WINDHOEK, Sept. 9 — The Bank of Namibia (BoN) has projected that the country’s burgeoning hydrogen industry could contribute 4.1 billion U.S. dollars to Namibia’s gross domestic product (GDP) by 2030. Speaking to attendees at the Namibia in Focus event in the national capital of Windhoek on Tuesday, Johannes Gawaxab, governor of the BoN, said the industry is also expected to generate about 18,000 jobs, providing a substantial boost to employment opportunities in the country. “Namibia aspires to produce hydrogen and its derivatives at highly competitive costs and create an at-scale green fuels industry that will serve markets in Europe, China, Japan, South Korea, and other parts of the world,” he said. Namibia has the potential to offer low-cost green hydrogen production second only to Chile, owing to its abundance of solar and wind resources. Namibia also stands to benefit from the oil and gas industry, Gawaxab said, adding that the nascent oil and gas sector has the potential to profoundly reshape the nation’s economic landscape, as at least 3 billion barrels of oil reserves have been discovered within Namibia’s borders. In April this year, Namibia announced its third significant light oil discovery in the Orange Basin, adding to a series of successful discoveries over the past year. Three of these discoveries rank among the world’s top 30 largest deepwater oil discoveries since 2015, and production is expected to begin in the next four to six years, he said. Namibia established the Sovereign Wealth Fund in May 2022 to manage wealth generated from its natural resources for future generations. This includes the Intergenerational Savings Fund for investing proceeds from current resource utilization and divestiture in state assets and the Stabilization Account to protect the economy from commodity price volatility.
Xinhua
