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Global African Hydrogen Summit, Windhoek, 9–11 September 2025
Remarks from the Global Africa Hydrogen Summit, September 2025
Workforce Development for the African Green Energy Economy
By Tom K. Alweendo
Honourable Ministers, distinguished guests, colleagues and friends, thank you for being here in Windhoek.
Let me start with a simple truth: skills are infrastructure. We budget, schedule and hold people accountable for transmission lines and ports. We must do the same for training, certification and technology transfer. Without capable people on site, megawatts and clean fuels do not move.
Africa has a window of opportunity. The world wants clean power and clean molecules. We have sun, wind, land, ports and minerals. The question is whether we can build and keep the workforce to turn studies into operating assets; where projects are completed on time and run safely, while serving exports and local industry.
What kind of workforce do we need?
Picture a three-layer pyramid.
At the base sit the enabling trades: electricians, instrument technicians, welders, pipe-fitters, civil works crews, laboratory technicians and safety officers. In the middle are technologists: operators and maintainers for wind and solar plants; people who commission and run electrolysers and compressors; operators for ammonia and other clean fuels; control-room and industrial cyber specialists. At the top are professional and leadership roles: power-system and process engineers, grid and port planners, water and desalination engineers, project managers, environmental and social specialists, logistics professionals, finance and legal teams.
Across every layer we need the same habits: a strong safety culture, reliable data and record-keeping, quality assurance, cost control, and respect for communities and the environment.
Where will pressure bite first over the next three to five years?
I can think of five places:
hydrogen safety and daily operations; electrolyser commissioning and maintenance, including water treatment and the full balance of equipment; clean-fuel handling at ports; high-voltage grid skills and system integration as renewables scale; and certification and traceability so exports meet global standards.
My core proposal is direct: make workforce capacity part of the project, not charity on the side, and to make that happens, we need to do five things.
First, train to the job.
Build short, focused courses around real tasks on real projects. Define a clear “job packet” for each entry role; what a person must know to start work safely, and test for competence, not classroom hours. Use stackable certificates so a rigger can become a supervisor, then a planner, without starting again.
Second, make the project the classroom.
Every major project, be it a power plant, port upgrade, pipeline, or substation must include paid apprenticeships from construction through commissioning. Write the numbers into licences and main contracts: for example how many people trained, how many from the host region, how many women, how many placed into jobs. If it is not in the contract, it rarely happens.
Third, build hubs where the jobs are.
Coastal hubs should focus on port logistics, ammonia handling and ship bunkering. Inland hubs should focus on the grid, protection settings and control systems. Industrial zones should focus on process operations and water management. Do not duplicate everything everywhere. Network, specialise and hold common standards so skills travel across borders.
Fourth, keep the people you train.
Retention is a business issue. People leave when pay is flat, promotion is unclear or the culture is unsafe. Fix that with transparent pay bands linked to skills, bonuses that reward those who stay two to three years, safe and decent workplaces, housing and transport support for remote sites, and real mentorship. Bring in international expertise for short “teach-back” stints on live equipment. Two weeks with a seasoned supervisor can save months on site.
Fifth, make technology transfer real.
Localise maintenance and mid-life overhauls from day one. Pair global suppliers with local workshops for compressors, valves, power electronics and instrumentation. Set up joint labs and test beds at universities and training colleges. Start manufacturing where it makes sense now: assemble skids, frames, switchgear enclosures and piping to international standards, then climb the ladder. Use global codes, but publish open training packs so smaller providers reach the same quality bar. Share de-identified operating and safety data with training providers so courses improve with reality.
Who pays, and how do we govern it?
We already have tools. National training levies can ring-fence a predictable share for green skills with public dashboards. Development finance can fund equipment for labs and mobile training units. Employers fund apprenticeships on their sites. Public support schemes and licences should score bidders on training and technology transfer, not only on price. Every major approval, such as land lease, licence, power contract, offtake, must include a training annex with measurable outputs and audit rules.
Why this matters to policy makers and investors.
Workforce capacity is a risk variable. Trained, retained teams reduce safety incidents, cut commissioning delays, lift uptime and protect reputation. They make export claims credible. In short, skills budgets are not overhead; they are risk management and value creation.
Inclusion is non-negotiable.
If women are not present in training cohorts and site teams, we are using half the talent for a whole transition. Set targets and remove quiet barriers such as unsafe commutes, missing facilities, shift patterns that push people out. The return is both moral and operational.
Be realistic about timing.
Do not flood the market with training for projects unlikely to reach final investment decision. Sequence courses to the most likely pipeline. Balance export ambition with domestic demand so mines, farms, fleets and factories in Africa become early users of clean fuels. That builds operating experience and buffers market swings.
To keep this practical, I propose a Windhoek Skills and Technology Compact consisting of six commitments we can adopt now:
- Dedicate a fixed share of national training levy inflows to green skills, and publish a quarterly dashboard.
- Include contractual training obligations in every major licence and project contract, with clear outputs and penalties.
- Establish three anchor training hubs per country or corridor—coast, grid heartland and industrial zone—networked under one standards framework.
- Launch a Green Skills Passport so certificates are recognised across borders while protecting worker rights.
- Guarantee at least forty percent of funded training seats for women, with practical support for retention.
- Require localisation plans for maintenance and spare parts from day one, and fund joint labs linked to live sites.
I will end with a brief memory. During a tough afternoon at Van Eck, a young technician said, “The problem is not only megawatts; it is hands.” He was right. This transition will be built by those hands—by the supervisor who knows what to do when a compressor trips at two in the morning, by the operator who commissions a stack safely, by the planner who keeps the grid steady at sunset, and by the teacher who prepares the next cohort better than the last.
If we fund and manage skills and technology transfer with the same seriousness we give to steel and concrete, investment will flow, projects will finish on time, and the benefits will stay here. That choice is ours, and let us make it now.
Thank you.
