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Kenya’s leading sugar producer is looking to join in the country’s success in diversifying its energy sources by expanding into ethanol production as well as power generation, writes Kimemia Mugo

The African Development Bank (AfDB) board approved a senior loan of up to $150m on 2 October for a 300MW mine-mouth coal power plant at Maamba and the refurbishment of the coal mine at the site. Maamba Collieries – a joint venture of Nava Bharat Singapore Ltd (65%) and government-owned Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines (35%) – is developing the project to use the low-grade coal produced as a by-product of mining at the site which is at risk of spontaneous combustion.The project is expected to cost around $800m and will comprise two 150MW units, using two 510 TPH steam generators with circulating fluidised bed combustion. It is designed with the potential to expand to 600MW.

CONGO-B: Transformers contract; DR CONGO: Ruzizi 1 rehab tender; ETHIOPIA: Sterlite wins EEPCo contract; TUNISIA: Rural solar project; UGANDA: ERA approves Tororo plant

Already in default on $12.8m of interest on its 2019 bonds, Afren said on 9 June it had decided to use a 30-day grace period for $11.9m of interest on its 2020 bonds. The interest was due on 9 June, and Afren warned that it did not anticipate paying the interest at the end of the 30 days. Afren said it had received assurances from a committee of creditors that they had no plans to take enforcement action on the bonds.

Decarbonisation of the global energy industry should mean a massive shift from conventional thermal power and even hydroelectric power to solar, wind and other renewables, as well as nuclear power, carbon capture and storage and biofuels, write Jon Marks and David Slater

First fuel flowed through Transnet’s new 555km multi-product pipeline, running from the Port of Durban to Jameson Park, south of Johannesburg, on 11 January

Liberia’s Rural and Renewable Energy Agency (RREA) invites sealed bids by 25 October for the design, supply and construction of the 2.5MW Kaiha 2 small hydropower plant on the Kaiha River, near Kolahun, in Lofa County. The contract is to be financed by the World Bank under the Liberia Renewable Energy Access Project. The hydropower plant is the pilot project of the World Bank scheme, which is designed to expand access to electricity in remote areas and to promote the use of renewable energy, while reducing the use of imported fuel.

Dubai-based temporary power provider Altaaqa Global CAT Rental Power has opened a branch office in Nairobi to serve the East Africa region. “The business activities in the East Africa region are flourishing and the economy has been thriving throughout recent years, resulting in an increased demand for power,” said general manager Peter den Boogert. “With the combined fleet of our sister company in Saudi Arabia, Altaaqa Global has approximately 1,400MW of rental power readily available so that we can focus our efforts on rapid deployment and customer satisfaction.”

There is a sense of relief among the South African business classes that President Jacob Zuma has appointed long-serving finance minister Trevor Manuel to a potentially critical job in his big new government. A court’s decision crushing the highly politicised trade union-led opposition to SA’s biggest listing in years, of telecoms giant Vodacom,

The Liberia Electricity Corporation has signed an agreement with the UK’s Dawnus International to carry out enabling works for the Mount Coffee hydropower rehabilitation project. Work will include building two cofferdams and the advance camp, as well as removal of vegetation and cleaning the powerhouse, and will be carried out by April 2014. The 64MW facility on the St Paul River was built in 1966 and extensively damaged during Liberia’s civil war. The government signed a €50m agreement with the European Investment Bank early last year to finance the rehabilitation work.

Operator Repsol resumed drilling of the Welwitschia-1A well in the Walvis Basin on 4 June after a series of technical problems. The well started drilling on 23 April, using the Rowan Renaissance newbuild drillship, but needed to be re-spudded 50 metres away after the wellhead housing slumped, then was further delayed by a fault in the blow-out preventer control system. Partner Tower Resources said similar problems with new drillships were not uncommon. Recent drilling has had little success, but companies with acreage offshore Namibia say that, with just 14 wells drilled to date in four basins along the 1,600km coastline, it is too early to write off the country’s potential.

The global campaign to provide vulnerable and marginalised communities with sustainable and affordable energy has gained considerable momentum in the past decade. The Africa-EU Energy Partnership’s target of giving electricity access to 100m more Africans by 2020, set in 2010, was exceeded by mid-decade. The United Nations’ Sustainable Energy for All (SE4All) initiative should achieve its target of pulling 1bn people worldwide out of energy poverty by 2030; some 500m of these people live in sub-Saharan Africa.

A judicial review of a decision by the Public Procurement Administrative Review Board to reject an appeal by a consortium of Kenya’s TransCentury, its subsidiary Civicon and Russia’s Power Machines against a tender to lease a minimum of 50MW geothermal wellhead generation units to the Kenya Electricity Generation Company (KenGen) has ordered that the case be thrown out with costs. KenGen signed a contract with a consortium of Toshiba and local companies RentCo and Lantech on 5 September 2015, but the deal has been held up in the courts.

Jack Keyes’ Frontier Resources International has received a petroleum exploration licence for blocks 1717 and 1817 in the Ovambo Basin, and is retaining Houston neighbour Peace River Group (PRG) for technical services

Ocean Installer has been awarded a contract for development work on the Aje field in OML 113 by Folawiyo Aje Services Limited. Ocean Installer will perform the offshore construction of the Aje Phase 1 project, including mooring buoy installation and hook-up, flowline and umbilical installation. Folawiyo Aje Services is technical adviser to field operator Yinka Folawiyo Petroleum. Offshore operations will be performed by the construction support vessel Normand Vision starting in Q1 2016.