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The Africa Renewable Energy Fund (AREF) is seeking expressions of interest for an engineering, procurement and construction contract for the 14MW-18MW Kikagati hydro project in Insingiro District, western Uganda, on the border with Tanzania. AREF is a $200m fund that reached final close in Q3 2015 and is managed by Berkeley Energy. It is developing the Kikagati project in partnership with Norway’s Norfund. The contract covers the design, manufacture, supply, transportation, construction, installation and commissioning of turbines and associated works.

The Agence Française de Développement signed a €60m ($70m) credit facility with Kenya Electricity Generating Company (KenGen) on 21 June for the 400MW Meru wind power project.

Germany’s Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW), the European Union and the African Union Commission’s Regional Geothermal Coordination Unit are gearing up to select the first projects from their new €50m Geothermal Risk Mitigation Facility (GRMF), to support developments in Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda.

The African Development Bank has approved a ZAR2.89bn ($217.9m) loan to Eskom Holdings to help finance the upgrade and expansion of transmission facilities. The funding supports the Eskom Transmission Improvement Project, which will see the construction of 555km of 400kV transmission lines in KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga province and the upgrading of substation equipment and improvement of substation earth mats in Mpumalanga.

The Agency for Rural Electrification (Ager) invites expressions of interest by 12 June from private contractors to develop a detailed proposal for the electrification of a dozen rural localities within the framework of the Guinea Electricity Access Scale Up Project.The localities will be electrified through hybrid systems composed of solar PV power plants with storage and diesel generators and mini-grids, and will be spread over a maximum of four zones to be finalised by Ager within the tender process.

The US Trade and Development Agency (USTDA) on 24 June approved two grants for renewable energy projects in Ghana. Some $926,614 was approved for eleQtra (West Africa) Ltd to support technical assistance for a 50MW wind power project in the Greater Accra region. The grant will fund the preparation of technical studies to determine the energy production and topographical, geotechnical, grid interconnection and market characteristics of the project. Also included is the preparation of tender documents for the engineering, procurement and construction contractor and legal support. Technical assistance funded by USTDA will be restricted to US companies.

French consortium Starsol has issued an invitation for consultancy services to assist with plans for the development, construction and operation of a solar photovoltaic (PV) plant near N’Djamena. The consortium, comprising Paris-based solar energy project developer Newsolar Invest, engineering company CIEC Monaco and infrastructure and renewable energy project financing arranger Arborescence Capital, received a $780,000 grant from the Sustainable Energy Fund for Africa in March 2015 for the development of a 40MW park as the first phase of the Starsol Solar PV project.

The African Development Bank (AfDB) invites expressions of interest by 29 November from consulting firms to assist the Rural and Renewable Energy Agency to carry out a detailed environmental and social impact assessment (ESIA) and resettlement action plan (RAP) for the 9.4MW Gbedin hydropower project on the St John River in Nimba County, as well as access roads and an associated 33kV distribution network

AOG has sold a 75.1% stake in its Makeni bioethanol project to Sunbird Bioenergy, which is developing two similar projects in Zambia and Zimbabwe. AOG launched the project in 2008, planning an ethanol refinery and a 30MW biomass-fuelled power plant, to power the refinery and supply 15MW to the national grid. Sunbird chief executive Richard Bennett told African Energy in a telephone interview the power plant and 85m litres/yr capacity distillery were completed but not yet commissioned. Addax had planted 10,000 hectares of sugarcane, but had failed to obtain sufficient crop yields to make the project economically viable, while development was also delayed by the Ebola virus.

Toyota Tsusho Corporation, the trading arm of Japan’s Toyota Group, announced on 30 August the signing of a memorandum of understanding at the 7th Tokyo International Conference on African Development for the development of two 50MW solar power projects with battery storage. The projects will be developed with Egypt’s Elsewedy Electric under an agreement signed with the Zambian Ministry of Energy. They will be located in Sesheke and Mungo and connected to the national grid. The projects are expected to be commissioned by 2021.

Liquidity-constrained Zesco is seeking to borrow from the country’s biggest pension fund to complete the 750MW Kafue Gorge Lower (KGL) hydro project. Zesco chairman Mbita Chitala told Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation the utility was in talks with pension funds to finance the transmission line element of the scheme. He did not name the fund in the 21 April interview, but industry sources confirmed the utility was talking to the National Pension Scheme Authority, the country’s biggest pension fund, which the government regularly dips into to pay civil servants’ salaries.

Faced with likely delays connecting some renewables projects to the grid, South Africa’s Department of Energy (DoE) has issued a request for coal baseload independent power producers (IPPs) to register their projects by 25 July. A previous request for registration and information was issued in June 2013, but the new call has been designed in light of challenges connecting some projects from the third round of the renewable energy IPP procurement (REIPPP) programme.

Office National de l’Electricité et de l’Eau Potable (ONEE) has invited prequalification applications by 12 February for the construction, operation and maintenance of the Noor Atlas solar photovoltaic project, comprising seven plants with a total capacity of around 200MWp. The seven projects, with capacity of 20MWp-30MWp each, are being offered in two lots. The first lot seeks bids for projects in Ain Beni Mathar, Bouanane, Boudnib, Boulmane (Enjil) and Outat El Haj in eastern Morocco.

A ground-breaking ceremony took place on 3 December marking the start of construction for the 60MWac Salima solar project being developed by JCM Power. “We will now work to prepare the ground, ready to install 230,000 solar panels after the rainy season and anticipate that Salima Solar will be delivering power to the grid by the end of 2019,” said JCM country director Phylip Leferink.

The Rural Energy Agency (REA) invites expressions of interest by 11 May from consultants to assist with the establishment of the Renewable Energy Investment Facility (REIF). The consultancy services will be financed with a grant from the Sustainable Energy Fund for Africa, administrated by the African Development Bank.