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Uncomfortable financial disputes are expected to dominate the 27th United Nations Climate Change (COP27) conference, to be held in the Egyptian Red Sea resort city of Sharm El Sheikh on 6-18 November. African nations may achieve progress in some areas – perhaps by forcing the vexed question of compensation for loss and damage onto the agenda – but the meeting will likely once again fail to identify a way forward for electricity supply industries (ESIs) across the continent.

South Africa has many problems, stemming from the enduring legacies of apartheid and the fallout of more recent misrule, but could it be load-shedding and the perpetual crisis at state utility Eskom that finally ends the African National Congress (ANC)’s control of the state?

Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dabaiba may just have won another round in the unedifying slugfest for control over Libya’s government and resources. It seemed like a mistake when Dabaiba replaced National Oil Corporation (NOC) chairman Mustafa Sanalla with former Qadhafi-era Central Bank of Libya governor Farhat Ben Gdara in late July, but the move seems to have bought the PM more time.

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.

Brave efforts are being made to continue with business as usual in the Sahel, despite an apparently never-ending security crisis, which has been further aggravated by a split in the western-backed G5 Sahel (G5S) alliance of Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger, as the military-led regime in Bamako seeks to distance itself from France and its allies.

It is more than a whisper: international institutions and private equity (PE) investors are again exploring major hydroelectric power (HEP) deals, after years during which environmental, social and governance (ESG) concerns made big dams a problematic issue for development finance institutions (DFI) and other potential investors.

The rules governing a new mechanism for the international trading of carbon emission reduction credits is due to be agreed at the Bonn Climate Change Conference, which runs from 6-16 June in Germany. The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) – which has so far proved of limited value to Africa – is set to be replaced by Article 6 of the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference’s Paris Agreement, which is intended to offer governments and project owners the potential to tap into a  new source of finance.

Less than a year from elections, numerous candidates are eyeing up the prize of taking over from President Muhammadu Buhari. 

African Union and European Union leaders met for the sixth EU-AU Summit in Brussels on 17-18 February, co-chaired by European Council president Charles Michel and AU’s Senegalese chairman President Macky Sall. It had been three years in the making – due to Covid and other delays – and, as with previous summits, there was talk of huge financial flows, boundless co-operation and commitments to a future of inclusive development.

Thanks to a combination of high solar radiation and superlative wind resources, the massive, largely desert zone along north-west Africa’s Atlantic coast has become a focus for huge projects in what is starting to look like a new scramble for Africa. Recent developments include Chariot and Total Eren positioning themselves to take advantage of the emerging business opportunity in the production of green hydrogen in Morocco and Mauritania. This follows close on the footsteps of CWP Global and Xlinks. Others such as Harmattan Energy are looking at the disputed Western Sahara (under a UN mandate). As the number of prospective schemes grows, so too will the pressure to secure land rights and authorisations – a familiar issue for businesses with long track records in securing upstream and mineral rights across the continent.

Industry players continue to make bullish sounds about projects in Ethiopia, despite the murderous conflict pitting the Abiy Ahmed government against Tigrayan rebels that is putting some financing on hold and leading to geopolitical realignments in the region, writes Dan Marks

Prizes and league tables should often be treated with great caution (as underlined by Nobel laureate Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s war in Tigray), but credit should be given when it is due and, in that context, Uganda’s fourth consecutive first place in the African Development Bank (AfDB)’s Electricity Regulatory Index should be acknowledged as a triumph for the rule of law and sound management.

The global energy transition is having profound impacts on natural resource producers, from the oil majors who are morphing into energy providers, to mining companies whose priorities are shifting as electric vehicles (EVs), battery storage and other new technologies take hold, and African governments and non-state actors who might profit from these changes but could also find themselves embroiled in new resource wars.

Much of the news flow ahead of the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow in November has been about which global leaders will turn up and what carbon reduction commitments they will make. Many in Africa are more concerned the least-developed continent will be forced to adopt ill-fitting policy straightjackets and forced to choose between rival superpower-led development models, most notably China’s One Belt, One Road Initiative (BRI) and the US-led Clean Green Initiative (CGI) and Build Back Better for the World (B3W) programmes.

Southern African governments have been slow to recognise the potential of regional power pools to draw investment into their countries. Most have seen the Southern African Power Pool (SAPP) through a resource nationalist lens...