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New Private Infrastructure Development Group (PIDG) facility Green Africa Power (AE259/17) is looking to recruit an experienced fund manager with previous involvement with renewable energy to manage its £95m ($150m) investment fund. The tender has been registered on the European Union public procurement website – ted.europa.eu/ – with the reference 2013-279690. The contract will be valid for an initial period of three or five years, expected to commence in early 2014, with potential for two one-year extensions.

Few markets have shifted focus as quickly in recent decades as the natural gas industry, where the application of new technology to tight gas reserves, starting in North America, has transformed the outlook for ‘conventional’ producers. This trend has yet to shake Africa,

French geophysical services company CGG on 30 August announced an agreement with GNPC Operating Services Company Ltd (Gosco) to form a joint venture company focused on 2D, 3D and 4D marine seismic acquisition and related services. The company, Gosco Geoscience Ltd, will be a Ghanaian indigenous company based in Accra. Gosco, an independent Ghanaian upstream services company, operates the Offshore South-West Tano and East Keta petroleum blocks.

Tanzania’s Fair Competition Commission (FCC) has cleared the acquisition of 50% of BP Tanzania Limited by Trafigura subsidiary Puma Energy (Tanzania) Investments Ltd

The Ministry of Energy, Mines and Quarries has invited prequalification bids for the development of a 100MW heavy fuel oil-fired thermal power plant in Ouagadougou. Bids are due by 22 December. A private partner is sought to design, finance and construct the project as well as operate and maintain the future plant as a concessionaire without any ownership interests, according to the tender notice issued on 28 November.

The Vienna-based Organisation for International Economic Relations and United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (Unido) are providing an $800,000 grant to support a Solar Light for All initiative to supply off-grid, rural communities in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana. Solar Light for All is an initiative set up by the Austria-based Energy Globe Foundation, a non-profit organisation founded by Wolfgang Neumann.

Official figures show a big rise in power imports from Spain in the first half of this year, as lower consumption brought down the price. Moroccan plants reduced their output, enabling ONE to carry out essential maintenance

With further progress in its electricity privatisation, increased food production due to investment in agriculture, and capital markets responding favourably to banks and bonds, it is easy to be drawn into the bubble of optimism that has built up around the Nigerian economy and its prospects. Away from the conflict zones of the north and Niger Delta, real progress has been made, but for every bit of positive newsflow there is a reality check, such as a new report from the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) which examines illegal oil exports – a still little understood cog in the machine of money and power-broking that defines public life in Nigeria.

Among the larger Saudi-controlled companies active in the African resources boom is Stockholm-based Svenska Petroleum, which belongs to Saudi/Ethiopian magnate Mohammed Hussein Al-Amoudi – one of that group of Saudi businessmen born into non-Saudi or marginal communities who have emerged as very significant players, usually by being linked to senior Saudi princes as ‘men of business’ during part, at least, of their careers.

The much-anticipated national LNG development plan is going ahead with a strengthened advisory team and revised targets, working to new bid deadlines, which take account of the ambitious integrated project’s scale and follow officials’ analysis of input from potential investors. Some of the heads of state who have lobbied King Mohammed VI, and among the 100-plus potential liquefied natural gas (LNG) suppliers who have lined up to see Ministry of Energy, Mining, Water and Environment senior adviser Abdellaziz El Gamah, may find it worth the wait: the long-term quantity of gas required at the new Jorf Lasfar terminal is now expected to be 10bcm/yr, double the original forecast.

Sonelgaz’s president tells African Energy that ‘our differences with Dii have been resolved’ as Algeria reassesses its attitude to European mega-schemes, writes Selwa Calderbank in Brussels

The government paid another $600m of arrears to oil companies in August, bringing its debt down to $2.9bn. Petroleum minister Sherif Ismail told Reuters that Egypt aimed to reduce the arrears to $2.5bn by year-end. Egypt received a significant boost on 30 August when Eni announced a huge gas discovery on the Shorouk licence. Eni said the block had estimated reserves of 30tcf in the Miocene interval, which could increase further once the deeper Cretaceous is explored.

Morocco’s readmission to the African Union in January 2017 was widely welcomed, ending a boycott called by the late King Hassan II in 1984 after the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) was admitted as a full member of the then Organisation of African Unity. Morocco sees its future security and prosperity in an energetic drive to build business, political and cultural relations across Africa and King Mohammed VI received a standing ovation when he addressed the 2017 African Union summit.

President Paul Biya has not survived in power for over 37 years by showing great sensitivity to local or international criticism, let alone by accommodating outright opposition. Like other leaders and sympathetic opinion-formers across Central Africa and beyond, he has rationalised authoritarian tendencies and crony relations by insisting on his regime’s essential role in ensuring stability. While governance shortfalls may define the daily lives of Cameroon’s multi-ethnic population, a nation created first by German colonisation and then by division between the British and French empires has traditionally avoided identity-based conflict.

Benedict Oramah has been appointed to replace Jean-Louis Ekra as head of the Cairo-based export credit agency African Export-Import Bank. Oramah, a Nigerian national, joined the bank as an analyst in 1994. Presently executive vice-president in charge of business development and corporate banking, he will take over the leadership in September as the institution’s third president since it was founded in 1994.