Information and communications technology (ICT) giant Vodacom Group plans to acquire a controlling stake in Vodafone Egypt for R41-billion.

The group, which announced on November 10 that it had agreed terms with Vodafone, will fund the acquisition of a 55% stake in Vodafone Egypt by issuing 242-million new ordinary shares at R135.75 a share and R8.2-billion in cash.

This values the proposed transaction, which remains subject to regulatory and shareholder approvals, at about R41-billion.

“Acquiring a majority stake in Vodafone Egypt would cement Vodacom Group’s position as Africa’s leading techco by advancing our strategic connectivity and financial services ambitions while increasing our total population coverage on the continent to over half a billion people and more than 40% of Africa’s gross domestic product,” said Vodacom CEO Shameel Joosub.

Following the proposed transaction, Vodacom Group will cover a population of more than 500-million across the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Lesotho, Mozambique, South Africa and Tanzania.

He commented that the proposed deal would provide shareholders a revenue and profitability diversification opportunity that had the potential to accelerate the group’s medium-term operating profit growth potential into double digits.

“Vodafone Egypt is ideally positioned to capture growth in a burgeoning ICT market,” he said, noting that Vodafone Egypt was the largest mobile network operator in Egypt with 43% revenue market share, offering a range of integrated telecommunications services including voice, data and mobile money services to 43-million consumer and enterprise customers.

Vodafone Egypt has a proven track record of consistently delivering strong revenue growth, with a compound annual growth rate of 14% in revenue from 2017 to 2021, as well as generating attractive margins, strong free cash flow and a return on capital employed of 31% for the financial year ended March 31.

Further, Vodafone Egypt is the country’s largest mobile wallet provider through Vodafone Cash, which boasted almost 90% of mobile wallet transactions as at August 2021.

“Vodacom Group shareholders are expected to gain significant value by scaling its multi-product strategy or System of Advantage into Egypt. With more than 80% of Egypt’s 100-million population unbanked, there is a significant opportunity to leverage its financial services platforms, global partnerships and best practices into this largely untapped market,” Joosub added.

Vodacom also believes that there is attractive synergy potential through the combination of Vodafone Egypt’s software factory with Vodacom Group’s existing big data capabilities, closer cooperation in scaling pan-African enterprise and Internet of Things solutions, enabling the proliferation of digital services through a platform approach and talent sharing.

“In 2017 we bought a strategic stake in Safaricom from Vodafone that has proven to be value accretive. We said at the time that we had negotiated an attractive price for Safaricom and we believe this to be the case with Vodafone Egypt,” he said.

As the transaction is third-party related, Vodacom implemented the appropriate governance controls to ensure the transaction was and is negotiated, evaluated and executed on an arm’s length basis.

Vodacom Group appointed PwC to provide a fairness opinion on the proposed transaction, which the group will include in a circular to be distributed to shareholders ahead of a general meeting in January 2022 where minority shareholders will vote on the matter.

Vodafone, which currently holds a 60.5% stake in Vodacom Group, will be precluded from voting on this at the meeting.

“Once all of the conditions precedent are met pertaining to the proposed transaction, the acquisition is expected to conclude before March 31, 2022. On completion of the acquisition, Vodacom Group will simplify its dividend policy to at least 75% of headline earnings,” Joosub noted.

The current policy is ...

Liquidity constraints and procurement problems continue to impede Eskom’s reliability maintenance recovery (RMR) programme, with CEO Andre de Ruyter reporting that South Africa’s public procurement rules have undercut the utility’s efforts to swiftly appoint the competent contractors needed to undertake the programme.

In a briefing hosted during another bout of Stage 4 load-shedding – which is expected to be de-escalated to Stage 3 on Wednesday and then Stage 2 on Friday, before being cancelled entirely over the weekend – De Ruyter said the procurement system “really does not lend itself to this type of maintenance programme”.

