By Dhiladhila Magazine · Issue 16

The forum's talk of value chains reaches the farm two ways: through what Namibia exports raw, and through a new home-grown fertiliser.

The phrase running through the Brussels forum was value chains, and few sectors show what that means more plainly than agriculture. Namibia already sells the EU beef, grapes and fish, yet mostly in raw or lightly processed form, and the partnership’s promise of adding value before export lands squarely on the farm gate.

There is a second, newer thread. The same green hydrogen the forum celebrated can be turned into green ammonia, and green ammonia is fertiliser. For a country that imports most of its plant nutrients, that connects the headline energy story to the unglamorous business of growing food.

Raw exports, thin margins

Namibia’s farm exports to Europe run through a narrow gate. Beef reaches the EU under the Economic Partnership Agreement through a handful of accredited exporters such as Meatco, and the country’s grapes and fish follow similar duty-free routes. The access is valuable, but much of the product still leaves as a commodity, with the ageing, portioning and packing that carry the real margin done elsewhere.

That is the value-chain problem in miniature. A carcass chilled and shipped earns a fraction of what the same animal earns as branded, portioned cuts on a European shelf. Moving even one more processing step onshore is where a farming economy captures more of the final price.

The margin in beef is in the cut and the brand, not the carcass on the boat.

Green ammonia as a farm input, not just an export

The hydrogen story has a direct agricultural payoff. Ammonia is both a way to ship hydrogen and the base of nitrogen fertiliser, so a country building green ammonia for export is also, in principle, building the feedstock for its own food production. For Namibia, which relies heavily on imported fertiliser, that is a supply-security argument as much as an export one.

It reframes green hydrogen as an input to farming rather than a rival for land and water. If some of the ammonia stays home, the same industry the forum promoted to European buyers could quietly lower the cost of growing food inside Namibia.

Green ammonia is an export cargo and a fertiliser bag; the second may matter more at home.

A working proof at village scale

The idea is already being tested. The Daures Green Hydrogen Village in the Erongo region, established in 2023, uses renewable power to make green hydrogen and ammonia for fertiliser, then grows tomatoes, cucumbers and leafy greens hydroponically in the desert. Early targets include roughly 100 tonnes of green ammonia and several hundred tonnes of produce a year.

The scale is small, but the logic is the whole value chain in one place: energy, fertiliser and food produced together, with local jobs and food security as the point. It is a demonstration that the green ammonia pitched in Brussels can end as vegetables on a Namibian plate.

A desert village growing tomatoes on green fertiliser is the value chain made visible.

The choice between exporting and feeding

The tension in the farming story is allocation. Every tonne of green ammonia sold to Europe earns hard currency; every tonne kept at home cuts a fertiliser import bill and supports domestic agriculture. The forum framed the sector as an export opportunity, but the agribusiness case is strongest when some of the value is deliberately retained.

Beef points the same way. The country can keep chasing duty-free volume, or invest in the processing and cold chains that let it sell finished products rather than raw ones. In both cases the value-chain question is not whether to trade with Europe, but how much of the chain to build at home first.

The farming payoff is decided by how much of the chain Namibia keeps, not how much it ships.

For a farmer, an agribusiness or an investor in food systems, the forum’s value-chain language is an invitation to look past raw exports: to the processing that lifts the price of beef and grapes, and to a home-grown fertiliser that green ammonia could supply. The decision is whether to treat Europe as a buyer of Namibian commodities, or to build the plants – abattoirs, pack houses, ammonia units – that let the country sell, and grow, more of the value itself.

Sources: European Commission; Daures green hydrogen village fertiliser (Chemistry World); Exports drive Meatco’s beef revenue (The Namibian)