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Development finance institutions (DFIs) remain the big beasts in developing infrastructure and other major projects in much of Africa. The ‘blending’ of public and private finance has become a preoccupation for traditional donors looking to leverage their grants and loans to produce bigger funding flows to kick-start the continent’s infrastructure revolution, to catch up with sub-Saharan Africa (SSA)’s macroeconomic growth. More diversified forms of financing are being sought to underwrite power, water and other big-ticket schemes. This will inevitably need new players and asset classes, including African and international pension funds, billionaire investors, family private offices, the public listing of power developers and electricity investment companies.

Nigeria’s Lekoil has raised $46m with a placing of 125.2m shares at 24p/share. The proceeds will fund the acquisition of an indirect controlling stake in OPL 325, to the south of Lekoil’s OPL 310 in the Dahomey Basin. Chief executive Lekan Akinyanmi told the Africa Independents’ Forum in Cape Town that the Dahomey Basin was underexplored. The company also has the Otakikpo marginal field on OML 11, which delivered first oil on 5 September, and acreage in Namibia, where Lekoil is doing regional geological work.

Former oil minister Diezani Alison-Madueke has been arrested and bailed in London as part of an investigation into suspected bribery and money-laundering offences. The UK National Crime Agency (NCA) said its recently formed International Corruption Unit had arrested five people across London on 2 October. “All five people arrested were released on conditional police bail later that evening, pending further investigation both in the UK and overseas,” a statement said. “The investigation commenced in 2013 under the Proceeds of Corruption Unit, and transferred to the NCA earlier this year.”

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo launched the construction of two solar power plants totalling 17MWp at Kaleo and Lawra in the Upper West Region on 4 February. The projects are being developed by the Volta River Authority with €22.8m ($25m) of funding from Germany’s KfW.A presidency statement said the 13MWp plant in Kaleo was due for completion by December, while the 4MWp project in Lawra would be completed in June. The projects, the first grid-connected solar power plants in the Upper West Region, will supply enough power for 32,000 households.

BP Angola has given Technip a five-year contract for engineering and modification services for the Greater Plutonio and Plutão, Saturno, Venus and Marte (PSVM) floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) units in blocks 18 and 31.

President Yoweri Museveni has launched construction of the 183MW Isimba hydro project on the River Nile. China International Water & Electric Corporation is building the dam with financing from the Export-Import Bank of China under an agreement reached between Uganda and China in July.

Liberia’s Senate and House of Representatives have voted to ratify an amended production-sharing contract for Block LB-13, enabling Canadian Overseas Petroleum Ltd (COPL) to bring in ExxonMobil as a partner (AE 250/1). The deal, which enables the US supermajor to take an 80% operating stake, had created controversy because of suspicions that Liberia might not be getting the best deal.

Addax Bioenergy’s Makeni project in Sierra Leone has been registered as a clean development mechanism (CDM) project with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the first project in Sierra Leone to do so. 
The $300m complex, which consists of a sugarcane estate, a bioethanol refinery and a biomass fuelled cogeneration facility, has been criticised by local and international lobby groups.

US anger over Ghana’s resistance to ExxonMobil and African disillusion with France is opening the way for a new British investment push into Africa.

Off-grid solar company BBOXX announced on 13 January that Africa Infrastructure Investment Managers (AIIM), part of Old Mutual Alternative Investments, has agreed an investment of $31m to acquire a minority stake in BBOXX’s operating companies in Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya and Rwanda. The investment was made by AIIM’s African Infrastructure Investment Fund 3 and will allow the BBOXX companies to install 2m solar systems by 2022. AIIM chief executive Jurie Swart said the deal reflected the maturity of the off-grid sector as well as BBOXX’s ambition.

State utility Office National de l’Electricité et de l’Eau Potable (ONEE) has finally opened bids for 850MW of power to be generated at five sites, a key element in the Integrated Wind Energy Programme (PIEE), which aims to generate 2GW by 2020. Decisions on the 850MW element (tender no SP 40 311) have been delayed while ONEE has put together financing and bidders have contested some of the tough conditions requested for the build-own-operate-transfer scheme. These include the call for local manufacturing to be included in bids, notably from small and medium-size companies, along with technology transfer.

Prequalification closed at Kenya Tea Development Agency Holdings Ltd (KTDA) on 1 October for engineering, procurement and construction contractors for three hydroelectric plants at Tindinyo (6.6MW), Kipsonoi (3MW) and Nyambunde (2.1MW). Proposals were also due from consultants to carry out studies looking at the technical, financial and economic feasibility of solar PV facilities at KTDA tea factories.

Construction is under way on Namibia’s first utility-scale solar power plant. The 4.5MW facility is being developed by independent power producer Omburu Sun Energy Ltd on 16 hectares of land in Omburu, north-west of Windhoek. Germany’s Cronimet Mining Power Solutions is the engineering, procurement and construction contractor. The plant is expected to sell 11,075MWh each year to NamPower for 25 years under a power purchase agreement signed in December 2013. It will connect to the national grid at the Omburu substation, less than 1km from the project site, and is expected to begin commercial operation in February 2015.

Dutch development bank FMO has named Peter van Mierlo as its new chief executive. Van Mierlo, who was previously chair of the board of management of PwC Netherlands and managing partner of PwC Europe, will take over on 1 July. He succeeds Jürgen Rigterink, who left FMO in April to join the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. He will serve on FMO’s management board alongside chief investment officer Linda Broekhuizen and chief risk and finance officer Fatoumata Bouaré.

Of all the assorted regional infrastructure projects jostling for supremacy in East Africa, the growing credibility of the Lamu Corridor project raises the possibility of a new East African power axis of Kenya and an emergent Ethiopia.