STAFF WRITER
Frederick Benzel of the CrossBoundary Group says the buy-in of multilateral development banks will be key for Namibia to participate in the Climate Investment Funds (CIF) industrial decarbonisation programme.
A decarbonisation programme is a plan to reduce and eventually eliminate greenhouse gas emissions by shifting from fossil fuels to cleaner, renewable energy sources.
The programme requires an adequate volume of financing from multilateral development banks alongside CIF funding.
Participating institutions include the African Development Bank, World Bank and International Finance Corporation, which are expected to mobilise financing at least three times the CIF investment.
Multilateral development banks are international financial institutions established by multiple sovereign states to provide loans, grants and technical assistance to developing countries.
Speaking at the CIF industrial decarbonisation programme stakeholder workshop in Walvis Bay last week, Benzel said the programme is not designed to fully finance projects on its own.
“The programme is designed to finance projects but it is not designed to finance a project all on its own. There is a private sector component set aside, whereby the project is not here to crowd out the private sector but it is to crowd in investors who wouldn’t have enlisted in the first place if the risk were not enforced by the CIF programme.”
The workshop was hosted by the Namibia Green Hydrogen Programme.
In June 2025, Namibia was invited to participate in the CIF industrial decarbonisation programme and subsequently launched a call for projects, which closed in February this year after attracting 148 applications.
From these submissions, 78 Namibian project developers were shortlisted for the programme’s project pipeline. To qualify, projects must target industrial decarbonisation, demonstrate additional investment impact and show a pathway to comply with IFC performance standards on environmental and social sustainability, among other requirements.
The projects have been grouped into five sectors: clean energy and industrial power anchors; enabling infrastructure including grid and storage; industrial system decarbonisation and value addition; circular economy and low-carbon manufacturing; and bioeconomy, agriculture and climate innovation.
CrossBoundary is currently providing advisory support to the Namibia Green Hydrogen Programme and its partners in drafting the CIF investment plan, including assessing project bankability and identifying commercial, technical, financial and regulatory gaps.
Pierre-Adrien Baudele of CrossBoundary said different financing approaches are required across the project pipeline.
“We cannot have a one size fits all so we do need to have different buckets to cater to different opportunities that we are seeing in the pipeline.”
The projects will have access to several funding mechanisms, including direct project finance, common-user infrastructure, a Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) lending fund and a project preparation facility.
Namibia Green Hydrogen Programme head of policy, planning, and strategy Joseph Mukendwa said limited preparedness among small businesses could undermine the programme’s objectives.
“The challenge is if our MSMEs, if they are not prepared, if they don’t have the capabilities to be able to take up these opportunities, then unfortunately we will fail in our ability to reach our MSME goals outlined in National Development Plan (NDP6).”
The MSME lending fund will provide loans to businesses in the green supply chain, including working capital and machinery finance, aimed at helping local companies meet industry requirements.
NDP6 targets an increase in the MSME sector’s contribution to GDP from 16% to 19.4% by 2030.
BENCHMARK
Benzel said the project preparation facility draws on models used elsewhere on the continent.
“There are very interesting models, for example from Kenya, where their climate innovation centre has been put up and are typically donor funded, they provide various stages of entrepreneurial support, that can be in the form of membership, office space, share learning as well as to a degree, grants and technical support to complete studies and further advance projects.”
The Kenya Climate Innovation Center supports entrepreneurs through incubation, capacity building and financing in sectors such as renewable energy, water and agribusiness.
The CIF Trust Fund Committee is expected to make a final decision in October, with funding set to be deployed within 24 months thereafter.
Last year, Namibia’s application to the CIF Industrial Decarbonisation Programme was ranked third globally.
Nikol Hearn of the Namibia Green Hydrogen Programme said additional measures are being explored to support green industries.
“We are thinking about innovative solutions including the setting up of industrial zones, where projects can become tenants rather than independently looking for land.”
Government is currently developing a Special Economic Zone policy and regulatory framework, with the bill expected to be tabled in Parliament this year.
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