BASELINE STUDY ON GREEN HYDROGEN IN EASTERN AFRICA: EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This Baseline Study on Green Hydrogen in Eastern Africa provides a first-of-its-kind exclusive assessment of Eastern Africa’s green hydrogen potential within a rapidly evolving global energy landscape. It evaluates the region’s natural resource endowments, policy and institutional frameworks, infrastructure readiness, and emerging private-sector initiatives, as a foundation for an analysis of Eastern Africa’s prospective role in the global hydrogen economy.

 
The study focuses on the critical enablers required to develop a competitive green hydrogen ecosystem: abundant renewable energy, water availability, mineral inputs, infrastructure, policy frameworks, institutional capacity, and bankable projects. It maps the pipeline of announced projects, benchmarks national readiness, and identifies systemic gaps that could constrain scale-up. By combining country-level assessments with project-level insights, the study provides a regional view of overall readiness, of both near-term opportunities as well as structural challenges for realizing a regional hydrogen economy. The geographic scope covers the East African Community (EAC) – Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda – and includes Ethiopia and Seychelles due to their strategic energy relevance.