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The Project
Since 2021, Hyphen Hydrogen Energy, a green hydrogen developer, is partnering with the Government of Namibia to build the country’s first fully integrated green hydrogen–to–ammonia project. With full production targeted to begin in 2026, the initiative involves a US$10 billion investment. It is expected to significantly transform Namibia’s economy and position the country as an important global supplier. Namibia holds an exceptional advantage for large-scale green hydrogen production, combining favorable wind and solar conditions with vast open land and a rare geography that places these resources close to the major transport links on the coast.
The project is backed by major Western companies and governments eager to secure future supply chains. With financing dominated by the German firm ENERTRAG and the British investment fund Nicholas Holdings, the project raises important questions regarding how it can genuinely serve national goals while remaining under Western influence. More broadly, the project echoes long-standing concerns across the African continent about whether strategic initiatives can serve local needs when foreign investors hold most of the power.
Controversy
The project represents an important economic opportunity for the country. It is expected to create approximately 15,000 jobs during the construction phase, and around 3,000 permanent jobs once operational. ENERTRAG Board member Dr. Tobias Bischof-Niemz stated that “Hyphen shows Africa’s central role in the energy transition and underscores the need for strong international partnerships grounded in shared democratic principles.”
Yet this celebration of democratic collaboration contrasts sharply with the lived experience of impacted communities, revealing a gap between the project’s rhetoric and the realities on the ground.
The Nama people, descendants of victims of colonial genocide, were removed from their land in southern Namibia by the Germans so they could exploit diamonds and other natural resources. Now facing exclusion from the decision-making process surrounding the Hyphen project on their ancestral land, communities have reported receiving neither adequate information nor meaningful consultation, leaving them without the opportunity to give or withhold consent. According to international human rights standards, indigenous and tribal peoples have the right to self-determination, and to free, prior, and informed consent before infrastructure projects are developed on their ancestral land, something which the project violates.
Concerns also extend to environmental governance: the project’s proposed footprint inside Tsau //Khaeb National Park, a globally recognised arid-biodiversity hotspot, raises red flags over ecosystem disruption. Plans to expand the port of Lüderitz into a deep-water facility risks contaminating the nearby protected Namibian Islands Area. Coastal and marine environments, designated as “Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas”, also face threats.
The Price of Green Power
Foreign investment and government involvement, particularly from Germany, have sparked criticism of “green colonialism”, a term which denounces neocolonial projects disguised as advancements for sustainability. As environmental and social risks are placed onto post-colonial states, narratives of a green transition conceal global inequalities. Local communities, NGOs, and scholars argue that historically marginalized groups bear the brunt of hydrogen production’s social and environmental costs, while countries like Germany reap the economic and decarbonization benefits.
Hyphen illustrates how major infrastructure projects can recreate extractivist dynamics within a post-colonial economy. The project also reveals the contradictions of development models that ultimately reinforce the inequalities they claim to address. Namibia faces less risk than some other African countries, but it is not immune to destabilization or rising debt pressures. These vulnerabilities stem from long-standing economic structures and current financial relations that favour wealthier nations and multinational corporations.
The New Scramble for Africa
This project is far from unique; similar initiatives across the continent, like the Lobito Corridor in Angola-Zambia, are reshaping political and economic power dynamics. In many ways, what is referred to as green transition has simply shifted the coordinates of old colonial projects. Where once gold, ivory, and rubber were extracted, now it is lithium, cobalt, and hydrogen to produce wind turbines, solar panels and batteries. Africa is being reinserted into the global economy not as a sovereign agent, but as a supplier of green transition commodities, fuelled by Western interests.
This dynamic signals a new scramble for Africa, where climate ambition from the Global North reshapes African futures without fully accounting for African agency. Despite contributing only about four percent of global CO₂ emissions, African countries increasingly shoulder the socio-economic and ecological costs of climate action designed elsewhere. This imbalance is deepened by the hypocrisy of Western states that preach “degrowth” at home while backing their multinationals in destructive practices abroad.
Development is framed as partnership, yet decision-making power remains uneven, and benefits continue to flow outward. For Namibia, the challenge is not to reject green hydrogen, but to ensure that it does not reproduce the hierarchies the “just transition” claims to overcome.
A Different Approach
As Doctor Vasna Ramasar cautions, “we need to locate the just transition within the broader colonial-capitalist project. Otherwise, we risk replicating the same structures of inequality, just in a greener form.” To move beyond unjust systems of energy production and consumption, simply replacing fossil fuels for renewables is not enough.
Doing so merely treats the symptoms while leaving the deeper problems intact. A truly just energy transition demands a systems-thinking approach, one that confronts the historical and structural forces behind centuries of exploitation and resource extraction from the Global South. This means acknowledging enduring colonial hierarchies and profit-driven models that degrade ecosystems.
Western countries have a moral imperative to improve. Any transition led by the Global North will fall short if it simply repackages old extractive practices in “green” form.
For the Hyphen project, this means putting Namibian priorities at the center of the energy transition. This could begin with a binding benefit-sharing agreement that secures a meaningful share of project revenues for Namibian development rather than external investors. Genuine consultation with the Nama people and clear guarantees of local ownership would help ensure that the project strengthens economic sovereignty. Finally, the project should require technology transfer and training, ensuring long-term national capacity.
Edited by Patrick Armstrong
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and they do not reflect the position of the McGill Journal of Political Science or the Political Science Students’ Association.
Featured image by Defense Visual Information Distribution Service
