How did a small, economically vulnerable country become a trailblazer in sustainable industry? Clean economy builder James Mnyupe explores how Namibia is teaming up with partners from around the world to turn sun, wind and water into green hydrogen — a key ingredient in fueling everything from clean steel to eco-friendly transportation. Discover how this bold blueprint is creating jobs, cutting carbon and sparking a wave of African pride and possibility.For a chance to give your own TED Talk, fill out the Idea Search Application: ted.com/ideasearch.Interested in learning more about upcoming TED events? Follow these links:TEDNext: ted.com/futureyouTEDSports: ted.com/sportsTEDAI Vienna: ted.com/ai-viennaTEDAI San Francisco: ted.com/ai-sf Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hugh. According to the Gini coefficient, which is a statistical measure of income or wealth inequality within a population, Namibia is the second most unequal society in the world.
It has a high unemployment rate and like most nations in the world, suffers from increasing crippling droughts. As clean economy builder James Mnupe asks, how do we make lemonade out of all of these lemons?
In this talk, James shares how Namibia looked at these massive problems and in just a few years came up with actionable, innovative solutions that are bringing the country to the forefront of green industry, creating new opportunities, jobs, and technologies, not just for the population of Namibia, but for countries everywhere.
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Today, I'm going to talk to you about a curious tale from Southern Africa, about how a small, vulnerable nation decided to build a green industrialization hub of note, making lemonade from lemons. So I hail from a small nation with a population of about three million people.
For our troubles, we consume about four and a half terawatt hours of electricity, and in the process, we emit about 0.01 percent of the global carbon dioxide emissions. So from a climate change perspective, we are not the problem child. But if we're going to make some lemonades, we're probably going to need some lemons. So let's talk about those.
Today, Namibia is the second most unequal society in the world as measured by a Gini coefficient. We have 0.59 as a score. We have a stubbornly high unemployment rate of 37 percent. And we import 40 to 60 percent of our energy needs from our neighbors who themselves are energy insecure. Our largest electricity generator is a hydroelectric power station.
And as you can imagine, when we suffer from debilitating droughts, which, as you know, are getting worse and worse, we find ourselves in a very sticky situation, having to buy electricity from the Southern African power pool at high prices and at the same time trying to subsidize and assist our farmers whose livestock are dying and, of course, their plants are withering. OK, enough of the lemons.
We also need some sugar. So, Namibia is actually quite a wealthy nation from a renewable energy perspective. Vast tracts of our nation are glorified and covered in solar irradiance of 2,200 kilowatt hours per square meter.
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