The RMR was first unveiled in early 2020 and was punted as the solution to help Eskom stabilise its coal fleet to the point where the risk of load-shedding would be materially reduced, albeit not eliminated, by October this year.

In the event, Eskom will breach 1 000 hours of load-shedding for the first time this year, making it the worst-ever period for the implementation of rotational cuts.

Under the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA), the utility is required to apply to the National Treasury for permission to deviate from the rules, with the average response time currently exceeding 77 days.

“You can imagine that there are a large number of these requests that get made and that it has had a negative impact on our ability to appoint the necessary competent contractors and to do so swiftly . [and] to make sure that those contractors are on site, properly resourced with the right spares and the right skills at their disposal in order to execute on the maintenance programme.”

COO Jan Oberholzer, therefore, confirmed that Eskom was “absolutely not” satisfied with the competence of all the contractors currently performing maintenance at its coal power stations.

Employing incompetent contractors, he indicated, was linked directly to the procurement rules, which “we are actually addressing with Treasury”.

Likening the coal plants to a Mercedes-Benz vehicle, he said it was not always straightforward, owing to the procurement rules, to take the car to a “Mercedes-Benz garage that employed a Mercedes mechanic and used Mercedes spares”.

“In the past, you had to go out on open tender and appoint whoever was the cheapest . . . and this is giving us, in some areas of the business, significant challenges.

“But we are discussing this with our colleagues at National Treasury to have a look at how the PFMA should be applied at Eskom, specifically in the current situation that we find ourselves in.”

Likewise, the RMR had been affected by the group’s liquidity problems, which were resulting in the release of insufficient funding, which was also not always flowing in time for maintenance to be fully planned and executed.

Oberholzer has indicated previously that R11-billion is required yearly to maintain the generation business and that at least 24 months is needed to plan a major outage.

“This financial year, we were given R3-billion in April and only in September were we allowed an additional R3-billion,” Oberholzer said, explaining that the late release of the funding had made it difficult to both plan and execute this year’s maintenance schedule.

In the normal course, finances should be released at least six months prior to the start of an outage to secure the spares and services required, but De Ruyter said that there would have been a risk of default had the cash been released any earlier than it was.

Funding had also not year been secured for the RMR for the next two financial years.

De Ruyter said the liquidity crunch and procurement issues, together with the hard Covid lockdowns of 2020, had delayed the roll-out of the RMR and had also meant that it could not meet its initial target of having stabilised the coal fleet by October.

He once again reiterated that the risk of load-shedding would persist for as long as South Africa did not add the 4 000 MW to 6 000 MW required for system adequacy and to create the t...

If South Africa is unable to secure highly concessional terms from the international partners that have offered $8.5-billion to support the country’s energy transition and to provide social protection for workers and communities associated with the coal value chain, it will not pursue the transaction, an official in The Presidency said on Tuesday.

Speaking at an event hosted on the sidelines of COP26, Rudi Dicks, who is programme management officer in the private office of the President, emphasised that no agreement had yet been concluded and that South Africa could still “walk away if we feel that the conditions are too onerous”.

“[The funding] has to be highly concessional – it has to benefit us.

“It shouldn’t be equal to or just below the kind of financing that we could secure on the open bond market,” he said.

On November 2, South Africa, France, Germany, the UK and the US, along with the European Union, announced a ‘Just Energy Transition Partnership’ to support South Africa’s decarbonisation efforts in line with the country’s updated Nationally Determined Contribution emissions goals.

The announcement has received a mixed reception with some lauding it as an important breakthrough in South Africa’s shift from coal to renewables, and others raising concern that the deal could result in the precipitous closure of coal power stations, with negative consequences for electricity supply and the economy.

The declaration was unveiled against the backdrop of a return to an intensive phase of load-shedding, triggered, yet again, by the deteriorating performance of Eskom’s aging and under-maintained coal fleet, the energy availability factor of which has fallen to below 65%.

