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Officials in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are making bullish noises about the much-anticipated Inga 3 hydroelectric power project, with the bidding whittled down to two consortia, which officials say are expected to present their final offers by 31 July, for contracts to be signed by year-end. Veteran energy official Bruno Kapandji Kalala – appointed by President Joseph Kabila Kabange to head the Agence pour le Développement et la Promotion du Projet Grand Inga (ADPI-RDC), the unit within the president’s office charged with delivering the Grand Inga project – has set out a roadmap for the project’s implementation and revealed changes to the bidding consortia.

The Senegal River Basin Development Organisation (OMVS) signed a contract with Sinohydro on 26 February to develop the 294MW Koukoutamba hydroelectric project in northern Guinea. Sinohydro will build the $812m project, located in the department of Tougué, in the Labé region, on the Bafing River about 7.5km upstream of its confluence with the Senegal River, under an engineering, procurement and construction contract financed by the Export-Import Bank of China. Construction is expected to begin before the end of H1 2019, and take four years, according to project manager Bouya Condé.

Mauritius-based Tembo Power has outlined plans for the construction of five hydropower plants in the Lubudi area of Lualaba province with a combined generation capacity of over 70MW. The project, which would cost an estimated $300m, aims to improve power supply to miners in the Copperbelt region. Tembo DRC chief operating officer John Nsana Kanyoni presented feasibility studies for the project to a workshop in Kinshasa on 28 June. The hydrological, geotechnical and environmental studies were carried out by Aurecon, which identified five sites along the Kalule Sud River, a tributary of the Lualaba River.

The draft Kenya Energy White Paper, published in July, set out an overarching approach to the country’s energy sector. The white paper was not designed as a formal policy document but rather one that proposed “the type of policies that will be needed to achieve the country’s energy objectives”.

According to cabinet secretary for energy Davis Chirchir, the Kenyan government’s moratorium on IPPs is ‘unsustainable’, amid the risk of future loadshedding due to shortage of supply, while other advances are in the pipeline, including wheeling tariffs and the supply of power through embedded networks, writes Neville Otuki in Nairobi.

It is unlikely electric cars will come to dominate African roads for decades, but in the likes of Kenya and Benin battery-powered buses, motorbikes and industrial vehicles could have a radical impact on urban environments and commercial operations. Investors are lining up to support e-mobility projects in the most attractive markets, but in many jurisdictions the lack of capital, infrastructure and policy support and the high cost of vehicles are holding back what could be a revolution, write Tonderayi Mukeredzi and Jon Marks.

State-owned Kenya Electricity Generating Company (KenGen) is seeking a consultant to conduct a feasibility study on a proposed 40MW floating solar PV plant on the Kamburu hydroelectric power (HEP) plant reservoir.

Wärtsilä has renewed a long-running operations and maintenance (O&M) deal at QIT Madagascar Minerals (QMM), an ilmenite mine in Fort Dauphin which is majority owned by mining supermajor Rio Tinto Group. The extension of the long-running arrangement will see thermal capacity integrated with a new solar, wind, and battery energy storage plant.

Botswana has started to implement several solar, wind and battery IPP projects, ranging in size from 1MW to 100MW. It marks a shift away from a fossil fuel-dominated electricity system and reflects a determination to create surplus power, writes Tonderayi Mukeredzi.

Pretoria faces an arduous job in financing its energy transition, which could cost as much as $500bn over the next three decades. The number and size of investments have been limited to date and the scarcity of funding threatens to stymie the government’s climate change targets, but local lenders are now stepping up to bridge some of the financial gap, writes Tonderayi Mukeredzi.

Explosives and chemicals company AECI’s 4MW commercial and industrial (C&I) solar PV plant in Johannesburg has started operations. The project is part of AECI’s four-phase programme, launched in 2021, to generate solar power across various manufacturing sites.

Algeria is following the regional lead taken by Morocco and Egypt and has signed memoranda of understanding with partners from Austria, Germany, Italy, and Spain to launch feasibility studies into two green hydrogen (GH2) schemes which could export to Europe.

Monrovia is looking to secure dry season power imports from Ghana via the West African Power Pool and is also continuing negotiations to add a second utility-scale solar PV plant.

After a disastrous couple of years when almost no new electricity was added to Steg’s grid despite the urgent need to install alternatives to expensive Algerian gas imports, the Tunisian authorities have launched a 1.6GW renewables procurement round, and it is possible that some of the nearly 1.5GW of wind and solar projects under development may also start construction this year, writes John Hamilton.

Dubai-based Amea Power has broken ground on its Kairouan solar project. The 120MW plant, which is being developed under a build-own-operate (BOO) model, is one of the few projects to make progress in Tunisia’s troubled renewable energy programme.