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Energy, mines and quarries minister Bachir Ismaël Ouedraogo and economy, finance and development minister Lassané Kabore signed an agreement with World Bank Group country manager Maimouna Fam in mid-July covering financing for a solar rural electrification project (Soleer).

Kenya Electricity Transmission Company (Ketraco) has increased its compensation offer to local landowners affected by the Kenya-Tanzania transmission project by 75%, potentially clearing a significant hurdle. Ketraco yielded to the demands of locals after four years of protracted negotiations on a 96km section from Isinya to Namanga, near the border with Tanzania.

Electricidade de Moçambique (EDM) has announced that it has secured a loan of €29m from Germany’s KfW. The financing is made up of €20m for construction of a power interconnector with Malawi, and €9m for EDM’s short-term transmission investment plan. A first feasibility study for the interconnector was carried out in 1996 by Germany’s Lahmeyer International. It recommended the construction of a 210km, 220kV transmission line to transfer 200MW between the Matambo substation in Mozambique and the Phombeya substation near Blantyre in Malawi, with a total cost of $32m.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has said  that Eskom will start to buy power through the Southern African Power Pool (SAPP). This development could have important repercussions for pricing dynamics on the SAPP market, changing the environment significantly for active members, as well as for independent power producers (IPPs) interested in selling to the pool.

Kenya’s incoming government will do well to learn from previous efforts to reform the electricity supply industry. It will be guided by a new energy white paper, which offers a roadmap to 2040 and which could help Kenya move towards upper-middle-income status. African Energy usually writes its own Views, but such is the plan’s importance that we asked a prominent industry player to assess the proposals and the industry’s direction of travel. The writer has asked to remain anonymous so as not to prejudice their position.

The African Union Development Agency-New Partnership for Africa’s Development (AUDA-NEPAD) is expected to publish bidding documents in April for a consultant to help develop the Continental Power System Masterplan. This framework is intended to link Africa’s five regional power pools into what will eventually become the African Single Electricity Market. Vital elements include updating the Central African Power Pool (CAPP)’s masterplan and creating a one for the Maghreb region.

Energy-short Zimbabwe started receiving 100MW of electricity from Zambia at the beginning of August after paying up-front for the electricity. Zimbabwe had signed a prepaid facility to import electricity in July, but the deal risked falling through without payment for the power.

Sierra Leone’s capital Freetown has been connected to Transco’s Côte d’Ivoire-Liberia-Sierra Leone-Guinea (CLSG) transmission network, following the completion of synchronisation tests at the Bikongor and Bumbuna substations. In December, President Julius Maada Bio commissioned the service at Teloma, powering the southern and eastern regions of the country.

A number of investors remain interested in buying into generation companies (gencos) and distribution companies (discos) in Africa’s most populous country, but they face a daunting prospect, with President Muhammadu Buhari’s election promise to overhaul the dysfunctional electricity supply industry (ESI) still falling far short. Trends revealed by the African Energy Database show that, while installed capacity has increased in recent years, the availability of these plants has decreased to an average of 6,541.6MW in January-September 2016 and output declined to an average 3,054.6MWh/h – pitifully low for a country of over 174m people.

With elections looming in February, President Muhammadu Buhari will be seeking to avoid a repeat of the chaos when petrol filling stations across Africa’s leading oil and gas exporter almost ran dry last December and January. Buhari’s main challenger, veteran politician and businessman Atiku Abubakar, will be quick to highlight economic mismanagement and stress his preference for wholesale reform of the Ministry of Petroleum Resources as well as the state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and its malfunctioning oil refineries.

The World Bank signed partial risk guarantee (PRG) agreements on 24 August for the ground-breaking 450MW Azura-Edo scheme, whose successful close is expected to pave the way for further independent power projects (IPPs). Financial close is expected in the next few months.“This is a very important project for us, not as a deal but as a demonstration of how the Nigerian power sector needs to go forward. If you look at it, World Bank Group exposure to Azura-Edo is pretty significant.

Nigerian politicians’ focus in the year ahead will be on the 2019 elections and the chances of President Muhammadu Buhari serving a second term. Buhari seems to have returned home from medical treatment in London last August reinvigorated to an extent many doubters thought impossible, but if politics is a results business – rather than merely a question of the volume of resources at power-brokers’ disposal – the president and his All Progressives Congress (APC) have much to do.

Work on the Continental System Master Plan (CMP) is advancing via three main streams. In late 2021, a team of energy system modellers started to put together demand forecasts for all African countries. This in itself was a revolutionary process. One of those involved told African Energy the approach used until now by the power pools “was not based on any robust methodology. They were taking the numbers from the national utilities but they didn’t have to be validated or checked.”

Power, works and housing minister Babatunde Fashola, one of Nigeria’s two so-called super-ministers, has outlined a gradual and holistic approach to resolving the power crisis. Speaking in Lagos on 6 May, Fashola said the focus would be on thorough maintenance and rehabilitation of existing plants, improving the gas supply, and unlocking long-delayed projects. “We have resolved the framework for ultimately licensing over a dozen prospectors to generate over 1,000MW of solar energy,” he said, adding that the Ministry of Solid Minerals had been providing data on coal deposits for a possible coal power programme.

Barring unwelcome twists in Nigeria’s volatile elite politics, Goodluck Jonathan’s peaceful departure from Aso Rock will be judged an unexpected success at the end of a largely failed presidency. The economy has grown over the past five years, but the president’s role in this was limited at best, while mismanagement of issues such as the jihadist insurgency in the north-east has added to Nigerians’ insecurity. Jonathan’s defeat means that no future president can rest comfortable in the assumption that his ultimate control of the levers of patronage will translate into electoral success; this is a major step forward for Nigeria and, arguably, the continent.