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Saudi authorities have released Saudi-Ethiopian billionaire Mohammed Hussein Al-Amoudi after more than 14 months in detention, initially in the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Riyadh, in the corruption purge ordered by Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman Bin Abdelaziz Al-Saud. As with other business figures held in November 2017, Al-Amoudi seems to have engineered his release in a settlement process involving the transfer of cash and assets. “He paid and he paid a lot,” the Wall Street Journal quoted “a person familiar with Amoudi’s situation” saying.

The African Development Bank has invited expressions of interest by 28 December from consulting firms to assist with the roll-out of Electricity Cooperative Models in Nigeria and Ethiopia.

Ethiopia’s plans to attract more foreign capital into its power industry took a step forward in late October as the government announced 14 projects that it wants to build and run as public-private partnerships (PPPs). The plan to attract private finance for the planned hydropower and solar schemes is a departure for a government that has borrowed heavily over the last decade from Chinese banks and elsewhere to construct large-scale dams such as Gibe III and the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (Gerd), as well as for major transmission projects.

The UAE has said it could build an oil pipeline between the Eritrean port of Assab and Addis Ababa in the latest sign of its growing involvement in the Horn of Africa. The proposal was announced on 10 August following talks in Addis Ababa between Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and visiting Emirati state minister for international cooperation Reem Al-Hashimi. Ethiopia has been looking at ways to improve fuel supply, and has been holding talks with potential Asian investors on a 120,000 b/d refinery project to supply Ethiopia and the region.

The 25MW Reppie waste-to-energy plant in Addis Ababa was formally inaugurated on 19 August. Development, design and construction of the plant was carried out on a turnkey basis by a consortium of renewable energy developer Cambridge Industries Ltd (CIL) and China National Electric Engineering Company (CNEEC) on behalf of Ethiopian Electric Power (EEP), which is being advised by Danish engineering firm Ramboll as owner’s engineer.

In his first news conference on 25 August, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed confirmed significant problems with the 6.45GW Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (Gerd) on the Blue Nile River. But rather than address the lengthy ongoing spat with Cairo over the $4bn project, or chief engineer Semegnew Bekele’s death in central Addis Ababa in a mysterious 26 July shooting, Abiy’s comments shed more light on a distinctly domestic dispute.He blamed military-linked state contractor Metals and Engineering Corporation (Metec) for the delays.

Personalities remain a key factor in shaping a continent trying to emerge from lost decades of ‘big man’ politics. While the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) made much of efforts to create a post-conflict ‘developmental state’ in the last two decades, modern Ethiopia was fashioned in the image of the late Meles Zenawi, who harnessed an intolerant, Tigrayan-dominated political system to a rigid but fast-growing (if unbalanced) economy.

The government of new prime minister Abiy Ahmed has lifted the state of emergency and announced plans for the part privatisation of several state enterprises, including Ethiopian Electric Power, in the latest moves by the new administration to relax the state’s tight control.The government also said it would fully accept the 2000 Algiers peace agreement that ended its border war with Eritrea, as well as the outcome of a 2002 border commission ruling that awarded disputed territories, including the town of Badme, to Eritrea.

Ethiopia and Denmark signed a 1.26bn krone ($201m) loan agreement on 24 May for the 100MW Assela wind energy project in Oromia province, 150km south of Addis Ababa on the edge of the Rift Valley. Danida Business Finance will contribute 600m krone, while the balance will be secured from a Danish commercial bank. Construction of the substation and grid connection is to be financed by the African Development Bank at an estimated cost of €8.3m ($9.6m).

The Ministry of Water, Irrigation and Electricity has contracted the state-owned Ethiopian Construction Design & Supervision Works Corporation to prepare feasibility studies and the design for the 150MW Wabi hydropower project in Welkite in the Gurage Zone of the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Region. Under the terms of the 22.3m birr ($810, 320) contract signed in early May, the studies are to be completed in 18 months.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s first months in charge have been marked by hectic regional diplomacy that points to a realignment of ties that, in part, reflect the tensions surrounding water use along the Nile, as well as the benefits of closer integration. This has included Ethiopia agreeing three potentially major maritime transport deals: to jointly develop Port Sudan with Sudan; to take a stake in Djibouti’s largest trading port; and to acquire land at Kenya’s Lamu Port.

Ethiopian Electric Power (EEP) invites bids by 12 June from private developers to finance, build, own and operate the 550MW Didessa hydropower plant in Oromia regional state. The project, located on the Didessa River, a tributary of the Abay, will be developed on a build, operate and transfer basis, with the entire capacity and the plant’s estimated gross annual output of 5580GWh to be sold to EEP under a long-term power purchase agreement.

Ethiopian Electric Power invites expressions of interest by 9 May from consultants to carry out a feasibility study and social and environmental impact assessment for the Melka Sedi biomass-fired thermal power project. The purpose of the study is to assess the technical, social and economic viability of using the Prosopis juliflora invasive shrub in the north-western regional state of Afar to generate power at a new thermal power plant with installed capacity of 137.5MW.

China’s Poly-GCL, which is developing the Calub and Hilala gas fields in the Ogaden Basin, has found more gas reserves as well as some oil during appraisal drilling. “In the appraisal wells the company drilled around Calub it has discovered additional gas reserve. If you remember we were talking about 4.7tcf of gas reserve. Now the recoverable gas amount reached 6-8tcf. The amount has increased significantly,” Ministry of Mines, Petroleum and Natural Gas state minister Koang Tutlam told The Reporter newspaper.

Ethiopia Electric Power (EEP) is seeking international private developers or developer consortia to finance, develop, own and operate two hydropower cascades totalling 1362MW in the south-west of the country. Bids are invited by 11 May in separate tenders for the development of the 798MW Dabus 1 and 2 projects on the Dabus River, a north-flowing tributary of the Abbay, and for the 564MW Birbir 1 and 2 plants on the Birbir River, a tributary of the Baro.