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The campaign was costly, the result tantalisingly close and the aftermath is likely to see incoming President Professor John Evans Atta Mills’ administration back-pedalling on a number of promises made in the heat of frantic electoral politicking.

Saipem has been awarded an $800m lump-sum turnkey contract for the Southern Swamp Associated Gas Solution project to be developed 65km south-east of Warri, in Delta State.

Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s announcement that he will not seek a fifth term as Algerian president has once again raised questions of gerontocracy and failed governance in Africa. Tunisian head of state Béji Caïd Essebsi benefits from a degree of popular legitimacy but many citizens are concerned that the spry ‘BCE’ at 92 is too old to stand again when presidential elections are held in December. Before that, his fractured Nidaa Tounès (NT) will come under a strong challenge from the Islamist Ennahda party, now the two major parties’ alliance has broken down, and from other rivals, when parliamentary elections are held in October.

Eskom has given South Africa’s Romano Group an engineering, procurement and construction contract for a 360kW peak solar photovoltaic system to be installed on the roof of Eskom’s Megawatt Park head office in Johannesburg. So far in 2013, Romano has commissioned four rooftop PV projects in South Africa: two in Cape Town and two in Johannesburg.

Det Norske Veritas on 3 December announced it had taken over French safety and environmental risk management services provider Sof Conseil, creating “an important base for growing the French and North African energy market”, according to DNV chief operating officer Remi Eriksen.

Renewable energy developer eleQtra’s Ivorian subsidiary Kokumbo Energies has selected US firm Knight Piésold to conduct a feasibility study for a 27.7MW run-of-river hydropower project on the Bandama River in Gagnoa district. The study will be funded with a grant from the US Trade and Development Agency (USTDA). The project is expected to be completed and operational in early 2022, USTDA said.

Feasibility studies have been completed for the rehabilitation of the Bulawayo (90MW), Harare (100MW) and Munyati (90MW) coal-fired power plants. Zimbabwe Power Company (ZPC) managing director Noah Gwariro said India’s state-owned Wapcos had completed the studies and that ZPC would need to raise $300m to undertake the project to extend the life of the power plants by 30 years.

Conference and business information company Global Pacific & Partners has named former National Oil Corporation of Kenya (Nock) managing director Mary M’mukindia as its East Africa representative, as the region’s onshore and offshore oil and gas potential is increasingly in the spotlight.

Foreign exchange reserves fell by 2% in September to $4.1bn – the equivalent of 2.6 months of imports – as trends towards dollarization and election-related spending added to downward pressures.

Norway’s TGS-Nopec has formed a joint venture with Nigerian data storage and management provider PetroData Management Services. TGS said TGS-PetroData Offshore Services Limited would provide upstream operators in Nigeria with geoscience products and services including seismic data and processing services, digital wellbore data, and geological and geophysical interpretation studies and services.

Events in South Africa, whose sovereign debt has been reduced to junk status by President Jacob Zuma’s crony capitalist rule, are another reminder that when power is exerted abusively shortfalls in governance can be highly damaging for the wider economy. This is also apparent in Democratic Republic of Congo’s minerals and Nigeria’s oil kleptocracies, which are both under renewed scrutiny, with international judicial authorities contemplating action against President Joseph Kabila’s long-time business partner Dan Gertler and sifting through new evidence against former Nigerian oil ministers from Dan Etete to Diezani Allison-Madueke.

New prime minister Aminata Touré has named a cabinet, including Maîmouna Ndoye Seck, head of the electricity regulator, as energy minister. The appointment of veteran human rights advocate Sidiki Kaba as justice minister suggests the crackdown on high-profile corruption is set to remain a priority.

The aftershocks will be felt across Algeria’s economy and society after the tremors caused by the 13 September departure from the Département du Renseignement et de la Sécurité (DRS) of Lieutenant General Mohamed ‘Tewfik’ Mediene. After more than 25 years of running military intelligence, Mediene had become a near legendary representation of the opaque powers that dominate Algerian politics. His agency was critical in prosecuting high-level corruption cases against Sonatrach and other major players, as well as countering radical Islam across the region.

Once the right economics and policies are put in place, the pace of advance made by the most successful renewable energy types, including wind power and solar photovoltaic (PV), can be exceptionally fast. Extrapolations of continent-wide trends by the new African Energy Live data (Live data) suggest that sustainable technologies can replace polluting (and, increasingly, often costlier) thermal solutions which include the diesel, heavy fuel oil and charcoal that hundreds of millions in sub-Saharan Africa have come to depend on.

Less than five years after the first oil flowed into the Chad-Cameroon pipeline, the World Bank Group’s much vaunted revenue management project has collapsed (AE 119/4). Chad has taken advantage of the high world oil price to pay back its loan, and is now free to