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The restart of crude deliveries via the Petrodar pipeline in January was an important moment for South Sudan’s embattled economy and a sign of improved relations between Juba and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) based in Port Sudan. However, the trade continues to be at risk from Sudan’s civil war, as are the SAF’s hopes of attracting Russian companies to invest in its upstream sector, writes James Gavin.

Governments struggled to address daunting economic and social pressures in 2024, when many projects moved too slowly and opportunities were missed. A tendency across the continent to vote out incumbents has brought some new faces to the helm but, like their more seasoned fellow leaders, they are confronted by a dizzying array of issues that threaten to complicate even the best-laid schemes.

The third round of South Africa’s battery energy storage programme has attracted 33 bids from prospective independent power producers.

The Libyan government is about to claim more than $60bn of until now unknown assets, which investigators say were secretly invested in United States treasury bonds by the former Qadhafi regime. But, with much of the paper held in smaller American midwestern financial institutions, there will likely be a massive battle to establish title to the bonds, and decide how and to whom they should be returned.

The ruling ‘Duo Diomaye/Sonko’ seems to hold all the cards needed to at least try to implement their ambitious Project Senegal 2050 agenda, after their Pastef party won some 130 of the 165 National Assembly seats in Senegal’s much-anticipated mid-November legislative election, writes Waly Dione Faye.

The Oasis consortium, led by EDF Group and Mulilo, has reached financial close on three battery energy storage system (Bess) projects in South Africa’s Northern Cape and North West provinces. The projects are part of the first round of the country’s Battery Energy Storage IPP Procurement Programme (Besippp).

The Sirexe 2024 event has drawn senior officials to Abidjan, drawing commitments from Côte d’Ivoire to further develop its resources and energy industries

Côte d’Ivoire is pushing for a big upturn in renewable energy investment as a new event opens in Abidjan

The widespread perception that Donald Trump’s incoming United States administration will create new winners and losers does not exclude Africa’s energy industries and the wider continental economy and society. But true to the president-elect’s ‘transactional’ approach, US policy in the next four years will mainly be geared to creating winners at home – and those governments and corporates who plan with America First in mind could survive the expected Trump rollercoaster better than others.

Mazarine Energy’s management has acquired a majority stake in the indie firm by buying out two private equity investors. It comes as it is expanding into renewable energy projects, with a first solar PV plant in Feriana, Kasserine Governorate.

Belgium’s International Montage Maintenance (IMM) has completed construction of  a 22MW thermal power plant at Gerald Group’s Marampa iron ore mine in Sierra Leone. Owned and operated by the London-headquartered miner, the commercial and industrial (C&I) Marapma facility has now been commissioned.

The power and water utility serving Morocco’s commercial capital has transferred from French private sector control and is now being run by the state-owned SRM C-S. The move underlines the extent to which African governments are looking for new management models for vital services and highlights how the private sector has failed to meet expectations in electricity distribution.

Explosives and chemicals company AECI’s 4MW commercial and industrial (C&I) solar PV plant in Johannesburg has started operations. The project is part of AECI’s four-phase programme, launched in 2021, to generate solar power across various manufacturing sites.

The Nigerian government needs an urgent boost after essential macroeconomic reform measures sparked huge public opposition. By placing President Bola Tinubu at the centre of plans to revive long stalled projects, Abuja can point to the potential for a better economic performance ahead – at least in the longer term – while opponents test the administration’s resilience with the threat of more short-term disorder.

Reforms to the way multilateral financial institutions approach project finance could help overcome some of the most intractable barriers to the electrification of Africa, including fears of default and high project financing costs which drive away many potential investors. To be meaningful, changes need to be principled and generally applicable, while also anchored in the often-messy reality of doing business across the continent. African Energy is publishing the first in a series of white papers on how this problem might be solved in a way which recognises Africa’s needs and the capabilities of institutions, without introducing moral hazard.