Search results

At the 1 September meeting of the Federal Executive Council, Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari fired power minister Saleh Mamman along with agriculture and rural development minister Mohammed Nanono. Mamman was replaced by Abubakar Aliyu, formerly works and housing minister.

With demand falling due to Covid-19 and an election scheduled for 22 November, IPPs in Burkina Faso have been working hard to ensure their projects are at the front of the queue. Solar PV has been a major beneficiary, with a spate of groundbreaking ceremonies in the run up to polling day, writes Dan Marks.

Attention in the two Maghreb countries least endowed with hydrocarbons has turned to the potential of green hydrogen and fuel cell technology. On 23 December, Moroccan energy minister Aziz Rabbah told a virtual seminar organised by the Arab Renewable Energy Commission (Arec) that the Arab world should harness the “fuel of the future” as a catalyst for sustainable development and the green economy. He called for the establishment of infrastructure and the creation of research and development centres.

During July, Ethiopia achieved its relatively modest target for the first year of filling the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (Gerd) and after some confusing statements eventually settled on the explanation that this had been achieved from “run-off” after heavy rains rather than from diverting river flow. There have been no reports of any adverse downstream effects. 

Proposals to solve Libya’s interminable power and water supply crises are being advanced by competing institutions, but deep uncertainties about governance, security and finance mean only the most expensive and least sustainable projects are likely to be completed. Pragmatic renewable power schemes will remain on the sidelines, writes John Hamilton

A scheme to provide renewable electric power to the Man-Made River, which supplies almost all the water consumed by the majority of Libya’s population, has been agreed by a consortium made up of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), United Nations entities and a subsidiary of the Libyan Investment Authority sovereign wealth fund.

An Egyptian-Libyan developer of power projects is negotiating with the management of the Misratah Free Trade Zone and the authorities including General Electric Company of Libya (Gecol) to build a solar plant with an initial capacity of 50MW and a potential expansion to 300MW, but the project faces huge political, legislative and financial hurdles.IQ Power, the sponsor of the Misratah Free Zone (MFZ) solar photovoltaic project, is reworking the consortium that will ultimately deliver the project, according to its chief executive and business development director Sharif Al-Haj.

The Egyptian government listed the Middle East and North Africa’s first green bond on the London Stock Exchange’s Sustainable Bond Market on 6 October. High demand for the bond enabled it to increase the size of the offering from $500m to $750m while getting a good price from the market, achieving the country’s lowest ever five-year coupon.The 5.25% note is due in October 2025. 

Unit 10 of the Nalubaale hydroelectric power (HEP) plant has been synchronised to the national grid. Questions remain, however, over the future of the plant’s operation and maintenance (O&M) concession, which is operated by Eskom Uganda, a subsidiary of the South African national utility.

Bamako-headquartered SolarX said on 1 March it had signed 15-year deals with Orange Côte d’Ivoire to install approximately 1MWp of aggregated solar PV capacity at two of its data centres, in Yamoussoukro in Côte d’Ivoire (CdI) and Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso. African Energy spoke to SolarX chief executive Karim Ghammache.

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.

Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company (Masdar) has told African Energy the first details of its ambitious plan to develop 5GW of renewable energy (RE) capacity across sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), with projects in Angola, Uganda and Zambia.

Construction is under way on the first phase of a solar PV plant at Zimplats’ Selous Metallurgical Complex.

The first 2.4MWp phase of the Diego solar PV plant in Antsiranana has been completed, according to the local Group Filatex.

West Africa’s total installed generation capacity could reach 43GW by 2027 from 31GW at end-2021, according to African Energy Live Data’s latest analysis, with thermal, hydropower and other renewable projects lining up. But many of these capacity additions are planned for Nigeria, where results may be patchy, as it is already hard to dispatch power from existing plants to an inadequate grid.