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South Africa’s energy security remains fragile as load shedding continues to weigh on GDP – which is forecast to be little over 1% in 2014 – and generation output in late 2014 into 2015 could be further constrained by even more frequent power cuts. Margins remain dangerously fine, as was underlined when a collapsed coal silo at the 4,110MW-capacity Majuba facility – Eskom’s second largest (and youngest, commissioned in 2001) coal-fired plant – plunged much of the country into darkness on 2 November. Majuba’s generation output was halved from 3.6GW to 1.8GW, and then fell to a low of 600MW.

South Africa
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There is consensus on the need to scale up renewables, off-grid, combined-cycle gas and other generation schemes if sub-Saharan Africa is to overcome its gaping electricity supply and access deficits (see Power). Huge investment is required to create transmission backbones and commercially sustainable distribution networks. To achieve these ambitious aims, ever more institutions and initiatives are looking to marry public funds with private investment. But there is another category of stakeholder, which has an essential role to play as offtaker and focal point of the electricity supply industry but whose performance often falls short: national utilities.

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Some African governments specialise in grandiose statements about mega-projects that will drive the continent’s electrification or achieve some other transformational goal. In many cases little happens, but the mega-project provides a useful symbol of rapprochement between two states. The Trans-Saharan Gas Pipeline (TSGP) planned by former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo and Algeria’s Abdelaziz Bouteflika is one example still prominent on the Programme for Infrastructure Development in Africa project list.

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The issues that African Energy covers have risen much higher up the global agenda than seemed likely when the first issue was published in April 1998, when global concern about sub-Saharan Africa’s struggle to provide electricity to hard-pressed populations and industrial users, and the continent’s potential to provide energy to a fast-changing global economy driven by growth in emerging markets, seemed considerably less than now.

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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...

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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.

Kenya
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The most abundant element on earth, hydrogen, already has industrial uses, but it could do much more to transform the global energy mix as industrialised economies and the global south decarbonise. Judged by the welter of governmental and corporate statements, hydrogen is featuring large in the thoughts of planners and project promoters. These range from Chinese hydrocarbons giant Sinopec’s plans to reallocate some of its Rmb87bn ($13bn) cash pile to projects “all along the hydrogen chain” to Australian junior miner AVZ Minerals’ green lithium mine project at Manono in Democratic Republic of Congo.

DR Congo | South Africa
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Gas-fuelled power projects have an important role to play in Africa, according to African Energy Live Data’s figures. The Africa-wide database lists 313 operating gas-fired plants, with 84,226MW of installed capacity; another 39 plants are under construction (with total 32,933MW capacity) and 156 are planned (66,921MW). The majority are utility-scale facilities supplying national grids; Live Data records 206 of these as operational (75,487MW), 33 under construction (28,754MW) and 119 planned (58,061MW).

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Too often ignored except in times of extreme crisis, Lesotho is looking to emerge from years of political instability and economic malaise under previous coalition governments, as the Basotho population counts on newly-elected tycoon Prime Minister Sam Matekane to usher in transformative change.

Lesotho
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African nations, the governments of partner countries, international financial institutions (IFIs) and private investors are increasing their commitments to achieving universal energy access, the seventh of the United Nation’s sustainable development goals (SDG7). But the prospects of reaching the SDG7 target by 2030 are receding as population numbers continue to rise. A daunting amount of work remains to be done if SDG7 is to be achieved. In a newly published report commissioned by the Africa-EU Energy Partnership (AEEP), Cross-border Information – the parent company of African Energy – has analysed financial flows towards SDG7 over the past seven years and their estimated potential trajectories to 2030 and beyond.

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African electricity markets are on the threshold of genuine reform in 2024, even if policy-makers’ grandest ambitions are destined to meet with disappointment. African Energy has examined the first data that has emerged from the third development phase of the African Union’s Continental Master Plan and found much to applaud.

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Pay-as-you-go power distributor M-Kopa Solar on 24 March announced that it had connected over 20,000 off-grid homes in Uganda; it is now expanding its solar power distribution, targeting an additional 50,000 Ugandan homes by end-2015. M-Kopa Solar was launched in October 2012 in Kenya, where it now supplies over 150,000 homes, and began pilot operations in eastern Uganda in mid-2013. Consumer-friendly sales plans, serviced with regular payments via mobile phones (in Uganda provided by MTN Mobile Money and Airtel Money, in Kenya by the fast-growing M-Pesa platform), are central to M-Kopa’s rapid growth.

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It hardly rates on the scale of the drama that a courageous Tunisian population delivered to the world in ousting Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, but manoeuvrings by members of the former presidential circle to allow them to profit handsomely with little effort from the award of contracts for a gas-fired

Tunisia
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Opposition from local authorities to UK private equity investor Actis’ planned takeover of French operator Veolia Environnement’s electricity, water and sanitation concessions in Morocco may be explained in part by a shift in political and popular opinion away from privately financed projects and concessions back to a greater role for local politicians and the state. Morocco is not alone in this: public/private partnership models that give public bodies, and the politicians who lead them, more control are increasingly in vogue.

Ghana | Rwanda | Ethiopia | Morocco
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Zimbabwe provided one of the most impressive delegations to the 2019 Africa Energy Forum, where new energy and power development minister Fortune Chasi explained how a government committed to reform was working hard to reach its target of 11GW electricity generation capacity, from around 2GW now. After years of chaotic or no planning, Chasi reported that “an integrated resource plan is under way”, while licensing procedures were being eased for private power investors.

Zimbabwe