn't make any difference to them if you were wealthy or poor or black or white. They were really such a tightly woven society. And that's what makes you a Bukhtar, is just when you're part of that fabric.

5:53Johannes Dell:But the community is struggling. As elsewhere in Namibia, young people can't find jobs. Alcohol and drug abuse are a problem. something Phil Belhau knows better than most, having overcome addiction himself when he was younger. The reason why people get into these socio-economic evils is the lack of hope, the despair. The last two years was really challenging being the mayor because everybody comes to your office and hopes that you can unlock somewhere an opportunity, but the opportunities aren't there. If green hydrogen is meant to fix unemployment and create opportunities, what is changing for people right now while the big projects are still on paper.

6:38Johannes Dell:It seems just the prospect of a major development has got the town moving. The new Liederitz Maritime Museum here is part of an impressive redevelopment of the huge old power station that once provided the electricity for Kormanskop. On the top floor, high above the exhibits of ships, fishing and deep-sea mining gear that famous wind is hammering at the heavy iron doors.

7:09Johannes Dell:And it's that relentless power, along with the equally relentless sunshine, which has brought green hydrogen developers here. So what is the plan? One of the world's most ambitious hydrogen production facilities is developed here by the Namibian registered company, Hyphen. It's still in the feasibility stage, but on paper at least, the numbers are staggering. The total investment amounts to over 10 billion US dollars. The size of Namibia's entire economy is just over 13 billion by comparison. The extensive infrastructure will be built in the nearby national park, the same area where diamonds were once found.

7:50Johannes Dell:And by the end of 2028, the company wants to produce enough hydrogen to export 1 million tons of ammonia, That's the derivative that's easier to store and ship. To make the hydrogen green, Hyphen wants to build massive solar and wind turbine farms, initially producing 3.75 gigawatts of power, the energy needed to extract the gas from water. It's all a bit hard to take in, so I'd try to get my head around some of the numbers by climbing in the saddle.

8:24Johannes Dell:I'm doing a little workout using one of the exercise bikes in the fitness house gym here in the old power station and the dashboard on the bike tells me that I'm producing an average of 170 watts of power compare that to the renewable energy capacity the green hydrogen project expects to have My very rough calculation is that it would take 20 million of me working out to equal that capacity. Right.

8:59Johannes Dell:One of the most crucial figures, though, is the number of jobs Hyphen hopes to create. 15 ,000 during construction and 3 ,000 permanent roles once operational. But who are those jobs for? Locals or imported skills from elsewhere? After my gym workout, I met two youth activists in the restaurant just opposite, who should be first in line for new opportunities if this boom is more than just a promise. Like many young Namibians, Lucille Adams and Junior Muttalini are not formally employed, but they have multiple projects on the go, from ocean education to sport coaching and wedding photography, to name a few.

9:42Johannes Dell:In short, they are making the best out of limited opportunities. What is it like to grow up here? As a child, it was wonderful, actually. Like, we are people from the sea. You talk about fish, you talk about kelp, you talk about oysters, you talk about... So our elders used to know that if my father isn't a fisherman and his father is a fisherman, my house would always have fish because that was how we operated in Luterte. The talk of the towns, green hydrogen, the country's biggest investment coming in. What do you as young people and youth activists think of it? This is a great, massive project which can be able to change many people's lives.

10:27But it brings a lot of mixed feelings. There will be job opportunities provided. It can also change the economics of the living standard here of people in New Dread. But how will the youth benefit from this project? And if everybody is going to benefit, how?

10:42Johannes Dell:What do you think? Is everybody going to benefit and how? I don't believe so. We have been going to meetings with investors and with people from outside, but no action after it. Like we will come back to another engagement with the same people and then we would have the same conversation over and over and over. So at the end of the day, Luderitz is a good town for investors to come benefit, but the people from the town, we don't benefit from the kings. People don't know what we are getting ourselves into. If people don't understand what's coming, can they ever truly give their consent or benefit from the project?

11:21Johannes Dell:I need to understand the basics. What exactly is being planned here and what has to go right for it to work?

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13:04Johannes Dell:You're listening to the documentary from the BBC World Service with me, Johannes Dell.

13:17Johannes Dell:To find out how the hydrogen economy works, I've come to Namibia's busy capital, Windhoek. So here, this is the one left that I'm going to show you. I'm at the University of Namibia to meet Zivai Chiguware, the acting director of the Namibia Green Hydrogen Research Institute.

