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Eskom has received a E100m ($141m) loan from the Agence Française de Développement (AFD) to fund a 100MW wind project in the Western Cape.  The 20-year credit facility will contribute to financing the Sere wind project, to be built at a site north-west of Vredendal, about 300km north of Cape Town.

Nordex Group announced on 24 April that its contract to supply and install wind turbines at the 147MW Roggeveld wind farm near Laingsburg was now in effect following the signing of power purchase agreements with national utility Eskom in April. Nordex will install 47 AW125/3150 and AW125/3000 turbines for the project, which is expected to have a capacity factor of more than 47%, using towers manufactured in South Africa. The contract includes a 15-year service agreement.

The Agence Française de Développement (AFD) and the European Union (EU) have agreed to co-finance Benin’s first large-scale solar photovoltaic power project. A financing agreement totalling CFA39.4bn ($70.7m) was signed on 7 December by Benin’s economy and finance minister, Romuald Wadagni, and local representatives of the AFD and the EU to cover the cost of the 25MW Defissol project in the municipality of Pobé in southern Benin. The AFD will provide financing totalling CFA32.8bn while the EU will provide an additional CFA6.6bn, according to a statement from the French embassy in Benin.

The Senegal River Basin Development Organisation (OMVS) has invited expressions of interest by 26 November to carry out separate studies for the development of two hydropower projects on the Bafing River and a feasibility study for three micro-hydropower plants in the Senegal River Basin, both in Guinea.

Transmission Company of Nigeria invites expressions of interest by 3 June from international consultants to prepare a strategic environmental and social assessment on the development of gas-fired, solar and mini-hydropower generation plants by independent power producers. The contract is part of the Nigeria Electricity & Gas Improvement Project, which is being financed with a loan from the World Bank’s International Development Association. The terms of reference for the assignment can be viewed at www.nepapmu.org.ng.

The Climate Investment Funds, set up by a group of major multilaterals

The AfDB’s geothermal programme, initiated in the mid-2000s, is coming to fruition with the interest shown by private sector developers in the 400MW Menengai geothermal complex in Kenya, and the bank now intends to apply its new approach across the region, writes Dan Marks

The Get FiT secretariat in Zambia issued a request for proposals (RfP) for the procurement of 100MW solar photovoltaic (PV) capacity on 31 August and bids are due by 29 November. The Get FiT programme is being jointly developed and implemented by the Ministry of Energy and German development bank KfW to fulfil the government’s renewable energy feed-in tariff (Refit) strategy. The Get FiT secretariat in Zambia is managed by Multiconsult, which is also the implementation consultant. The programme received 41 project submissions from 24 solar power developers during prequalification.

The Infrastructure Consortium for Africa (ICA) reports that out of the four sectors it analyses – energy, transport, water, and information and communications technology (ICT) – transport operations attracted the most financial commitments ($34.5bn) of any sector in 2014, taking all sources of finance into account. This was largely due to $17.6bn in national government budget allocations and the $8.4bn of investment certificates for Egypt’s Suez Canal expansion. Among ICA members, which include leading national and multilateral donors, the energy sector received more commitments than any other sector in 2014, when ICA members committed $9.2bn out of the $22.4bn committed to the sector from all sources of finance.

The government and General Electric (GE) on 13 February announced the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) in infrastructure projects. The three-year MoU is focused on increasing the supply of electrical energy and on health modernisation programmes with the aim of accelerating the economic and social development of the country, a statement said.The US has almost no private investment in DRC and the MoU has been seen as a gesture of support for the government of President Félix Tshisekedi and an attempt to loosen China’s stranglehold on big projects.

The World Bank has selected a consortium of consultants led by Mott MacDonald of the UK to perform an economic, financial, and technical assessment of the 1,870MW Gibe 3 hydropower project on the Omo River (AE 132/9). The signing of a contract with the consortium also comprising Sogreah of France and the local AG Consult is pending negotiation of a final contract price.

EDF Energies Nouvelles announced on 8 December the commissioning of its third wind farm in South Africa. The 24.6MW Waainek wind farm, in Eastern Cape province, consists of eight 3.075MW turbines, and will sell its output to the grid under a 20-year power purchase agreement. The facility is 60% owned by InnoWind (an 80%-held subsidiary of EDF Energies Nouvelles), with the remaining 40% owned by local partners. InnoWind has commissioned the 61.5MW Grassridge, the 21.5MW Chaba and the Waainek plants this year.

A significant market is emerging across the continent for renewables-based commercial and industrial (C&I) energy projects. In all but a handful of markets, the talk is of a potential that will soon be measured in gigawatts, rather than the usual dozens (at most) of megawatts of an established business. As Kenya-based Astonfield Solar’s chairman Ameet Shah puts it, the technology is still in its early days – as in some cases is the quality of its delivery to clients – but the C&I industry will reach lift-off even before the ‘transformational’ 24-hour storage becomes the norm.

The Global Energy Transfer Feed-in Tariff (Get FiT) Zambia programme issued a request for qualification on 9 April for 100MW of solar photovoltaic (PV) power. Get FiT became the official implementation programme for the government’s renewable energy feed-in tariff (Refit) strategy in December 2017 and launched on 7 February. The strategy was approved by cabinet in October 2017 and aims to procure up to 100MW of hydropower and 100MW of solar by 2020. Get FiT projects must be 20MW or smaller.

British developer Renewable Energy Partner (RnE Partner) and wealthy local partner Condor Electronics are building a 5MW solar photovoltaic (PV) plant at Bordj Bou Arréridj in the High Plateaux. It will feed electricity into state utility Sonelgaz’s grid, establishing an innovative model for Algeria, which has set ambitious targets for renewables that are far from being met during a period when public funding is constrained.“Some developers fail to access equity, especially, and also debt, despite there being money out there,” RnE Partner director Adel Baba-Aissa said on the margins of CbI Meetings’ 29-30 September MENA Investment Exchange: Energy meeting in London.