Europe Turns to MENA and Africa in the Race for Green Hydrogen

Europe's race to secure green hydrogen is rapidly reshaping its economic and diplomatic ties with the Middle East and Africa. A new study suggests that the emerging partnership map is already highly concentrated, strategically driven and still far from mature, raising a larger question over whether the transition will create shared industrial gains or reproduce old extractive relationships under a greener label.

The study, "Green Hydrogen Diplomacy: Examining Emerging Bilateral Partnerships Between the Middle East and North Africa, the European Union, and Sub-Saharan Africa," published in Sustainability and authored by Hamzah Faraj Mohammed Abdulmajid and Celal Sakka of Girne American University, examines 26 bilateral green-hydrogen agreements signed between 2020 and 2024 while developing a framework to assess their equity, governance and sustainable-development implications.

Under REPowerEU, the European Union aims to produce 10 million tonnes of renewable hydrogen domestically and import another 10 million tonnes by 2030, tying hydrogen increasingly to both industrial decarbonization and energy security after Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Hydrogen Diplomacy Has Shifted From Climate Ambition to Energy Security

Eleven of the 26 agreements were signed in 2022, compared with only two in 2021, while another nine followed in 2023. Altogether, 20 agreements, 76.9% of the sample, were concentrated in 2022 and 2023, closely aligning with the launch of REPowerEU and the COP27 summit in Egypt. The timing shows how quickly hydrogen moved from a largely climate-oriented technology debate into the heart of European strategic policy. The authors interpret the surge as evidence of a transition toward "securitized decarbonization," in which reducing emissions and reducing energy vulnerability increasingly operate through the same external partnerships.

MENA and Sub-Saharan African states are no longer being viewed solely as renewable-energy markets or aid recipients; they are becoming prospective suppliers of a strategic commodity that Europe considers important to decarbonizing sectors such as steel, chemicals, aviation and shipping.

The current paper reports descriptive and structural findings rather than completed causal tests; its gravity models, difference-in-differences estimates, synthetic controls and causal-machine-learning analyses are reserved for a later phase. The present findings therefore map the emerging architecture rather than prove why individual partnerships formed.

Germany, the EU and Morocco Are Becoming the Network's Power Hubs

The emerging hydrogen system is strikingly concentrated. Germany and the European Union, treated as separate actors in the dataset, each account for nine of the 26 agreements, or 34.6% apiece. Together, they are involved in 69.2% of the agreements, while France and the Netherlands have only two each and several EU member states have none.

On the producer side, Morocco has established the strongest network position, signing six agreements with six different European counterparts. Algeria and Namibia follow with three each, while Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Tunisia have two each. The study describes Morocco as the most connected exporter and a structural broker linking EU institutions with individual member states. However, the wider network remains extremely thin. Of 972 theoretically possible EU-MENA and EU-SSA country pairings, only 26 (about 2.7%) had resulted in signed agreements.

For producer governments, first-mover advantage could bring investment, infrastructure and greater influence over emerging standards. It also creates new vulnerabilities, however, particularly if national strategies become dependent on a narrow set of European buyers or if infrastructure is designed primarily around exports rather than domestic industrial needs.

Most Hydrogen Deals Still Signal Intent More Than Transformation

The study also reveals how limited the institutional depth of many partnerships remains. Half of the 26 agreements are memoranda of understanding, 30.8% reach the study's "binding partnership" category and only one, the 2022 EU-Morocco Green Partnership, qualifies as a strategic-treaty-level arrangement.

Diplomatic announcements can easily be mistaken for economic transformation. An MoU may establish cooperation on production, infrastructure or trade, but it does not automatically guarantee financing, factories, jobs, technology transfer or durable market access. The authors consequently describe the emerging regime as still closer to a "signaling" phase than full institutionalization.

To address this gap between announcements and development outcomes, the researchers propose a Green Hydrogen Diplomacy Equity Index, or GHD-EI. The planned index evaluates partnerships across four pillars: contractual fairness, local value capture, environmental safeguards and institutional reciprocity, offering a way to judge agreements by more than their headline investment ambitions.

There is an important limitation. The index is not yet fully executed or validated, and much of it measures negotiated commitments contained in agreements rather than realized outcomes. A technology-transfer clause, for example, does not prove that technology will actually be transferred, just as promises of local value creation do not guarantee employment, industrial upgrading or equitable revenue distribution.

The Real Test Is Whether Hydrogen Avoids Green Extractivism

MENA and African countries possess some of the world's strongest solar and wind resources, but natural advantage alone does not determine who captures the economic value created by those resources. Water illustrates the trade-off particularly clearly. Hydrogen produced through electrolysis can require significant water inputs, while several prospective exporters operate in water-stressed environments. The study argues that producer states should place water safeguards and land-tenure protections directly into partnership agreements rather than assume that European certification systems will adequately capture local environmental risks.

Developing economies should negotiate hydrogen agreements as industrial-development strategies, not simply export contracts. Local manufacturing, skills development, technology transfer, infrastructure spillovers and domestic energy needs all determine whether hydrogen creates broad economic transformation or becomes another enclave industry focused primarily on supplying external markets.

The same challenge applies to Europe. If the EU wants its external Green Deal agenda to be viewed as a model of just transition rather than resource acquisition, its partnerships will need reciprocal development provisions alongside certification and supply security. The authors recommend stronger coordination between EU-level and member-state diplomacy and more explicit standards ensuring that imports contribute to producer-country development.

The African Union and multilateral institutions could also strengthen producer leverage by coordinating common expectations on local content, environmental safeguards, technology transfer and contractual transparency. Such cooperation could reduce the risk that countries compete for investment by accepting weaker terms and could connect the hydrogen transition more closely with Agenda 2063 and wider SDG priorities.

Notably, the study currently covers only 26 agreements, the Sub-Saharan African sample contains just eight observations and the main inferential models have not yet been completed. The proposed equity index also evaluates much of the architecture through contractual commitments, meaning the research cannot yet establish whether existing partnerships have delivered better jobs, higher domestic value capture or improved sustainability outcomes.

In a nutshell, green hydrogen is already becoming an instrument of foreign policy, industrial strategy and energy security before a mature international market has emerged. The decisive question is now shifting from whether Europe, MENA and Africa will cooperate on hydrogen to what kind of economic relationship that cooperation will institutionalize.