The Walvis Bay Circular Industry & Composite Innovation Centre converts end-of-life aircraft, heavy mining equipment, and other industrial assets into a platform for youth training, circular-economy employment, and clean energy on Namibia’s Atlantic coast.
Four Strategic Pillars. One self-funding platform. Built by Phoenix Resource Association.
Infrastructure of Opportunity is the institutional, industrial, and educational infrastructure that converts Africa’s underused human and material capacity into productive economies. In Phoenix Resource Association’s model, it takes physical form as Circular Economy Centres — campuses where end-of-life industrial assets are dismantled into commercial value, and where the young people written off by their economies are trained into the skilled workforce those economies need. It is not a programme, a project, or a pilot. It is the layer of institutions, industrial systems, and accredited training that has been missing — the layer above “NEET training”, “TVET initiative”, “youth employment programme”, or “circular economy startup”, each of which is a sub-component, not the whole. When the infrastructure is built, opportunity stops depending on luck or rescue, and becomes a feature the system itself produces at scale.
Across Southern Africa, young people with capability, drive, and potential are waiting for a pathway. A high proportion are classified as NEET — not in employment, education, or training — not because the talent is absent, but because the structure to connect it has never been built. In the same regions, mining districts and secondary airports hold growing numbers of redundant industrial assets: haul trucks, excavators, crushers, fixed plant, abandoned aircraft. These realities exist side by side, but are rarely connected.
“The biggest waste is not the metal in a redundant haul truck or the carbon fibre in a retired aircraft. It is the opportunity that never connects young talent to a real pathway.”
Recovering stranded industrial assets and the potential of young people who have been overlooked.
Constructing the accredited skills pathways, infrastructure, and circular enterprises that connect talent to opportunity.
Creating the conditions for graduates, communities, and economies to rise together.
Southern Africa’s deep-water gateway: a working port, an airport, industrial land, SEZ-style potential, and corridors reaching six countries. Walvis Bay sits at the centre of Namibia’s green hydrogen and industrialisation agenda — and Namibia needs visible, real-economy industrial projects that consume green power locally, youth skills programmes tied to new green industries, and partnerships that connect hydrogen, logistics, manufacturing, and circular economy in a single narrative.
The Walvis Bay Circular Industry & Composite Innovation Centre is designed to meet exactly that need. Concept first submitted to NIPDB in March 2026; updated July 2026 on the back of a NIPDB-convened week of institutional meetings in-country.
The Centre adapts Phoenix Resource Association’s Circular Economy Centre blueprint to the Namibian setting. Each pillar reinforces the others: assets feed training, training feeds operations, operations fund the mission.
A dedicated dismantling and depollution facility for end-of-life aircraft, heavy mining equipment, and related industrial assets, operating under documented standard operating procedures.
A Namibia campus of the Phoenix Institute for Circular Industries: accredited programmes with on-site dormitories, open to learners from across Namibia and the SADC region.
Reliable, low-carbon power for the dismantling yard, training facilities, and residential village, plus selected nearby productive users — designed as a mini-utility with transparent tariffs and performance monitoring.
An innovation pillar, not the primary revenue line: safe dismantling and segregation of CFRP and GFRP, composite skills in the PICI curriculum, and a renewables-powered pilot lab generating transparent data on costs, emissions, and occupational risks.
Composite materials — CFRP and GFRP — are critical to lighter aircraft, wind turbines, and hydrogen infrastructure. Yet composite end-of-life management is one of the hardest unsolved problems in circularity: most composite waste is still landfilled, incinerated, or downcycled, and no region holds a clear, integrated leadership position. That is a genuine opportunity for Namibia: Walvis Bay, under strong governance, as Africa’s first serious composite end-of-life testbed and innovation partner.
In 2001, a thirteen-year-old boy in Malawi was forced out of school when his family could no longer pay the fees. During a devastating famine, he found his way to the village library, taught himself electrical engineering from a physics textbook, and built a wind turbine from scrap metal that pumped water to his family’s crops. He saved his village.
His name is William Kamkwamba. He went on to Dartmouth College and later founded the Moving Windmills Project. His story has been told in a book and a Netflix film.
But William’s story is not extraordinary because of what he did. It is extraordinary because of what it reveals: Africa is full of young people like William. They are not short of talent or creativity or drive. They are short of a pathway.
NEET youth aged 18–30 from Namibia and SADC, trained and housed on the residential campus, with pathways into employment and SME creation.
Host communities near Walvis Bay, local SMEs served by the micro-grid, and government TVET agencies strengthened by the platform.
Aviation OEMs, mining operators, and future CEC replication sites across the region: a multi-country, systemic effect.
Capital from government, PRA, DFIs and donors; stranded-asset feedstock; land and enabling infrastructure.
Dismantling and metals recovery; accredited PICI training; micro-grid operation; composite R&D.
100–150 youth trained annually; certified metals into regional value chains; clean energy supplied.
Formal, decent employment and SME creation; reduced waste and unstructured scrap exports.
Structural contribution to green industrialisation, NEET reduction, and Walvis Bay as a regional circular hub.
