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President Jakwaya Kikwete has brought a new dynamism to Tanzania’s reform efforts, but governance worries persist. In early May, Norway’s Norconsult said it has decided to pull out of the country following internal and external reviews of the activities of its partly owned subsidiary NTZ.

Lagos-based Africa Finance Corporation (AFC) has completed a $50m bilateral loan facility with Rand Merchant Bank. AFC aims to use the proceeds with its other financings to fund further investments in the development of critical infrastructure.

Former finance minister Basil Pesambili Mramba and energy and minerals minister Daniel Ndhira Yona were jailed for three years on 6 July for issuing illegal tax exemptions to an international company and also arbitrarily awarding a contract to audit gold, costing the government millions of dollars of lost revenues. Both politicians are from the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi party and issued the exemption certificates in the early 2000s. “The accused acted arbitrarily in granting tax exemptions to a gold audit firm, totally disregarding advice by taxation and legal authorities,” the court judgement read.

A year after the Arab Spring, North African officials are once more flocking to events held beyond their borders, signalling a less introverted approach to doing business by companies traumatised by political turbulence

Sharjah-based Dana Gas has raised $135m through the sale of 1.675m of its shares in MOL Hungarian Oil and Gas Company. Dana Gas took a 3% shareholding in MOL in 2009 as part of an agreement to farm into the Kurdistan region of Iraq, and the 8 February transaction leaves Dana Gas with a remaining interest in MOL of 1.486m shares, or about 1.4% of the share capital.

The 10MW Soroti solar plant was formally inaugurated on 12 December. The $19m project was developed under the Global Energy Transfer Feed in Tariff (GET FiT) scheme, a dedicated support scheme for renewable energy projects managed by Germany’s KfW Development Bank in partnership with Uganda’s Electricity Regulatory Agency and funded by the European Union and the governments of Norway, Germany and the United Kingdom.

Nigeria has a long history of mining. It was once a large gold producer, the sixth largest global exporter of tin ore and a big exporter of coal in the early 1960s

Lundin Petroleum said on 1 November that it had been notified by the Swedish Prosecution Authority that the company could face fines in connection with the preliminary investigation into its operations in Sudan. The Swedish government in October authorised the country’s prosecution authority to proceed with an indictment against Lundin Petroleum chairman Ian Lundin and chief executive Alex Schneiter over alleged complicity in war crimes in Sudan.

City Power has contracted Consolidated Power Projects (Conco) to construct a new 400/275/88kV substation at Sebenza. Consolidated Infrastructure Group subsidiary Conco said growth in the Sebenza area had increased exponentially without a corresponding upgrade of the ageing power infrastructure, leading to the power grid in the region becoming constrained. The project began at the end of 2014 and completion is expected at the end of 2017. On completion, an extra 1000MVA is expected to be added to capacity in the Sebenza area, which will dramatically improve the reliability and stability of the grid.

The slow demise of Jacob Zuma’s presidency has coincided with a change of leadership and change of direction at failing national utility Eskom. Advertisements for the position of chief executive published in the South African press on 11 February call on the candidate to “develop and implement a vision and strategic direction to meet evolving energy markets and technologies” and require a “solid track record in leading and managing significant change in a complex organisation with at least 20,000 employees”

OLC Arandis Solar Energy signed a 25-year power purchase agreement on 19 September with the Erongo Regional Electricity Distributor. A tender for a 3MW solar photovoltaic plant at Arandis was awarded in February to Germany’s Cronimet Mining Power Solutions and its Namibian partner O&L Energy. Ground-breaking for the N$80m ($6m) solar plant will take place in November, with operations expected to start by April 2017. Cronimet was engineering, procurement and construction contractor for the 4.5MW Omburu solar plant, which started operation in 2015.

South Sudan’s oil production has fallen by about 25,000 b/d, or 15%, due to problems with well maintenance in the key producing state of Upper Nile, according to the latest sales and marketing data from the Ministry of Petroleum and Mines. The ministry has outlined a lifting programme for 4.2m barrels of crude for November, equivalent to 140,000 b/d. Production in H1 2014 averaged 165,000 b/d. The drop is significant, and will be costly for the government. The outbreak of hostilities in mid-December had already resulted in a sharp drop in output from 220,000 b/d in November 2013.

After more than a year of blockage, the detailed provisions in the latest deal reached by negotiators from Sudan and South Sudan mean oil could start to flow again within weeks. The deal was reached in the early hours of 12 March after almost a week of talks in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. An implementation schedule has been agreed by the two sides that demands a resumption in oil production be mandated by the two governments by 24 March. South Sudan halted oil exports via Sudan in January 2012, after the Khartoum government began to confiscate South Sudanese oil as payment for what it claimed were unpaid transit fees.

Vopak Terminal Durban (Pty) Ltd has given Fluor Corporation an engineering, procurement and construction management contract for the Vopak Growth 4 Project in Durban. Vopak Terminal Durban (Pty) Ltd. is a partnership between Royal Vopak (70%) and Reatile Chemicals (30%). Vopak Terminal Durban is well connected via pipelines to the (refining) industry in the Port of Durban.

Malawi is completing the sign-up steps to become an Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) candidate and is expected to present an application to the EITI Board by 30 June. The EITI is part of the government’s commitment to develop the oil and mining sector in a manner that generates revenue to the state and benefits the citizens of Malawi.In a state of the nation speech to parliament on 5 May, President Peter Mutharika said: “In view of the commitment by government to enhance transparency in the mining sector, government will join the EITI to promote revenue transparency.