Hyphen Hydrogen Energy’s original development plan, published when Namibia selected the company as preferred bidder, projected the country would begin exporting green hydrogen before 2025 and start production in 2026 from an initial 4.4 billion dollar, 2-gigawatt first phase. The project remains in a feasibility study scheduled to run through the end of 2026, meaning it has not advanced past preliminary assessment more than a year after its own original export target date passed.
The gap between Hyphen’s original timeline and its current status is the clearest measure of how far Namibia’s green hydrogen ambitions have drifted from the projections that first attracted European backing. The project, a joint venture between Germany’s ENERTRAG and South Africa’s Nicholas Holdings in which the Namibian government holds 24% equity through SDG Namibia One, was originally costed at 9.4 billion dollars for the full build-out, targeting roughly 300,000 tonnes of green hydrogen annually at a production cost of between 1.73 and 2.30 dollars per kilogram, a figure that would have made it competitive with the cheapest green hydrogen anywhere. That cost target now looks optimistic against how the broader industry outlook has evolved. BloombergNEF’s most recent global cost projection, published this year, puts achievable green hydrogen costs between 1.60 and 5.09 dollars per kilogram by 2050, with cost parity against fossil-based hydrogen realistically limited to China, India and Texas, meaning Namibia’s original per-kilogram target sits at the extreme optimistic edge of what a considerably more cautious industry-wide forecast now considers achievable anywhere in the world a quarter-century later.
The job creation numbers show a comparable gap between announcement and outcome. Namibia’s Ministry of Mining and Energy projected the broader green hydrogen sector would create 280,000 jobs by 2030, rising to 600,000 by 2040, in a country of three million people. Hyphen’s own project-specific projections were more modest but still substantial: 15,000 jobs during construction and 3,000 permanent positions once operational. As of October 2025, fewer than 800 jobs had materialized across the sector, a figure equal to roughly 0.3% of the government’s 2030 sectoral target and under 4.5% of Hyphen’s own project-level projection alone. Joseph Mukendwa, acting head of the state-run Namibia Green Hydrogen Programme, described the underlying problem plainly: “The market has not developed as we had anticipated. Without a long-term offtake agreement, it is difficult to get a bankable project off the ground.”
The most concrete illustration of that missing offtake is German utility RWE’s withdrawal, though the two sides characterize its significance very differently. RWE signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding with Hyphen in 2022 to explore purchasing approximately 300,000 tonnes of green ammonia annually starting in 2027, an agreement multiple accounts confirm involved no committed capital. RWE ended that exploratory arrangement in September 2025, stating that “as global hydrogen markets mature more gradually than anticipated, we have reviewed all related projects within our portfolio, including the Hyphen initiative,” and had been, by most accounts, the only potential buyer to have publicly shown interest in large-scale imports from Namibia’s hydrogen sector. Hyphen’s own response minimizes the exit’s significance, with the company stating that “RWE was never a project partner or investor in Hyphen” and that “the Hyphen project is not affected and continues as planned.” Both statements can be technically accurate: a non-binding exploratory agreement carries no contractual weight to withdraw from in a way that damages the underlying project’s legal standing, but the loss of the only publicly identified prospective buyer for a project whose entire commercial rationale depends on European export demand is a materially different kind of setback than Hyphen’s framing suggests, one Mukendwa’s own comments about the broader market failing to develop as anticipated implicitly acknowledge.
Namibia’s pivot toward oil and gas is proceeding on a timeline the hydrogen sector has not matched. TotalEnergies is expected to take a final investment decision this year on the Venus offshore oil field, part of discoveries estimated at around six billion barrels that could make Namibia one of Africa’s larger oil producers within a decade. President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah told the Namibia International Energy Conference in April that the country was “on the cusp of a new energy era,” a remark made in reference to oil and gas rather than hydrogen, while Africa Energy Chamber chair NJ Ayuk urged the country to “produce every drop of hydrocarbon you can find.” That shift raises a direct question about the roughly 500 million euros the European Investment Bank has committed toward Namibian port expansions, railways, roads and energy networks intended to support the hydrogen sector: infrastructure of that kind is not use-specific, and a European Commission spokesperson would confirm only that “EU support in Namibia is not targeted at fossil fuels or fossil fuel infrastructure” while declining to address whether the oil and gas industry might also benefit from it. Mukendwa was more direct: “We cannot be naive and say that the oil and gas industry is unlikely to benefit,” while maintaining that Namibia sees no inherent competition between pursuing both sectors simultaneously.
Not every Namibian hydrogen project has stalled to the same degree as Hyphen. HyIron’s smaller Oshivela project is proceeding toward direct reduced iron production, Zhero has proposed a 500,000 tonne annual green ammonia facility near Walvis Bay with a final investment decision targeted for this year, and the small-scale Hydrogen Dune refueling station, powered by a 5 megawatt solar-linked electrolyzer, was reported roughly 80% complete as of 2024. Namibia’s National Planning Commission has pointed to that kind of domestically-oriented progress, rather than the export-scale ambition Hyphen represents, as evidence that the sector retains momentum, a framing consistent with the European Commission’s own position that it remains committed to Namibian green hydrogen while declining to offer any estimate of future export volumes or timelines, stating that “any reliable estimate of export volumes, domestic use, and timelines would still be premature.” That caution, from the institution that committed a billion euros to a sector it once expected to attract 20 billion euros in private investment, is itself a measure of how far expectations have moved since 2022.
