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Much of the news flow ahead of the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow in November has been about which global leaders will turn up and what carbon reduction commitments they will make. Many in Africa are more concerned the least-developed continent will be forced to adopt ill-fitting policy straightjackets and forced to choose between rival superpower-led development models, most notably China’s One Belt, One Road Initiative (BRI) and the US-led Clean Green Initiative (CGI) and Build Back Better for the World (B3W) programmes.

Southern African governments have been slow to recognise the potential of regional power pools to draw investment into their countries. Most have seen the Southern African Power Pool (SAPP) through a resource nationalist lens...

Guinea has world-scale iron ore, bauxite and other mineral resources, as media reports quickly reminded their consumers when news came in on Sunday 5 September that an imposing-looking putschist, Groupement des Forces Spéciales (GPS) commander Colonel Mamady Doumbouya, had seized power in Conakry.

Like so many governments, President Nana Akufo-Addo’s administration is struggling with the challenges and contradictions of energy transition in Ghana. Oil and gas (O&G) projects are under pressure, having been seen as a crucial way to boost revenues – which have fed into treasury coffers since the Jubilee field development – and drive power generation and industrial development, and create vital jobs.

A collision of interests over two of Africa’s most high-profile national mega-projects – Egypt’s planned El Dabaa nuclear plant and the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (Gerd) – illustrates that grand schemes come with heavy geopolitical as well as financial costs, and that all the players have to calculate their interests carefully in a volatile region.

We all agree: the future is necessarily based on renewable energy and storage solutions, as economies, corporations and communities work to tackle the climate crisis by achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050. Africa understands the need for this better than most, as vulnerable populations in regions like the Sahel suffer the consequences of global warming on their daily lives and resource distribution.

President Cyril Ramaphosa has won plaudits for his public determination to clean up South African governance, as underlined by his suspension of African National Congress (ANC) secretary-general Ace Magashule. This clean-up has been supported by governance-focused civil society and media, and independent-minded members of the judiciary, but as African Energy’s South Africa power report pointed out, public confidence remains dangerously low after the ‘state capture’ years – and this negative environment is impacting across the economy.

According to the most widely accepted version of still hazy events, President Idriss Déby Itno (IDI) was injured on 17-18 April fighting rebels near Mao in the Kanem region, some 300km from N’djamena; he was pronounced dead early on 20 April. The military leader, who became president in 1990, had just been re-elected (with 79.32% of the official vote) for a sixth term in a vote on 11 April.

What’s not to like for investors in President Abdel Fattah El Sisi’s Egypt? The government’s International Monetary Fund-supported reform programme has greatly improved macroeconomic conditions; Egypt was a rare economy that reported some growth in Covid-plagued 2020, despite a huge downturn in tourism and other key revenue-earners. Its commitment to accelerating infrastructure development has sucked funds into global-scale solar and wind power programmes.

As African Energy editor Thalia Griffiths leaves to explore new opportunities, colleagues asked for her take on developments after 23 years leading the publication. For all the tragedies like the current Ethiopian conflict, she sees real hope for a better future on a continent where, in many places, governance has improved and previously marginalised populations are becoming empowered to enact positive change.

The problems of Nigeria’s southeast are rarely far from being a political and oil company preoccupation. Issues of governance and reputational damage weigh heavy on majors’ perceptions about operating in a lucrative but troubled region as lawyers busy themselves acting for local communities against Royal Dutch Shell and potentially other IOCs in a series of class actions. The new military top team appointed by President Muhammadu Buhari is challenged with reducing insecurity, including from rising levels of piracy in the Gulf of Guinea.

President Muhammadu Buhari finally responded to popular concerns over security by replacing his military top team on 26 January. With the economy hobbled by low oil prices and coronavirus, he has allowed a little more economic flexibility, although it remains to be seen whether his costly defence of the naira’s inflated value will be replaced by the foreign exchange market unification favoured by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.

Much is expected of Joe Biden after he is sworn in on 20 January; some of the anticipated policy shifts the United States’ 46th president and his administration may deliver, others they may not – including reversing some controversial policies promoted by his predecessor.

The Zambian government’s refusal to make a $42.5m interest payment by its 13 November deadline – thereby triggering a sovereign debt default – was hardly a surprise. The investor appetite that persuaded lenders to pile into $3bn-worth of Eurobonds has waned on President Edgar Lungu’s watch, while Covid-19 and falling commodity prices have affected sub-Saharan Africa as a whole. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) predicts the region’s economy will contract by 3% in 2020 and its forecast 3.1% growth in 2021 will be “a smaller expansion than expected in much of the rest of the world”.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s in-tray would terrify almost any political leader. He will watch the US election results with special interest after President Donald Trump signalled his frustration over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam by observing that Egypt would “end up blowing up the dam and… they have to do something”. Trump blamed Ethiopia for failed negotiations chaired by the United States earlier this year.