Dicks said that the “nuts and bolts” of the deal, including the sources and mix of funding and whether any government guarantees would need to be extended, still had to be negotiated.

The declaration make provision for the establishment of a task force, comprising representatives from South Africa and the international partners, to finalise the funding mechanism.

The task force would negotiate the ratio of grants to loans, as well as give greater definition to the nature of the concessional loan terms and their tenure.

“The devil is in the detail, of course, and that’s the next step,” Dicks said, adding that the initial focus would be on Eskom projects, even though the scope of government’s just transition planning had been extended to the manufacture of electric vehicles and the development of a green hydrogen industry.

Dicks confirmed that any deal would be concluded by government rather than Eskom, given that the facility would be used to support initiatives outside of the electricity sector.

South Africa would be assembling an expert finance team, involving participants from both within and outside of government, “to enter into very tough negotiations over the next six months to secure the offer that has been made”.

The team would assess all the risks, including those relating to South Africa’s volatile exchange rate, which Dicks flagged as a significant risk factor.

Speaking on the same platform, Eskom just transition office head Mandy Rambharos underlined the utility’s stance that it saw the funding as only the first step in a far larger programme that would necessarily involve both Eskom and the private sector.

Eskom’s investment pipeline included a mix of generation, transmission and distribution projects collectively valued at about R400-billion ($26-billion) and the funding would be insufficient, she said, to guarantee long-term security of supply.

On the generation front, Eskom has projects with a combined capacity of only 8.5 GW, while it would be decommissioning 22 GW of coal, which would have to be replaced by a renewables fleet of up to 60 GW.

It also needed to invest about R170-billion to add additional grid capacity, including the building of 8 000 km of transmission lines.

Rambharos said that beside the financing, it was important that the ...

Government has committed to speeding up policy changes in the road-freight sector following recent protests by truck drivers against foreign nationals filling job opportunities they believe should go to local drivers, as well as what they view as the lack of regulation in the road-freight industry.

A subsequent meeting between the aggrieved drivers, as well as the ministers of Employment and Labour, and Home Affairs, the Deputy Minister of Police, officials of the Department of Transport (DoT), and other affected departments, has now seen government commit to “speedily address” some of the issues that had been raised.

These include the employment of foreign nationals, especially undocumented foreign nationals, as well as those who arrive in the country as visitors, but end up securing employment in the sector, which is illegal.

“There are [departments of] Home Affairs and Employment and Labour policy initiatives to address migration and related policy initiatives,” said Minister of Employment and Labour Thulas Nxesi.

“I would like to appeal to those who feel aggrieved to desist from intimidation, road disruptions, and the undermining of existing laws and structures.

“We made a promise to meet the industry and we are committed to ensure that a workable solution is found through legislation and other means. We also encourage that existing forums at national and provincial level take the opportunity to find solutions.”

Minister of Home Affairs Aaron Motsoaledi added that the new Border Management Authority (BMA) is being set up, and that it will soon be engaging the trucking sector.

Home Affairs is to ensure that border management is strengthened “to weed out undocumented drivers”.

“In the next few weeks, there will be far-reaching leadership and policy interventions by the BMA, as well as a number of initiatives that we have been involved in to resolve issues around this matter. South Africans should expect a big difference going forward,” said Motsoaledi.

The DoT’s role in the process is to address issues around cross-border transport relations; the validity of foreign-driver issued licences; fake licences; prosecution of non-complying employers; and the potential discrimination against local drivers by the industry.

Joint inspections to address non-compliance in the freight sector are also set to intensify, with law enforcement, including immigration inspectors and the South African Police Service, to play a “much more active role”.

The government delegation also committed to scan all migration and transport legislation impacting negatively on local drivers.

According to data from WeBuyCars a vehicle is most likely to change ownership five to six times during its lifetime.

“New car owners tend to keep their vehicles for six years, and second-hand car owners for three,” says WeBuyCars executive director Faan van der Walt.

