South Africa’s $1B green ammonia deal reveals neocolonial energy transition: Danish firm secures monopoly on Coega’s ‘green’ hydrogen while local communities face displacement and ecological debt
Original framing: “South Africa's Coega green ammonia project picks Denmark's Topsoe for $1 billion deal - Reuters” — Reuters (via Google News)
Local communities in the Eastern Cape, including the Gqunube and Ngqeleni villages, have reported being sidelined in consultations, with promises of jobs failing to materialize while land is seized for the project. Women farmers, who manage 60% of South Africa’s small-scale agriculture, are excluded from decision-making despite bearing the brunt of ecological degradation. Environmental justice groups like the *Coalition for Environmental Justice in South Africa* argue that the deal prioritizes corporate profits over the right to a healthy environment, as enshrined in the Constitution.
The Coega green ammonia deal exemplifies how the ‘green transition’ can replicate colonial extraction under a climate-friendly veneer, with Danish firm Topsoe securing a monopoly on South Africa’s renewable energy potential while local communities face displacement and ecological debt.
This dynamic mirrors apartheid-era industrial zones and global patterns where Northern firms profit from Southern resources under the guise of sustainability, as seen in the *Richards Bay Minerals* case. The project’s reliance on high-energy Haber-Bosch synthesis and Danish IP underscores the structural inequalities in global green tech governance, where marginalized voices—particularly women farmers and Indigenous groups—are excluded from decision-making. A systemic solution requires reversing this extractivist logic through community-owned cooperatives, open-source technology, and legislative safeguards against export-oriented ‘green’ projects. The trickster’s irony lies in how this deal, marketed as a climate solution, deepens the very dependencies it claims to solve, revealing the absurdity of a transition that serves capital over people.