Nigeria has called on the United Nations to take deliberate steps to build an inclusive and equitable global hydrogen economy, warning that the transition to clean energy must not repeat the mistakes of the past in which the benefits of major economic shifts were concentrated in wealthy nations while developing countries were left to serve merely as suppliers of raw materials.
The Minister of Budget and Economic Planning, Senator Abubakar Bagudu, made Nigeria's position known during his closing remarks at the Conference on Clean Hydrogen: Shaping Sustainable Industry's Future, organised by the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation at the United Nations premises in Vienna, Austria, on Wednesday, April 8, 2026. The conference, which brought together global stakeholders from industry, policy circles, international organisations, finance and research communities, was aimed at exploring how clean hydrogen could drive industrial transformation in developing countries and transition economies.
Bagudu told the gathering that the global body had a responsibility to confront the historical inequalities that had long defined the relationship between industrialised nations and the developing world, stressing that any new global energy architecture must break from the old pattern in which value creation and economic gains were concentrated in a handful of regions while the rest of the world was relegated to the margins as mere suppliers of untapped potential.
The minister argued that hydrogen was far more than a tool for decarbonisation and must be understood as a transformative pathway to industrialisation, job creation, energy security and economic diversification, particularly for countries like Nigeria that have for too long remained on the periphery of global energy value chains. He described the emergence of the hydrogen economy as a historic opportunity for developing nations to shift from the margins to the mainstream of global energy systems, and urged the international community not to squander that opportunity by reproducing the inequitable structures of the past.
Nigeria's position at the Vienna conference underscores the country's growing strategic interest in the clean hydrogen space. The country, which boasts 206 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserves as well as abundant solar resources with over 2,000 hours of sunlight annually, is considered well-positioned to become a significant player in both blue hydrogen, derived from natural gas, and green hydrogen, produced using renewable energy. Nigeria is also a participant in UNIDO's Global Programme for Hydrogen in Industry, which was launched in 2021 with the backing of Austria, Germany and Italy, and is specifically designed to build the institutional capacity and policy frameworks needed to support developing nations in integrating clean hydrogen into their energy systems.
The Vienna conference was organised under UNIDO's Global Programme for Hydrogen in Industry and supported by the Global Environment Facility, with a focus on encouraging transformative changes in the industrial sectors of developing countries and transition economies through the sustainable deployment of clean hydrogen technology.
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