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Eyebrows were raised in Abidjan when President Alassane Dramane Ouattara’s niece Nina Keita was appointed deputy director-general of Société de Gestion des Stocks Pétroliers de Côte d’Ivoire (Gestoci). The appointment was signed off by hydrocarbons, energy and renewable energy minister Abdourahmane Cissé. At the budget ministry, Keita worked in communications for Cissé, who is close to Ouattara, a fellow finance specialist turned politician. More recently, she gained an MBA from Columbia Business School.

The success of Société des Energies de Côte d’Ivoire’s 275MW Soubré hydro plant has substantially undermined the commercial logic underpinning a proposed 3m t/yr liquefied natural gas (LNG) import terminal in Abidjan’s Vridi port. The challenge facing the project’s promoters, which include Total, Shell, Golar LNG, Azerbaijan’s Socar and Endeavor Energy, is not only to justify a gas offtake price higher than the $5.5-6.0/mBtu ceiling set by the government, but also to find a market for the gas at all.

The Agence Française de Développement (AFD) invites bids by 24 May from consultants to carry out a series of studies for the development of a floating solar photovoltaic project on Lake Kossou in north-central Côte d’Ivoire. The project, with an installed capacity of between 10MWp and 20MWp, is to be developed as a pilot project by CI-Energies on the reservoir impounded by the Kossou dam on the Bandama River. The reservoir was identified in a scoping study carried out by the state power producer as the site for the first in a series of planned utility-scale floating solar projects.

UK-based developer Globeleq and the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development-owned Industrial Promotion Services (West Africa) announced on 7 March that they had signed an amended concession agreement with the government for a 250MW expansion to the Azito gas power plant near Abidjan. Financial close is expected in June 2019.Alongside the expansion, a technical upgrade being implemented this year will add 30MW to the existing 430MW, meaning that the expanded facility will generate 710MW, or around 30% of Côte d’Ivoire’s installed capacity.

The Africa Finance Corporation (AFC) has finalised a bridge loan facility worth €149.6m ($170m) for the construction of the 44MW Singrobo-Ahouaty hydropower project. The transaction closed in mid-December, when a first disbursement was made for the project, in which the AFC has also invested €24.4m equity. Construction is expected to begin before Q2.The loan is intended to fast-track construction while long-term lenders secure final credit approvals, complete documentation, meet conditions precedent and disburse funds.

New petroleum, energy and renewable energy minister Abdourahmane Cissé’s approval of plans for Paris-based investment company Eranove Group to build a 390MW gas-fired power plant at Jacqueville, near Abidjan, and for Globeleq’s 430MW Azito plant to add another 253MW in a CFA225.8bn ($385m) revamp suggests an acceleration of efforts to have 4GW of installed capacity in place by the time Côte d’Ivoire goes to the polls in 2020.

Eranove signed a concession agreement on 19 December for the 390MW Atinkou (Ciprel 5) combined-cycle gas turbine plant at Jacqueville. The agreement covers the financing, design, construction, operation and maintenance of the Atinkou power station, which means “house of light” in the Ebrié language. Eranove said the plant would be the first in sub-Saharan Africa to use F-class gas turbines. The plant will be located in Jacqueville, on the outskirts of Abidjan, to support a government initiative to encourage industrial activity outside the economic capital.

Lagos-based development financier Africa Finance Corporation (AFC) announced on 8 January that it had successfully closed a €577m ($657m) facility for Société Ivoirienne de Raffinage (SIR) to refinance the refinery’s significant debt. AFC’s participation was for €192m. The facility is key to meeting a debt management target agreed with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which approved an Extended Credit Facility and Extended Fund Facility in December 2016. SIR’s debt is equivalent to around 1.5% of gross domestic product and places a substantial burden on the economy.

A cabinet meeting on 8 January approved a loan of $286m from the Export-Import Bank of China for the 112MW Gribo-Popoli hydro project on the Sassandra River. The loan agreement was signed on 9 October 2019. “This project, planned for the Sassandra River downstream from the Soubré dam site, will increase the share of hydroelectric power generation in the generation fleet by 112MW of power and 580GWh of output.

The sacking of petroleum, energy and renewable energy minister Thierry Tanoh, formally announced on 10 December, was not unexpected. Tanoh had been in conflict with powerful players, notably influential presidential adviser and former minister Adama Toungara, over a planned audit of the sector, further reforms and project developments. The former banker had also clashed with Prime Minister Amadou Gon Coulibaly, who was lobbying President Alassane Dramane Ouattara to sack the minister.

Transport minister Amadou Koné on 17 December launched a fleet of buses fuelled by compressed natural gas (CNG). Engie and Tractebel worked together to engineer, supply and install a CNG fuelling station at the Société des Transports Abidjanais (Sotra) depot in Abidjan’s Yopougon district for 50 Crealis buses, supplied by Iveco, which will run on CNG in the Abidjan area.

The Agence Française de Développement has invited bids by 9 January 2019 from consulting companies to support the development of biomass power plants in the cocoa and cotton sectors. Full tender documents are available at: www.achatpublic.com.Contact: Agence Française de Développement, 5 rue Roland Barthes, F - 75015 Paris, France. Tel: +33 1 53 44 30 19; E-mail: [email protected]; Website: www.afd.fr.

The African Development Bank on 7 November approved a €42.3m ($48.2m) loan to support the national rural electrification programme. The loan will be disbursed over three years from 2019 and is intended to support the government’s aim of connecting all communities of more than 500 inhabitants to the grid by 2021. Three districts in the north of the country – Savanes, Woroba and Zanzan – will be connected to the grid via medium-voltage lines, giving around 260,000 people access to electricity.

France’s Proparco has arranged a €90m ($105m) loan for Groupe Sifca to support its investment plans across West Africa, including the construction of the 46MW Biokala biomass power plant in Ayébo in south-eastern Côte d’Ivoire. The credit line is co-financed by Dutch development bank FMO and Société Générale, Proparco said on 8 October. The biomass plant is to be built and operated by Sifca’s renewable energy subsidiary Biokala SA and France’s EDF, under an agreement signed in September 2014.

German development bank KfW is to provide €36.7m ($42.7m) in funding for a 37.5MW solar photovoltaic (PV) project to be developed in the north-western Boundiali region. KfW said it signed two contracts on 3 October with the Ministry of Economy and Finance for the financing of the project, with €27m to come from Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development and €9.7m from the European Union.