Used-car trader WeBuyCars sells more than 9 000 vehicles a month.

“When looking at buying trends in various provinces over the last few months, Gauteng, Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal equals to about 83% of all purchases,” says Van der Walt.

“Gauteng accounts for 43%, the Western Cape for 25% and KwaZulu-Natal for 15%. The rest are split between the other provinces.”

WeBuyCars data also shows that a typical KwaZulu-Natal buyer tends to buy and sell more frequently than customers from other provinces, selling a newer vehicle of higher value so that they can trade up.

Western Cape buyers tend to buy with cash, hold onto their cars for longer and maintain their cars’ service histories, while Gauteng buyers tend to be a combination of the two.

“Twenty years ago, when WeBuyCars was established, we did not aim to become such a large business, but a combination of luck, circumstances and a deep understanding of delivering based on what our customers want and need, has allowed us to grow into a significant business with turnover close to R12-billion,” says Van der Walt.

“Over the years we have relied greatly on industry and provincial trends when making business decisions. We need to know where consumers are located and what their needs are so that we can provide them with the best selection that meets their requirements.”

This is especially true for deciding which vehicles will be sold in which province.

Insights have shown that Volkswagen is the most popular WeBuyCars brand in Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, the Western Cape, the Eastern Cape and Mpumalanga.

Ford reigns supreme in the Free State and Limpopo, while Toyota takes the lead in the North-West and Northern Cape.

Most of the vehicles bought by WeBuyCars are from people between the ages of 30 and 44. This age group roughly accounts for around 37% of all purchases.

Second in line is the 45 to 59 age group, accounting for 28% of all purchases.

“These age group trends do not differ across the provinces. We also see that the age group we buy the least number of cars from are the 75 to 89 age bin, which roughly accounts for 2.6% of all purchases,” says Van der Walt.

The price bracket in which most WeBuyCars vehicles are purchased is between R40 000 to R80 000, with the R120 000 to R200 000 mark being a strong second.

Aligned with the surge in online purchasing and auction sales, WeBuyCars has seen its Gauteng branches make up more than half of its total online sales.

Midstream is the business’ best performing branch (out of four Gauteng branches) with reference to online vehicle sales, currently accounting for around 25% of sales.

WeBuyCars will soon add another Gauteng branch, with the opening of a facility at the Dome.

Mercedes-Benz Vans South Africa (MBVSA) has taken the conversion of the Sprinter panel van into the Sprinter minibus taxi in-house at its Eastern Cape facility.

“To deepen our commitment to the local taxi industry and in support of the South African economy, our 23-seater Sprinter Inkanyezi vehicles are now being converted locally at our East London conversion facility,” says MBVSA product and marketing head Marinus Venter.

“This means that taxi owners will be able to immediately operate and earn income from the purchased vehicle instead of waiting for a conversion [at a third party].”

The Inkanyezi – isiZulu for The Star – is available at dealers as a long-wheelbase 516 CDI.

The list of added advantages in the new conversion process includes conversion parts that are covered by the manufacturer’s two-year/unlimited kilometre warranty and a more durable conversion, says Venter.

The van’s optional extras, such as parcel shelves, USB ports and tow bar are plug-and-play and can be fitted at dealers nationwide.

Pricing for the Inkanyezi starts at a recommended R945 000 including VAT.

The Inkanyezi’s service intervals are every 20 000 km, and the warranty is a two-year/unlimited kilometre offering.

With South Africa now officially experiencing its worst-ever year of rotational power cuts, there is growing concern about both the level and flow of financing for maintenance, as well as the utility’s capacity to implement.

Initial calculations by Jarrad Wright, formerly of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research Energy Centre, indicate that 15% of 2021 would have been load-shedding-afflicted once Eskom has fully implemented its latest round of announced load-shedding, which is officially set to continue until Saturday, November 13.

