Seed grant for green fertilizer project by Cezne and Hendriks

Eric Cezne (ASCL) and Tanja Hendriks (ISGA) have won a Leiden University seed ('Kiem') grant for a project on green fertilizer industries in Namibia. Kiem grants are meant for for interdisciplinary initiatives in research, teaching or university organisation, are worth 10,000 euros and are allocated in a lottery.

The project by Cezne and Hendriks is called 'Climate silver bullet or false solution? Counter-mapping green fertilizer futures in Namibia'. It develops an innovative, interdisciplinary pilot study on the emergence of green fertilizer industries in Namibia, focusing on the Daures Green Hydrogen Village – one of Africa’s first green fertilizer initiatives. While policy and industry discourses frame green fertilizer as a pathway to decarbonization, food security, geopolitical resilience, and green industrialization, little is known about how such initiatives are locally experienced, contested, and embedded in socio‑ecological realities. Addressing this gap, the project brings together expertise from African studies, human geography, security studies, visual anthropology, and grassroots activism to examine how communities in Namibia engage with, contest, and reimagine green fertilizer futures.

Counter‑mapping (i.e., the practice of creating alternative maps to highlight marginalized geographies and voices) serves as the project’s methodological anchor and centrally guides its interdisciplinary goals, providing a framework for collaboration between Leiden’s ASCL and FGGA faculties alongside international partners. Through the co‑production of a counter‑map with local community representatives, the project will make visible land‑use frictions, ecological risks, and social struggles that are often obscured in official green fertilizer narratives and representations. It will also illuminate alternative visions and agroecological futures articulated by local actors. Collaboration with a leading Brazilian counter‑mapping scholar and a Namibian community activist will foster meaningful North–South and South–South methodological exchanges, ensuring that the project is grounded in community realities and demands.

As the first study of its kind, the project will produce a proof‑of‑concept approach that can support future research proposals, comparative studies on green transitions, and novel teaching modules.

Congrats to both researchers!