Aligned with NDP6 and Vision 2030, Namibia’s Green Hydrogen Strategy, ILO Decent Work principles, and UN Global Compact Labour Principles. Safeguarding and gender inclusion are embedded in curriculum design and operational standards.
The project is structured in four phases. As at mid-2026, Phase 1 is underway: the Memorandum of Understanding is in drafting and site engagement is in progress.
NIPDB endorsement and focal-team designation; site identification at Walvis Bay; initial ministry and university engagement, including letters of intent from NUST and UNAM.
Technical, financial, and environmental-and-social pre-feasibility; composite risk and opportunity assessment; DFI engagement; research partnership framework and baseline data package.
Enabling infrastructure; industrial dismantling yard; PICI training institute and residential village; solar-hybrid micro-grid installation. CEC operational, PICI Cohort 1 enrolled, composite pilot lab established.
Full dismantling operations; composite evidence review and scale decisions; SADC replication design. Year-5 steady-state revenues of approximately USD 3.7–4.1M at a whole-Centre EBITDA of approximately 26%.
The Centre is built to produce revenue and cover its own operating costs by year five. Revenues are diversified across dismantling and recycling fees, training and programme funding, micro-grid revenues, and innovation partnership income. Grants fund the mission layer; the operating business pays for itself.
The detailed capital-responsibility breakdown, with CAPEX, OPEX, revenue and financing scenarios, is available to qualified partners through the diligence pack.
Steady-state estimate of USD 3.7–4.1M, modelled at USD 3.9M in the July 2026 integrated financial model.
Whole-Centre operating margin after staff, feedstock handling, and utilities.
Organisational seed funding carries the platform through incubation and pre-feasibility.
Source: PRA integrated financial model, July 2026 · WB-CEC Concept Note v2. No feedstock commitments are announced; lessor and AFRA-accredited partner approaches are in progress.
Most NEET programmes start with a classroom. Phoenix Resource Association starts with an asset. Founder David Mercer spent seventeen years on Royal Navy flight decks and a decade in airline cockpits, with an Executive MBA from the University of Geneva layered in between. Aviation, logistics, and command run on exactly the discipline the NEET conversation has been missing: hard infrastructure, accredited competencies, measurable outcomes, cross-cultural delivery at pace.
Africa’s young people are not a problem to be managed. They are an asset waiting for a pathway.
David Mercer is Founder and Executive Director of Phoenix Resource Association, a Geneva-based Swiss non-profit building Africa’s first network of Circular Economy Centres for NEET youth across SADC. Founder succession, by design →
Chaired by founder David Mercer, the governance team draws on senior experience at Pictet, Boeing, Standard Chartered, the DBSA, the African Development Bank, and Botswana’s public service. A mission-lock golden share, held by the Phoenix Resource Foundation in each CEC operating entity, keeps commercial operations subordinate to youth, jobs, and circular-economy outcomes.
Founder. Executive leadership across all workstreams. Former Royal Navy helicopter pilot and airline captain; Executive MBA, University of Geneva.
Private Equity Real Assets at Pictet Group. Digital transformation executive and COO. EMBA (IMD); former airline captain. Certified in impact investing, ESG, and AI & data analytics.
Senior HR and social impact professional. Corporate experience at Boeing and Standard Chartered. Expertise in ILO Decent Work, DEI frameworks and youth safeguarding.
Aviation industry expert covering MRO, airside infrastructure, OEM relationships and aviation-safety compliance. Advises on digital learning systems, VR simulation and CEC campus design.
Deputy Executive Director, Botswana Public Service College. More than 20 years spanning public service, government ministries and the private sector. Former Deputy Permanent Secretary for Labour and Social Security.
Infrastructure finance practitioner. DBSA (9+ years), African Development Bank, New Development Bank, and Nedbank CIB Co-Head of Africa Infrastructure Finance.
From 12 to 19 June 2026, PRA spent a week in Windhoek and Walvis Bay, hosted and convened by the Namibia Investment Promotion and Development Board. The programme brought the Centre to the institutions that can help bring it into being: development finance, environmental investment, industrial land, ports, and airports. The warmth and seriousness across government, finance, ports and industry told us something simple: the appetite is there.
A partnership with Phoenix Resource Association creates real, auditable value for your organisation while placing you at the centre of Africa’s circular economy development. Five partnership types, each with a clear value exchange.
Provide end-of-life aircraft and mining equipment to process at the Centre. The industrial core of the model runs on your equipment retirement strategy.
Technical validation, safety protocols, curriculum quality assurance, and regulatory credibility: the legitimacy that unlocks everything else.
Curriculum development, research collaboration, student articulation, and accreditation pathways — alongside NUST, UNAM, and the SADC research network.
LMS platforms, digital learning tools, hardware, and campus connectivity to power the innovation pillar and the Academy.
Foundations and development finance institutions partnering across operational grants, seed capital, and site-level development finance.
PRA operates as a funder-ready institution, not a concept note. The documents below are assembled and current. Qualified partners conducting diligence can request access; we share under mutual NDA.
Shared under mutual NDA, within 3 working days of request verification.
Phoenix Resource Association is actively engaging partners across five types: feedstock, standards, academic, technology, and funding. If your organisation sees a role in what we are building, the quickest way in is a direct conversation.