By that date, about 1 100 hours of rotational cuts would have been implemented, resulting in between 1 700 GWh and 1 800 GWh having been shed, with more than a month and a half of 2021 still to go.

In addition, the number of hours during which load-shedding was implemented at Stage 4, representing 4 000 MW of simultaneous cuts, has increased sharply this year, even though most of the cuts were still implemented at Stage 2 (2 000 MW).

“For reference, we shed 1 269 GWh in 2020 and 1 090 GWh in 2019,” Wright says, while stressing that the numbers remain unconfirmed until officially published on Eskom’s data portal package.

This year is also set to be the first ever during which load-shedding will breach the 1 000-hour mark, up from 528 hours in 2019 and 859 hours in 2020.

Only in 2015, did South Africans experience a similar level of load-shedding intensity, when 858 hours were affected and 1 325 GWh shed, mostly at Stage 2.

The intensification of load-shedding is directly proportional to the decline in the performance of the coal fleet, the energy availability factor (EAF) of which has fallen to below 65% for the year-to-date.

The EAF is well below Eskom’s 70% target and is also significantly below the 67.9% reported for the same period to the end of September 2020.

This decline comes despite Eskom’s much-vaunted reliability maintenance recovery (RMR) programme first unveiled as so-called ‘philosophy maintenance’ in early 2020, with a focus on increasing the level of planned outages and using long-duration shutdowns to properly address plant performance.

When announced, the initial objective was to improve the reliability of the under-maintained coal fleet by October this year to a point where the risk of load-shedding would be materially reduced, albeit not eliminated.

Implementation of the programme has hit several snags, however, with mobilisation initially hampered by the introduction of national lockdowns in response to the onset of Covid-19 in South Africa.

Execution problems have since evolved with much of the concern currently centred on the level of financing available for the RMR and what Eskom describes as the “timely release of capital funding”.

In a recent presentation, the utility said it needed the finances to be released at least six months prior to the start of an outage to secure the spares and services required.

It also indicated that funding had not been secured for the RMR for the next two financial years, which was undermining planning, which for a major shutdown needed to begin 24 months ahead of execution.

In a separate briefing COO Jan Oberholzer explained that neither the level of funding nor the release of the funds was in line with what was required under the programme.

“Typically, we need close to R11-billion per annum for the generation business to do proper maintenance on an ongoing basis . . . [and] we also need at least 24 months to plan it adequately.

“This financial year, we were given R3-billion and only a few months ago we were allowed an additional R3-billion, which is still short of what we really need, [while] the late timing of the provision is making it extremely difficult to execute the maintenance within this financial year,” Oberholzer explained.

CEO Andre de Ruyter said that ensuring sufficient liquidity for maintenance involved a careful balancing of the inflow and outflow of funds, which were secured either from loans and equity injection...

When a social media site throws out an advert for a product you were just discussing over the phone, it’s easy to jump to the conclusion that ‘they’ must be listening, says Aura CEO and co-founder Warren Myers.

The truth, however, is that the site employed artificial intelligence (AI) to predict your behaviour.

“You searched for a yeast starter last week and commented on a friend’s photo of sourdough bread yesterday. The ad for a bread-making course that seemingly pops up out of the blue was shown to you because the data predicted you might be interested in it, based on your own and previous users’ behaviour,” notes Myers.

“Those same principles can be applied to fight crime – and soon will.”

Aura is a security and medical response marketplace, gathering and centralising data from more than 170 private security companies before applying AI to dispatch the closest vetted response vehicle to its more than 500 000 active users.

There is a wealth of information to predict the likelihood of crime, says Myers.

“The data exists to predict, and thus prevent, crime, but it’s just not being analysed as yet.”

However, when it comes to predicting crime, it’s not quite as simple as scraping social media to find people who did successive searches for ‘crowbar’ and ‘balaclava’.

Data of use here spans from the obvious indicators, such as a person’s presence in a bad part of town, to the more surprising, which includes weather patterns and the days of the week.

