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Japan’s pledge to invest some $30bn in Africa over the next three years has underlined the Asian economic giant’s commitment to rapidly advance its relations, as well as to expand its presence, on a continent where Tokyo’s involvement has too often lagged behind other big nations.

Large renewable procurement in South Africa and ambitious hydrogen production plans in Egypt are expected to bring huge amounts of privately-owned, utility-scale solar capacity on line in the next three years. Meanwhile commercial and industrial solar remains a high growth potential market, according to analysis of  new data from the African Energy Live Data platform.

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has committed a $100m loan to Cairo-based Banque Misr for on-lending to local small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) operating in the Egyptian green economy.

Governments are assessing their positions over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (Gerd) project, after the dam’s third filling was completed, despite an escalation of rhetoric from Egypt and Sudan as the downstream nations continue to complain at a threat to their dependency on Blue Nile waters for irrigation and basic water supply.

Financial pressures are building to an uncomfortable extent as a result of sharp increases in global commodity prices, but the authorities in Cairo are holding firm to their strategy for energy market liberalisation and reform.

The quartet of public institutions driving Egypt’s green hydrogen (GH2) development have signed eight new memoranda of understanding (MoUs) with international partners in the past month, seven of them in one session on 25 August, bringing to at least 17 the number of projects under consideration. The new participants include UK-based Actis and Globeleq, two of India’s largest renewables developers, Acme Group and ReNew Power, and Gulf-based investors Alcazar Energy, Alfanar Group and K&K Energy, plus Egypt- and US-backed Mediterranean Energy Partners.

Egypt’s New and Renewable Energy Authority (NREA) is expecting to commission a number of its own wind and solar projects during the next 12 months as part of a wider project to take installed renewable generation capacity up to 10GW during 2023.

Reports that Russian crude is being transhipped off the West African coast and in Egypt signal a fast-changing  oil market as Asian buyers access cheap crude rejected by western buyers. This has implications for African producers, while market sources say there are also signs of Russian crude ending up in products sold in Africa

Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX)-listed Tenaz Energy Corporation has pulled out of its takeover of SDX Energy after only 20.2% of the London AIM-listed firm’s shareholders voted in favour of the deal. In further corporate manoeuvres, Egypt-Morocco-focused SDX has lined up a new anchor investor, Aleph Commodities, with which it is working on a “refreshed and ambitious strategy”.

Within months of offering the company to a receptive market, UK private equity (PE) investor Actis and partner Mainstream Renewable Power announced on 18 July that they had signed an agreement to sell Lekela Power to Egyptian/UAE-based Infinity Group (and its Abu Dhabi-based ally Masdar) and Lagos-based multilateral Africa Finance Corporation (AFC).

Houston-based independent Vaalco Energy is to acquire Canada’s TransGlobe in an all-share transaction valued at $307m, creating a larger Africa-focused independent exploration and production company.

Cairo has not budged on its commitment to Rosatom and the Dabaa nuclear project, regardless of international sanctions and other western attempts to diplomatically and financially isolate Russia over Ukraine. Construction has begun in earnest at Dabaa, which says much about the underlying strength of Cairo-Moscow relations, but the project’s real drivers are domestic and regional, writes John Hamilton.

A 1.1 GW wind power project by Acwa Power and Hassan Alam Utilities (HAU) is the first to be agreed since regulations were changed to allow wind turbines to almost double in height, indicating the authorities intend to move quickly. A key outstanding question is whether the price of the power purchase agreement remains the same as that for earlier projects.

Egypt has taken major strides towards the government’s long-stated objective of establishing itself as the hub of the eastern Mediterranean gas trade, with agreements signed with Israel, the European Union and Chevron in June. The concept fits in with Europe’s response to the Ukraine war by offering an alternative to Russian gas.

Denmark’s Vestas has said the 241.5MW Gulf of Suez wind power plant is expected to reach commercial operations in Q4 22 or Q1 23. Fernando Iwan Glazer, head of marketing for Vestas’ African operations, told African Energy the project was proceeding on schedule.