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President El Sisi’s cabinet reshuffle is the most significant reshaping of the energy sector’s management in nearly a decade, bringing new ministers to the oil and gas and electricity portfolios, who face daunting challenges as Egypt struggles to meet its ambitions for energy self-sufficiency and to become a regional gas and renewable power hub, writes John Hamilton.

With African electricity supply industries in a state of flux, everyone agrees the infrastructure needed for economic development can only come from the private sector, but the existing financial and commercial models are inadequate – and a desperate need for investment in transmission only makes this financing challenge harder. Some new thinking about how to crack these problems was presented at the African Energy Forum in Barcelona, but the boldest ideas require a leap of faith, writes John Hamilton*

The National Nuclear Regulator (NNR)’s granting of a licence to state power utility Eskom to continue operating Koeberg nuclear power station’s Unit I for another 20 years should provide South Africa with greater energy stability. A review to extend Koeberg unit II by 20 years is still being carried out. South Africa is also making progress with plans to procure 2.5GW of new nuclear capacity.

Veolia Environnement’s sale of majority interest in Casablanca’s water and electricity provider to a new state-owned regional utility is part of a wider shift towards public ownership of the sector in Morocco.

The second phase of KMC’s spodumene processing plant, under construction in Hwange district, has been delayed by three months. The first phase of the processing plant was commissioned in December 2023.

Another series of delays have postponed the commissioning of the Mozambique-Malawi Regional Interconnector Project (Moma), the World Bank Group (WBG) has confirmed. The 218km, 400kV line will connect Malawi’s isolated grid to the Southern African Power Pool (Sapp) and add a badly-needed source of electrons to its grid – with a 50MW allocation expected from state-owned independent power producer (IPP) Hidroeléctrica de Cahora Bassa.

Faced by a severe drought which has seen water levels fall dramatically at its hydroelectric power plants, Zambia is hoping to revive abandoned private sector-led power projects and speed up work on an interconnector with Tanzania.