A Finnish study, for example, showed that a 1 °C increase in temperature results in a 1.7% increase in criminal activity, based on two decades’ worth of data.

Another study in the US proved that vehicle theft spikes on weekends and in the evenings, notes Myers.

Also, science has even shown that when a local football team loses unexpectedly, domestic violence incidents increase by 10%.

By collating all this data, as well as past crime statistics, information from tipping lines, social media scraping, CCTV, and more, crime can be predicted, and emergency services proactively dispatched before it is too late, says Myers.

The same principle can also be used to predict spikes in traffic accidents and to dispatch emergency services to nearby locations for even faster response times.

The AI employed here is similar to Uber’s algorithms which predict when and where there will be a high probability of ride requests, so the service provider can dispatch drivers proactively.

Again, the same principle can also be applied to riots, adds Myers.

“Riots, like the ones parts of South Africa was subjected to recently, are one of the most difficult emergency incidents to manage because they have such a staggering snowball effect.

“History has shown that once a riot escalates past a certain point, almost nothing can be done that won’t be to the detriment of everyone involved. By predicting it, it can be prevented or contained in the early stages.”

Using AI Proactively

Emergency services, from ambulances to private security and police, currently largely operate on a reactive basis, explains Myers.

“A call comes in, and a vehicle is dispatched to assist. As the country’s crime and emergency statistics keep increasing, it’s clear that a proactive approach is the answer.”

This will happen soon – predictability fuelled by AI and big data can reduce violent crimes by 25% as early as 2023, believes Myers.

“It is unclear how accurate our predictability will be within this timeframe, but we have pegged a really high expectation.

“We are aiming for crime and risk prediction to be the primary creator of real dispatches on the Aura platform – in other words, we want to be responding more to predictions than to actual panics. Once a person has panicked, the crime/damage has usually been done.”

Data engineers at Aura are already working on expanding its existing security and medical response algorithms to become the centre repository for risk data, says Myers.

There will be a number of data pools which will feed into...

A request for information (RFI) has been issued to assess the implementation options and market appetite for the creation of a liquefied natural gas (LNG) import hub at the Port of Ngqura, in the Eastern Cape.

The RFI is designed as an information gathering exercise to inform a future procurement programme and a deadline of 12:00 on December 3 has been set for responses.

The document has been issued by the Central Energy Fund, which has established a joint development agreement (JDA) with fellow State-owned enterprises Transnet and the Coega Development Corporation to facilitate such a terminal at the port and the adjacent Coega Special Economic Zone.

The RFI is seeking market input on three components, namely:

gas aggregation, whereby LNG demand is consolidated across a number of customers to ensure cost-effective supply that matches demand;

the engineering, procurement and construction of the fixed gas infrastructure linking the port to offtakers; and

the provision of a floating storage and regasification unit and terminal operator services.

Respondents can either make submissions on each component separately, or submit a “bundled” response covering all three elements.

Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe announced in 2019 that government envisaged Coega as the initial hub for the importation of LNG, with Richards Bay and Saldanha Bay as possible future locations.

This, despite arguments that Richards Bay should be the front-runner, owing to the fact that most of the country’s gas demand is located on the east coast and indications that planning for an LNG terminal at Matola, in Mozambique, was at an advanced stage.

The Department of Mineral Resources and Energy has also indicated that bidding for the 3 000 MW gas-to-power independent power producer (IPP) programme catered for in the Integrated Resources Plan of 2019 could be launched before the end of February 2022. It is anticipated that at least 1 000 MW will be allocated to the Port of Ngqura.

