Search results

Egyptian president Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, Ethiopian prime minister Hailemariam Desalegn and Sudanese president Omar Hassan Al-Bashir on 23 March signed a declaration of principles intended to help resolve the longstanding dispute over the 6,000MW Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (Gerd). The ten principles, which were published in full on the Egyptian Ahram Online website, recognise the dam as a primarily hydroelectric facility and refer to areas such as compensation, fair and appropriate use of water resources and the filling and operation of the dam. Downstream countries Egypt and Sudan were granted priority access to electricity generated by the facility.

Financing totalling $135.6m has been approved for the rehabilitation of the Kariba storage hydropower scheme on the Zambezi River between Zambia and Zimbabwe. The World Bank announced on 9 December that it had agreed to provide a $75m International Development Association credit to the Zambezi River Authority (ZRA), with a $25m grant to be provided by the government of Sweden to Zambia.

Tunisia is pushing forward with its multi-part renewables procurement strategy. On 20 July, shortlisted companies submitted bids in the largest of its ongoing bid rounds for 500MW of solar and 200MW of wind. On 11 July, the Ministry of Industry and Small and Medium Enterprises issued a tender for 70MW of solar photovoltaic power under a build-own-operate framework. It has invited bids by 26 November for the construction of six 10MW and ten 1MW solar plants in the third round of small-scale solar procurement.

A new investment vehicle has been established to invest in regional partners for UK-based off-grid solar company BBOXX. The vehicle, named Beam, will be managed by BBOXX shareholder Bamboo Capital Partners. Beam has been designed to support BBOXX’s ambition of expanding into 15 to 20 countries over the next five years. The company is operating in Kenya, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Togo. Bamboo’s Florian Kemmerich told African Energy that the terms of the first transaction were being negotiated.

The US Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) has approved five-year compact agreements with Benin and Liberia, worth $375m and $257m respectively, and a $44.4m threshold agreement with Sierra Leone. The grant packages are intended to develop infrastructure in the three countries, with a focus on electricity in line with the MCC’s intention to invest $2bn in support of the Power Africa initiative. Liberia’s compact agreement was signed with the MCC on 2 October but required ratification by the country’s House of Representatives and Senate before it could be passed into law.

There has been speculation in the Ugandan media about the worsening situation at the 600MW Karuma and 183MW Isimba hydroelectric power projects. Reports say a rift between the Ministry of Energy and the Uganda Electricity Generation Company (UEGCL) has resulted in tension at the site between the ministry’s owner’s engineer, Indian firm Energy Infratech, and the main contractor China’s Sinohydro.

Eight solar power plants in rural areas with combined capacity of 16.6MW have begun operating in Mauritania, Masdar, part of Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala Development Company, has announced. The plants were developed by Masdar in Boutilimit, Aleg, Aioune, Akjoujt, Atar, El Chami, Boulenour, and Bani Chab. An official inauguration was attended by President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz at the Atar site on 28 November, Mauritania’s national day. Masdar built the 15MW Sheikh Zayed solar power plant in the capital Nouakchott, which was inaugurated in 2013.

Côte d’Ivoire marked the commissioning of the country’s largest hydropower plant at a ceremony attended by Prime Minister Amadou Gon Coulibaly on 29 June. The first of three 90MW units at the 275MW Soubré hydropower station at Naoua Falls, on the Sassandra River in the south-eastern region of Nawa, is now generating power after being connected to the national grid in late May. The next two units are expected to enter commercial service by October, according to the state utility CI-Energies, which will own and operate the plant.

The Ministry of Industry, Trade and Energy is inviting expressions of interest from developers to design, finance, build, own, operate and maintain two 5MW solar PV projects near Santa Maria on Sal island and Salamansa on São Vicente island. The projects will be implemented on a build, own, operate basis. The tender follows publication of the National Programme for Sustainable Energy and Power Sector Master Plan 2018-2040, which aims for 50% of energy coming from renewable sources by 2030.

A month after inviting the Spanish and Chinese consortia competing to build the 4,800MW Inga 3 hydropower dam on the Congo River to merge their offers into a single bid, the head of the Agency for the Development and Promotion of Grand Inga (ADPI), Bruno Kapandji Kalala, has said the project’s start date has been postponed by four years to 2024 or 2025. “We are working for this timing (in 2024 or 2025) now that the potential developer has been identified,” he told Reuters on 3 July.

Prequalification bids were due on 12 February for companies interested in the design, supply, installation, operation and maintenance of a 100MW central receiver concentrating solar power plant in Upington, Northern Cape (AE 264/7). The project is being developed by Eskom, and invitations to bid are expected to be issued in April. The project is receiving financing from the African Development Bank, the Agence Française de Développement, the Clean Technology Fund, the European Investment Bank, Germany’s Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau and the World Bank.

German development bank KfW is to provide €36.7m ($42.7m) in funding for a 37.5MW solar photovoltaic (PV) project to be developed in the north-western Boundiali region. KfW said it signed two contracts on 3 October with the Ministry of Economy and Finance for the financing of the project, with €27m to come from Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development and €9.7m from the European Union.

Powerful groups are lining up to build ONE’s groundbreaking 500MW solar complex near Ouarzazate, pointing to the country’s emergence as a major player in the southern Mediterranean renewables revolution

The signs are not good for South Africa’s economy. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates that GDP grew by only 1.9% in 2013, following a disappointing 2.5% in 2012, and growth of just 0.6% in Q1 2014 has many investors worried. The IMF does not expect the unemployment rate – which does not include the sizeable economically inactive population – to fall below 24% until 2018. A string of damaging strikes, most notably the five-month strike at the platinum mines, has contributed to an annualised fall in mining and quarrying output of nearly 25% in Q1 of this year.

Lekela Power announced on 6 December that groundbreaking has taken place at its 158.7MW Taiba N’Diaye wind power project, 70km north of Dakar. The plant is expected to start operating in 2020 and will supply power to more than 2m people. It will occupy a 67ha site and use 46 3.45MW V126 turbines supplied by Vestas, supported by the Danish export credit agency Eksport Kredit Fonden (EKF), which covered 50% of the project cost. Vestas is the engineering, procurement and construction contractor and will also be responsible for operations and maintenance.