Green hydrogen promotion in Cameroon: Implications for sustainable development

This paper argues that green hydrogen could be a driver of the technological transformation of a small open economy well integrated into the global energy market. Green hydrogen development is key to a sustainable transition of the economy. It can replace CO 2 -intensive technologies, e.g., in the transport sector, water cleaning facilities, and the steel industry. As the renewable energy potential is particularly high in Sub-Saharan Africa, it appears to be promising to install green hydrogen production facilities there, where they can contribute to “greening” the domestic economy while excess hydrogen production can be exported to generate revenue. In this paper we introduce a normative recursive growth model to investigate the case of Cameroon and demonstrate that the establishment of a green hydrogen sector can contribute to sustainable development where economic development goes hand in hand with environmentally friendly technological change. An essential precondition is education because the accumulation of human capital is necessary for implementing and distributing new, innovative technologies, as well as for building market institutions to lower the cost of capital and attract FDI to support the transformation of the Cameroonian economy.