Besides demand that could arise from the IPP programme, the RFI document notes that the Coega precinct also has the following potential inception gas demand:

the 340 MW Dedisa diesel peaking plant, which is currently operating at a 12% capacity factor but which could be reviewed if gas were to become available;

the 200 MW Mulilo-Total mid-merit plant being procured through the delayed Risk Mitigation Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme (RMIPPPP);

a 450 MW Karpowership mid-merit plant which is also a preferred bidder under the RMIPPPP, but which does not yet have environmental authorisation and is the subject of a legal challenge;

current industrial demand in the area of 5 PJ a year; and

the prospect for converting heavy fuel oil bunkering demand, which peaked at 1-million tons a year pre-Covid, to cleaner fuels.

The document states that a nonmandatory virtual briefing will be held at 10:00 on November 17 and that respondents have until November 24 to request clarification on any item contained in the RFI.

The Namibian government has stolen a hydrogen march on its larger neighbour South Africa announcing at COP26 the selection of HYPHEN Hydrogen Energy as the preferred bidder for a $9.4-billion green hydrogen project to be developed in the Tsau //Khaeb National Park, near the coastal town of Luderitz, in southern Namibia.

HYPHEN is a joint venture between Nicholas Holdings Limited, a strategic investment and infrastructure project developer, and ENERTRAG South Africa, a unit of an independent German energy company that has a portfolio of renewable energy projects and which has also been producing green hydrogen since 2011.

Following a competitive tender process, Namibia announced that HYPHEN had been selected as the preferred bidder to build a vertically integrated project able to produce 300 000 t/y of green hydrogen and green ammonia for export into regional and global markets from 2026 onwards.

Once the feasibility study is concluded and the project reaches financial close, HYPHEN will have the right to construct and operate the project for a 40-year period.

Speaking during an event hosted at the COP26 Commonwealth Pavilion on November 4, Presidential Economic Advisor James Mnyupe said the project was closely aligned with the Namibian government’s vision for green hydrogen and for the Karas region, in southern Namibia.

Mnyupe said that, while a large focus would be on exporting to Europe, there was also potential to sell some of the output to neighbouring countries, to “take advantage of the vision that our leaders have for the African Continental Free Trade Area”.

“A lot of our neighbours have been contacting us – Angola, South Africa and Botswana – to ask how this project can be integrated into the Southern African Power Pool,” he reported.

HYPHEN CEO Marco Raffinetti said that the first $4.4-billion phase of the project would involve the building of 2 GW of renewable-electricity generation capacity, as well as the electrolyser capacity to produce green hydrogen for conversion into green ammonia.

The project will use desalinated water, part of which will be supplied to communities in nearby Luderitz.

Further expansion phases in the late 2020s would raise the total investment value to $9.4-billion, which was almost in line with Namibia’s current gross domestic product.

Once complete the integrated facility would have a renewables generation capacity of 5 GW and electrolyser capacity of 3 GW, with surplus electricity capacity to be fed into the Namibian grid and potentially into the regional power pool.

“The Tsau //Khaeb National Park is among the top five locations in the world for low-cost hydrogen production, benefiting from a combination of co-located onshore wind and solar resources near the sea and land export routes to market,” Raffinetti said.

HYPHEN director Dr Tobias Bischof-Niemz, who is also ENERTRAG South Africa CEO, described the investment as a “milestone” in Namibia’s ambition to be a leading international producer of green hydrogen.

This ambition, Bischof-Niemz added, would not only facilitate the full decarbonisation of the Namibian economy but support the decarbonisation efforts of other countries, which were turning their attention to the hard-to-abate sectors of marine and land freight, steel, chemicals, fertilisers and cement.

The project would create 15 000 direct jobs over the four-year construction period, as well as 3 000 permanent direct jobs over the 40-year operational period.

It was also viewed as a pioneer project in a far larger green hydrogen pushed being driven by Namibian President Hage Geingob and the Namibian Investment Promotion and Development Board, which indicated planning was under way for yet more competitive green-hydrogen tenders.

“This is exactly the type of investment the board aims to attract as it is directly aligned to our mandate of unlocking investment opportunities that drive the economy forward, and most importantly, improve the quality of life for all Namibians,” Namib...