Keynote address by President Cyril Ramaphosa at the inaugural Africa Green Hydrogen Summit, Century City Conference Centre, Cape Town

Keynote address by President Cyril Ramaphosa at the inaugural Africa Green Hydrogen Summit, Century City Conference Centre, Cape Town Newsroom Date Thursday, 12 June 2025 - 14:00 vanessam Thu, 06/12/2025 - 10:46 Image Body Programme Director, Adv Nsinga Qunta,
Minister of Electricity and Energy, Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa,
Premier of the Western Cape, Mr Alan Winde,
Honourable Ministers,
Excellencies,
Leaders of industry,
Development partners,
Distinguished Guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen, Welcome to the inaugural Africa Green Hydrogen Summit. This summit started out in 2022 as a platform for South African to articulate its national vision and to convene the country’s green hydrogen ecosystem. Now this summit provides a platform for our shared continental ambitions. Our beloved continent Africa, the cradle of humanity, is uniquely positioned to become a major player in green hydrogen because it has abundant renewable resources manifested in high solar irradiance, strong winds and hydropower potential. The vast land our continent has lends itself to large-scale renewable energy projects. We are therefore perfectly placed to leverage the global shift towards cleaner energy sources for our collective advantage. Green hydrogen is a way to marry Africa’s mineral riches with our renewable energy endowment to decarbonise heavy industries, to create jobs, to stimulate investment and to unlock inclusive growth across borders. The growing global demand for clean hydrogen as countries decarbonise their industries, transport, and energy systems presents unlimited opportunities for our continent. As demand for green hydrogen grows, so does demand for platinum group metals, sustaining and expanding our continent’s mining and refining industries. Africa is rising to meet this moment of opportunity and potential. The Africa Green Hydrogen Alliance brings together a number of African nations, including Egypt, Kenya, Mauritania, Morocco, Namibia and South Africa. More than 52 large-scale green hydrogen projects have been announced across the continent. These include the Coega Green Ammonia project in South Africa, the AMAN project in Mauritania and Project Nour in Morocco. The Alliance’s ambition targets 30 to 60 million tons of green hydrogen production by 2050. It is estimated that this could create between two and four million new jobs in Alliance member states by 2050. To make use of these opportunities, we need to establish appropriate policy and regulatory environments. We must continue to move as a continent to develop regional certification schemes, hydrogen corridors and green product export platforms. We commend the work of countries like Mauritania, which has taken early steps on certification. It will be critical that we learn from one another and converge on standards that work for Africa. The recently launched Green Hydrogen Report is a consolidation of 35 underlying studies, providing the most comprehensive insight to date into the continent’s green hydrogen potential. A number of recent global developments further support the potential of Africa’s green hydrogen ecosystem. The H2Global mechanism is opening its second bidding window, with one of the four lots allocated to Africa. The African lot, which is funded by the German government, will guarantee off-take for successful projects on the continent. A Joint Declaration of Intent with the German government focuses on market access, off-take opportunities and value-additive benefits in the production of green steel and green fertiliser. We commend the German government for its commitment to African supply. For South Africa’s part, we have made advances towards building the green hydrogen industry. To date, South Africa has invested more than R1.49 billion in our Hydrogen South Africa programme. Through our partnership with the European Union, we have prioritised support to projects like Sasol’s HySHiFT programme, which aims to produce up to 400,000 tonnes of sustainable aviation fuel annually. The project directly supports African re-industrialisation and European energy transition goals. HySHiFT could anchor demand for up to 20 gigawatts of green hydrogen and represents a scalable model for industrial decarbonisation. The Sasolburg pilot is now producing green hydrogen for domestic use. In the Eastern Cape, the Coega Green Ammonia Project is at an advanced planning stage and four additional flagship hydrogen projects are expected to be submitted for Cabinet approval soon. The newly launched South African Renewable Energy Masterplan aligns the localisation of renewable energy and hydrogen components with industrial development and job creation. The expansion of the country’s electricity transmission infrastructure, which is essential to the growth of renewable energy, is now being accelerated through an Independent Transmission Projects Office. New wheeling regulations create an enabling environment for private power producers, especially those servicing hydrogen projects. These reforms demonstrate that we are not waiting. We are building. Major research is underway in all aspects of the green hydrogen value chain to reduce final costs. Early commercial exploration for naturally-occurring ‘white’ hydrogen is underway in the provinces of Limpopo, Mpumalanga and Gauteng. If white hydrogen is proven to be available and commercially extractable, this will provide a further source of clean hydrogen. Tapping into the potential of the hydrogen economy is a matter of urgency for Africa. The continent has borne the brunt of climate change and the devastation it causes in communities and economies. We have witnessed deadly heatwaves, heavy rains, tropical cyclones and prolonged droughts. These events underscore our shared vulnerability, but also our shared responsibility to act, to adapt, and to do so in a way that leaves no one behind. At the same time we are clear that Africa must transition at a pace and scale that reflects our development priorities and our economic realities. We are very much alive to the reality that green hydrogen production faces a number of challenges. There is the cost factor. Capital intensity and the high costs of financing are significant barriers, as is the cost of green hydrogen relative to other energy sources such as natural gas. We are also contending with skewed global investment patterns. A number of green hydrogen projects on our continent are not being initiated or reaching financial close, due to cost of capital and perceptions of risk. We cannot close that gap with potential alone. We must match it with demand signals, regulatory certainty and project preparation support. We need to ensure that there is sufficient and growing demand. This includes building domestic demand in African countries. In this regard, the launch of green hydrogen production for mobility in Sasolburg and policy enablers for domestic offtake are important foundational steps. As we explore these exciting opportunities, we must work to address the impediments to the growth of this industry. In 2024, the International Energy Agency reduced the global 2030 hydrogen growth forecast. It said that the sector is now maturing and moving beyond the hype observed in recent years. It said that understanding among stakeholders about where the real opportunities for hydrogen lie – and where efforts must be focused – is now much stronger. Tempered by these realities, this Summit must not only be a platform of ideas. It must be a platform of commitments. We must put the African voice at the centre of global energy rule-making. We must be authors of our own future. During its G20 Presidency, South Africa has chosen to prioritise just energy transitions as engines of economic growth and social development. The Africa Green Hydrogen Summit is an important part of that vision. Hydrogen is a bridge to a new export industry for African countries. It is an enabler for Africa’s energy independence and climate resilience. More importantly hydrogen is an anchor for industrial transformation and infrastructure investment. We are called upon to join hands to build this bridge together – as Africans, as partners and as builders of a green, prosperous and inclusive future. I thank you.

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