13:45Johannes Dell:Dr Chiguware showed me around his laboratories, where his team are testing materials to see how they can safely store and transport hydrogen, a gas that is very volatile, as he explained to me in his office. Maybe a very small lecture in chemistry, hydrogen is the most reactive element known. It is usually joined together with other atoms or molecules, as in the case of water, for example. Two atoms of hydrogen are joined together with one oxygen. So in order for you to actually produce hydrogen, you need to supply electricity through a process of electrolysis. And when you supply that, the water molecule will break and you have hydrogen on one side and oxygen on the other side.

14:33If you now produce that electricity from renewable energy sources, then we call the hydrogen produced green.

14:41Johannes Dell:Hydrogen is widely used in the manufacture of steel chemicals and fertilisers. It's usually made using fossil fuels, resulting in what's known as black or grey hydrogen, which is cheaper to make. But the green variety could help cut emissions from dirty industries. To make it requires not just sun and wind energy, but a lot of fresh water, something this desert nation has very little of. The solution is to take advantage of Namibia's long coastline and desalinate seawater. But that is a process that churns out a chemical-laden cocktail of extremely salty by-product called brine. If we are not careful, the fishes might start migrating away from the place where we are used to having them, and this could disturb the livelihoods of the peasants.

15:30So our idea is we can actually mine from brine and remove certain chemicals in a commercial venture, and we are now busy with the economic modelling.

15:41Johannes Dell:So that's the process for producing green hydrogen. Use renewable energy to power electrolyzers, the technology that will break water molecules to free up the hydrogen gas. Technically, it can be done. My next question is a crucial one. Can it be done here without damaging a uniquely fragile place?

16:06Johannes Dell:The National Botanical Gardens on a hill above Windhoek are as close as our get to see the unique flora of the former diamond mining site near Lüteritz known as the Sperlgebiet, that's German for no-go area and it remains strictly off limits to the public It's now known as the Zaukaib National Park which means soft sand in the local Nama Klick language and it's here where Haifen is planning to build. So this is the desert plant house? That's what we call it, yes. And it houses all the plants from the very dry areas of Namibia and we have to have them under roof because just a little bit too much water for these plants and they will die.

16:49They will start rotting and die.

16:52Johannes Dell:Hata Kolberg is one of Namibia's leading botanists. Together with her colleague Sophia Amakali, she's running a project listing all of the country's endemic and near-endemic plant species, flora unique to Namibia and the region, including those in the Tzaukaib. Would this be an area that is particularly rich in endemic and semi-endemic species? Absolutely. So the Spellherbeet has been a restricted area zone for many, many years. So it's safe to say it's a good example of what an undisturbed arid ecosystem looks like. There's a very high biodiversity, especially when it comes to succulents. And yeah, so I would like for it to remain that way.

17:37But looking at the initiative of introducing the green hydrogen, it's going to have a really serious impact on the biodiversity of this.

17:47Johannes Dell:I've even heard the name biodiversity hotspot. A hotspot meaning a place where there are many different species. and I don't want to kill you with statistics but... Please do. In Namibia we have got about 3 ,850 plant species. In the Tsaokai Park we have 36 % of the total of the Namibian flora is found in that park and another 46%. So nearly half of the plants found in the park are found only there, or mostly there.

18:39Johannes Dell:My trip to the capital has underlined just how complex the green hydrogen debate is, and it's not just about the Tsaukaib National Park, but the ocean too, which has been the lifeblood of Lüteritz for generations.

18:57Johannes Dell:I've come to Shearwater Bay, half an hour's drive out of town, where the pupils of the Lüteritz Blue School are enjoying their weekly Oceans Day. It's part of the school's mission to educate the future guardians of the sea. What do you want to be when you grow up? I want to teach marine and maritime because I know a lot about marine and maritime since I live next to the ocean and I grew up here. What's planned right here would profoundly change these children's futures and what their hometown of Lüseritz will gain and what it might lose. Do you see dolphins all the time here? You've never seen them in the wild.

19:35So the kelp farm's over in that area. That's why all of the dolphins gather there.

19:46Johannes Dell:In this spot, Hyphen is hoping to build its desalination plant at a processing facility that will turn hydrogen into ammonia, which can be more easily stored and transported. That, at least, is the plan. And if it becomes reality, this untouched moon landscape is going to become a giant industrial zone. There are a lot of competing interests here and I'm just wondering whether multiple green futures can share the same water Just offshore, where I spotted some dolphins earlier a small company, Kelp Blue, is farming giant algae that provide specialist fertiliser and are also good at capturing and storing carbon from the air We grow the baby kelp in a laboratory we put it onto a twine that twine we then wrap around structures at sea and then it does the rest itself with nature.