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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.

Nigeria’s power sector had a year to forget in 2015 as the momentum that had started to build in the private sector was checked first by the political situation and then by the fall in oil prices, the currency crisis and the reorganisation of government finances. However, progress at the $900m, 450MW Azura-Edo power project – the first independent power producer (IPP) to be project financed in the post-privatisation regime – coupled with a renewed focus on gas supply by power, works and housing minister Babatunde Fashola and an accompanying $2 increase in the domestic gas price to $3.30/mBtu have brightened the prospects for the sector.

Troubled utility Liberia Electricity Corporation is expected to sign a much-anticipated import deal with Ivorian counterpart CI Energies on 21 October, following months of negotiations over outstanding payments. It comes as President George Weah has extended exempt status for equipment imports, while more HFO purchases are planned and work is planned to repair malfunctioning thermal and hydropower plants.

Mozambique is among the sub-Saharan countries that has been making progress installing more power transmission capacity, with new lines connecting under-served centres to improve state utility Electricidade de Moçambique (EDM)’s grid.

Nigeria’s problems in installing new generation capacity from a variety of sources are reflected in faltering plans to develop embedded power projects, which the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (Nerc) defines as electricity generated and sold directly to an offtaker or distribution company (disco). Progress is reported by a few generators, including Eko Power, which in 2014 announced it was looking to sell 1GW on an embedded basis to discos from 2019, but momentum has been slower than many expected. According to developer Genesis Energy’s founder, Akinwole Omoboriowo, the government remains strongly committed to embedded power as a complement to conventional grid supply.

BP’s commitment to become a renewables-driven energy company has met with some shareholder scepticism, as it is hydrocarbons that still drive profits, while climate campaigners see the UK supermajor, predictably, doing too little to speed the transition while spending too much (through its arts sponsorship, for example) on ‘greenwashing’. (The same can be said for all of the ‘Big Five’ majors, to at least some extent.)