Mr Mansmann, Innovation Commissioner for Green Hydrogen at the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) will vist the Daures Green Hydrogen Village on the 27th March 2023. The aim of the site visit is to see the progress that the Daures consortium has made in the implementation of the activities. The event will be attended by high-level dignitaries from Namibian governments as well as high-level representatives from Germany Institutions, Southern Africa Science Service Centre for Climate Change and Adaptive Land Management (SASSCAL) and Daures. This comes after SASSCAL and the Daures Green Hydrogen consortium has signed a 12 million Euro funding agreement on 14th December 2022. The programme is fully funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).
Daures Green Hydrogen Village is a project under the Joint Communique of Intent (JCoI) signed between Germany and Namibia. SASSCAL has been appointed as the implementing partner of the programms under the JCoI.
The Daures Green Hydrogen Village is located in the Daures Constituency which is the largest constituency in Erongo Region, Namibia, with a population of approximately 11,350 inhabitants. Majority of the people in this area depend on communal subsistence farming for their livelihood. The Daures Green Hydrogen Village will be Africa’s first green hydrogen community. In Its first phase, the village will employ over 90 Namibians during construction and up to 50 permanent employees in a modern carbon free estate.
The project objectives are sustainable production of green hydrogen and ammonia from renewable sources; development of green schemes that create local employment and partnership; demonstration of green hydrogen applications; and enablement of green hydrogen economy. The pilot phase will run for an 18-months period.
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 (http://www.h2atlas.de/en/) which is also coordinated by SASSCAL in 12 SADC countries.