Presentation short abstract

This paper examines South Africa’s green hydrogen frontier at Boegoebaai in the Northern Cape, highlighting colonial continuities, financialisation, and contested state–capital relations. Drawing on socio‑economic data and public consultations, it foregrounds justice and local voices.

Presentation long abstract

South Africa’s vast, remote Northern Cape province, marked by its fragile dryland ecosystems and sparse population, is positioned as a strategic hub for global decarbonisation, exemplified by the proposed Boegoebaai Green Hydrogen Export Hub in the Richtersveld. Yet, these transitions unfold within landscapes scarred by enduring extractive legacies and colonial dispossession, raising urgent questions about energy justice and local sovereignty. This paper critically examines how the green hydrogen frontier risks reproducing historical patterns of exclusion. Drawing on the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA), including socio-economic reports and public consultation outcomes, the analysis highlights local concerns regarding livelihoods, land security, and ecological fragility within this vulnerable environment. These community voices emphasise how global finance and trade aggressively collide with the everyday realities of poverty and historical exclusion in this geographically marginalised region. The Northern Cape's history of copper and diamond mining has long enriched external actors while systemically impoverishing local communities. Green hydrogen projects risk extending these colonial continuities by framing the remote, semi-arid land as both empty and underutilised, thereby justifying the sidelining of traditional governance and embedding epistemic exclusions within narratives of "sustainable development." The Boegoebaai case demonstrates how hard-won land restitution victories are potentially undermined when the state seeks to lease communal land to foreign investors under opaque terms. The findings stress the urgent need for structural reforms that move beyond "green extractivism," ensuring that the unique ecological and socio-economic vulnerabilities of this remote semi-arid province are central to a just energy transition.