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Algeria’s energy authorities have staked their upstream strategy and their international credibility on the largest licensing round ever held in the country. It is the first to be held since amendments to the hydrocarbons law were passed in January 2013, so will test whether commercial terms have been improved enough to attract substantial international interest. The perimeters on offer include a high proportion of frontier and unconventional resources as well as licences in areas which are both more prospective and well-connected to existing pipeline and processing infrastructure.

Renewable energy company Fenix International has appointed Jit Bhattacharya as its chief technology officer. Pointing to the trend for established executives from technology and finance companies to move into offgrid, Bhattacharya, best known for his pioneering work in electric vehicles, including energy storage systems, will relocate from Silicon Valley to Uganda. Bhattacharya has been a senior manager in Apple’s special projects group since 2014. Before that he headed Mission Motors, a technology developer for electric vehicles (including a record-breaking electric motorcycle).

The European Investment Bank has agreed a loan of €24.5m to state power utility Jiro Sy Rano Malagasy (Jirama) to finance the doubling of capacity of Madagascar’s largest hydropower plant. Jirama plans to purchase two new turbines to expand generation from the Andekaleka plant, which has two 29MW turbines and is powered by a 50,000m3 capacity dam

The Africa Enterprise Challenge Fund (AECF) has made $6.5m available through its Renewable Energy and Adaptation to Climate Technologies (React) competition facility to fund small and medium-sized energy companies to accelerate access to renewable energy in rural Zimbabwe.The funds are part of the $48m released by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) to finance React projects in seven countries in sub-Saharan Africa.The funding to Zimbabwe is the second disbursement by AECF in less than a year.

Some 14 photovoltaic (PV) plants with total 268MW capacity were commissioned in 2015 in the High Plateaux and southern regions, Centre de Développement des Energies Renouvelables director Noureddine Yassaa told the official Algérie Presse Service in early January. Yassaa has previously noted that the falling cost of PV panels since 2008 is working in Algeria’s favour. He said 2015 “was marked by the speeding up of photovoltaic plants construction by [state utility] Sonelgaz’s renewables subsidiary [Shariket Kahraba wa Taket Moutadjadida] SKTM in the High Plateaux and the south”.

South Africa is keen to promote research into carbon capture and storage, which will help it to exploit its huge CO2 storage capacity.

Development of renewable energy in Tunisia has got off to a slow start, but the resolution of a handful of vital differences between the authorities and international lenders by the end of this year could allow important programmes to accelerate during 2019. The Ministry of Industry has published clarifications to the solar photovoltaic (PV) second round and wind first round tender processes postponing the deadline for submissions for a second time. Originally scheduled for mid-August, the deadline was first pushed back to October and now to 18 December.

After eight years in the pipeline, the 300MW Lake Turkana wind power project finally signed financing agreements worth €498m ($687m) on 24 March. The much-publicised project, described as the largest private investment in Kenyan history, has the support of a wide range of financiers, led by a revitalised African Development Bank (AfDB), but the time taken to reach financial close highlights the difficulty, even in private sector friendly Kenya, of developing a renewables project on this scale. The wind farm is expected to begin operating in early 2016,with full operation by 2019, and to produce power at Ksh9/kWh (€0.0752/kWh) and generate as much as €150m/yr in foreign exchange costs by reducing the need for fuel imports.

Senegal’s holy city of Touba is a place apart, run by the powerful Mouride religious brotherhood, who venerate it as the burial place of their founder, Sheikh Aamadu Bàmba Mbàkke.

Local mini-grid solar provider Nuru expects to commission a 1.3MW solar plant in Goma in early January and aims to generate 8MW of power by the end of 2020 and supply power to 5m people in Democratic Republic of Congo by September 2024.Nuru chief executive and co-founder Jonathan Shaw moved to Béni in 2013 as a history professor. Faced with a local diesel generator suppling only three to four hours of power a day and regular voltage spikes of 400V, he installed a solar home system.

An attempt to push through the long-delayed signing of key project agreements for outstanding renewable energy independent power producer (IPP) projects selected through the Department of Energy’s renewable energy IPP procurement (REIPPP) programme on 13 March has been scuppered at the last minute by an attempted court interdict. The applicants – the National Union of Metal Workers of South Africa (Numsa) and a non-governmental organisation linked to former president Jacob Zuma, Transformation RSA – argue that the programme would lead to job losses among coal miners and that the power is not needed because there is a supply surplus.

The 4.5MW Stortemelk hydroelectric power plant has begun commercial operations on the Ash River in Free State. The run-of-river project was developed by Renewable Energy Holdings (REH) Project Development – formerly NuPlanet Project Development – and is also owned by Mertech Group and 30% by broad-based black economic empowerment company Vapotouch. Stortemelk was selected as a preferred bidder in the second round of the renewable energy independent power producer procurement programme and is REH’s third small hydropower project in the country after 3MW Sol Plaatje, commissioned in 2009, and 4MW Merino, commissioned in 2010.

Senegal is a relatively small economy with a reputation for competent, if sometimes flawed, governance of its limited resources. The prospect of an administration with a taste for joined-up government tapping recently identified offshore gas resources, and attracting investment in its abundant solar and wind resources, suggests that President Macky Sall’s Plan Sénégal Emergent strategy to achieve emerging market status by 2035 is not overblown.

Oriental Renewable Solutions has reached an agreement with Denham Capital’s GreenWish Partners to co-develop a 50MW solar power project in Jigawa State in a 50:50 equity partnership.

Cracks have appeared in a dam being built by Italy’s Salini Impregilo in the Masvingo region of southern Zimbabwe following torrential rains. Zimbabwe’s independent SW Radio said that 4,500 villagers living along the flood basin of the Tokwe-Mukosi dam had to be evacuated after water escaping from cracks in the dam wall flooded the river. Namibia sent two helicopters to rescue marooned flood victims, while the Chinese community in Zimbabwe donated food, blankets and other supplies worth over $40,000. Salini declined to comment to African Energy, but the Herald newspaper quoted Zimbabwe National Water Authority Tokwe-Mukosi projects manager Taurai Maurukira as saying there was no risk of the dam collapsing.