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Société Nationale d’Electricité (Snel) has given a consortium led by Austria’s Andritz Hydro a contract for refurbishment of the Mwadingusha hydropower plant on the Lufira River in the southern province of Katanga. The scope of supply comprises replacement of four turbine units, generators, governors, inlet valves, exciters, voltage regulation, and draft tube stop logs, including dismantling, erection and commissioning, the equipment supplier disclosed on 16 January. The new turbines have almost 10% more output than the original units, which were commissioned in 1928 and manufactured by Charmilles, a predecessor of Andritz Hydro.

As well as clarifying the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producers Procurement Programme, energy minister Elizabeth Dipuo Peters on 29 October announced that 7,761MW of baseload generation capacity would be open to bids from independent power producers before 2025

UK-based clean power developer PASH Global, majority-owned by Dutch commodity trader Trafigura, announced on 15 January the acquisition of a 49.9% stake in the 50MW Kita solar PV park in western Mali. The project, in the town of Kita, 180km west of Bamako, is being developed by French green power producer Akuo Energy under a 30-year build-own-operate-transfer concession with a 28-year power purchase agreement (PPA) with Energie du Mali (EdM), according to the London-based impact investor.

President Nana Akufo-Addo on 15 September commissioned a 20MW solar plant at Gomoa Onyaadze in Central Region built and operated by local developer Meinergy Ghana. With government having committed to generating 10% of its energy from renewable sources by 2020, Akufo-Addo said his administration has put in place measures “that will help us, within a decade from there, to have renewable energy as the majority of the generation mix of our country”.

In his first news conference on 25 August, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed confirmed significant problems with the 6.45GW Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (Gerd) on the Blue Nile River. But rather than address the lengthy ongoing spat with Cairo over the $4bn project, or chief engineer Semegnew Bekele’s death in central Addis Ababa in a mysterious 26 July shooting, Abiy’s comments shed more light on a distinctly domestic dispute.He blamed military-linked state contractor Metals and Engineering Corporation (Metec) for the delays.

On 15 December President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf officially commissioned the first 22MW turbine-generator unit at the 88MW Mount Coffee Hydropower rehabilitation project. A second turbine is scheduled to be commissioned in February 2017, and all four units should be operational by August 2017.The run-of-river hydropower plant on the Saint Paul River was built in the 1960s and destroyed during the civil war.

The Agence Française de Développement (AFD), on behalf of Kenya Electricity Generation Company (KenGen), invites bids by 23 October from consultants to assess the potential for optimising large hydropower plants and developing pumped storage. KenGen, the country’s leading generator by installed capacity, owns and operates 15 hydropower plants with a combined installed capacity of 820MW, which represents about 36% of national installed capacity of 2,300MW. Its major hydropower plants include Gitaru (225MW), Kiambere (168MW), Turkwel (106MW), Kamburu (94MW), Kindaruma (72MW) and Sondu-Miriu (60MW).

Zambian IPP Mphepo Power has installed a 120-metre meteorological mast to measure the wind potential for a 200MW wind power project that it plans to develop in the Katete district of Eastern Province. The mast was launched on 1 November at a ceremony presided over by energy minister Matthew Nkhuwa. Mphepo plans to develop the Unika I wind farm in a public-private partnership with the Ministry of Energy with the support of the Office for Promoting Private Power Investment and state utility Zambia Electricity Supply Corporation.

Saudi Arabian power developer Acwa Power announced on 16 January that it has awarded an engineering, procurement and construction contract to China’s Chint Solar (Zheijang) for the development of three solar photovoltaic (PV) projects at the Benban complex, Aswan province. The projects, worth a combined $190m, were selected as part of Egypt’s feed-in-tariff programme and will be located on plots 3-1 (50MW), 42-4 (25MW) and 43-4 (50MW). Power purchase agreements were signed by Acwa Power and the Egyptian government in August 2017.

Power, works and housing minister Babatunde Fashola has confirmed that power purchase agreements (PPAs) were signed with 14 solar photovoltaic projects on 21 July. Speaking at Chatham House in London on 1 August, he said 12 PPAs had earlier been initialled and two more projects added subsequently. The combined capacity of the plants is 1,125MW, although not all of the projects are expected to meet the demanding timelines contained within the agreements.

The Department of Energy (DoE) has announced that an additional 13 renewable energy projects with combined capacity of 1,084MW have been selected as part of the fourth round of the renewable energy independent power producer procurement (REIPPP) programme. Seven wind and six solar power projects were selected, with Ireland’s Mainstream Renewable Power and the US’ SunEdison two of the big winners. The new projects represent an investment of around R25bn ($2bn).Energy minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson promised additional preferred bidders in April, when she announced the first 13 fourth-round projects with combined capacity of 1,121MW.

In a throwback to the earliest roots of electric capitalism in southern Africa, private mining houses sitting on giant coal resources are desperate to provide power to the region’s economic powerhouse. Australia’s African Energy Resources (AFR), which holds rights to 3.8bn tonnes of coal at Sese and Mmamantswe, and India’s Jindal, whose licences on the Mmamabula coal field have estimated reserves of 2.4bn tonnes, have both confirmed registration in South Africa’s baseload IPP programme. AFR said on 29 July that it had successfully submitted a request for registration and information with South Africa’s Department of Energy for a 300MW coal power plant at its Sese coal project.

Canada’s Cinergex Solutions is working on a second waste to energy project in Ghana, for a 20MW plant in Accra. The plant will be operated by Florida-based Solargy Systems, which specialises in small alternative energy projects. Solargy’s Michael Nurse told African Energy they had not yet concluded a power purchase agreement (PPA), as the final stages of negotiations had been delayed until after December’s elections.

The IFC InfraVentures project development fund signed a joint development agreement in mid-April with the government of Malawi to develop the 258MW Mpatamanga hydropower plant on the Shire River. The involvement of the International Finance Corporation (IFC) takes the project an important step forward and will be crucial in ensuring a successful independent power producer tender process, when the time comes. The final decision on when or if to do this and the conditions under which that will happen remains in the hands of the government.

The Togolese Agency for Rural Electrification and Renewable Energy (AT2ER) has launched prequalification for two solar PV projects with combined capacity of 60-80MWac, which are being procured through the World Bank Group’s (WBG) Scaling Solar programme in Togo. One plant will be located at Kpalassi, near Awandjélo, in the Kara region and the other at Salimdè, near Sokodé, in the Central region. The WBG’s International Finance Corporation Advisory is the transaction adviser for the programme.