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Published March 2023, this map provides a detailed overview of the energy sector in Somalia. The offshore excludes blocks around the Yemeni island of Socotra, which appeared to have been claimed by Somalia in an unofficial map produced by a previous administration in Mogadishu.

Somalia has been accused of circulating an unofficial maritime map that includes offshore blocks that are claimed by Yemen.

Energy trader BB Energy Group has made an early-stage minority investment in Kigali-based developer GasMeth Energy Global and its project to extract, process and distribute methane gas from the Rwandan side of Lake Kivu.

French independent power producer Qair Group has inked four power purchase agreements (PPAs) with the Central Electricity Board (CEB) to develop four so-called Stor’Sun solar PV and battery storage plants.

Niamey hopes the construction of a pair of thermal power plants with total capacity of 111MW will break its dependency on Nigerian electric power, but little is known about Moulaye El Arby Baba Aïnina, the Mauritanian businessman with mining and cement processing interests in Guinea who has financed the $130m investment.

The founders of a school of electricity regulation for Africa expect to choose a host institution on the continent before end-May and will then start looking for a director. A programme of high-level conferences is already under way while the African School of Regulation (ASR) looks for more donors to support its courses and events.

Early years electricity demand at the Magnis Energy Technologies group’s Nachu graphite production plant will be around 24MW, with mining and processing operations expected require some 135,000 MWh/yr.

Negotiations with Shell and Equinor for the estimated $30bn Lindi liquefied natural gas (LNG) project (also known as Tanzania LNG) have been completed, and contracts are being written up, energy minister January Makamba said on 6 March.

Australia’s Magnis Energy Technologies has made important advances in its 230,000 t/yr Nachu graphite project, with financing expected to be in place by June and first production in early 2025, bolstered by an offtake agreement with Tesla and plans for a gas-to-power plant, writes Marc Howard, recently in Dar es Salaam.

Marathon Oil Corporation has been talking up plans for its 3.7m t/yr Punta Europa liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant on Bioko Island, where it is looking to generate $1bn in profits in 2024, when it can drop the US Henry Hub indexation that has curbed its earnings potential.

West Africa’s total installed generation capacity could reach 43GW by 2027 from 31GW at end-2021, according to African Energy Live Data’s latest analysis, with thermal, hydropower and other renewable projects lining up. But many of these capacity additions are planned for Nigeria, where results may be patchy, as it is already hard to dispatch power from existing plants to an inadequate grid.

The replacement of long-serving oil minister Gabriel Obiang Lima with Antonio Oburu Ondo appears to have had an immediate impact, with block entries announced on 20 February for two experienced – but relatively small – independents into Equatorial Guinea’s offshore. Further developments are awaited in the ‘last enclave for American Big Oil in Africa’, writes James Gavin with Our Central Africa Correspondent.

Published February 2023, this graphic consists of three trend charts illustrating West Africa's installed and pipeline power generation capacity and a map showing the location of generation projects where commercial operations are scheduled to begin over the 2023-2027 period. Data for the charts and map is drawn from African Energy Live Data, a power database with detailed profiles of more than 7,000 power generation plants and projects across Africa and the entities behind them. The three charts show total installed and pipeline capacity by country (2010-27), total installed and pipeline capacity by fuel (2010-27) and renewable/non-renewable capacity (2010-27). The map, which covers Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo, shows named projects of 5MW-plus, with locations marked by fuel type and whether they are currently under construction or planned. The map is presented as a PDF file using eps graphics, meaning that there is no loss of resolution as the file is enlarged.

Privately-held Aqua Power’s power investments focus exclusively on baseload provision and projects with a cost of below $0.10/kWh. Above this level “hard questions need to be asked”, as it implied costs were being subsidised by the utility and, by proxy, taxpayers, executive director Gachao Kiuna told African Energy.

The extent that South Africa’s power crisis threatens meltdown in the political system, as well as in the failing electricity supply industry (ESI), has been reflected in open warfare between the government and state utility Eskom’s group chief executive officer (GCEO) André de Ruyter – whose contract has been terminated even before his expected end-March departure.