Search results

Supporters of a revamped Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) believe that, this time, the outcome for legislation to reform Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and the hydrocarbons sector will be different from past disappointments, when vested interests stalled efforts to overhaul an underperforming and opaque sector. Senate president Ahmad Lawan on 29 September committed the bicameral National Assembly to pass legislation to make the industry more effective and efficient. After years of delay,“we will break that jinx and see to the passage of the bill”, Lawan promised. The Senate on 30 September approved the a 239-page draft PIB’s first reading, opening the way for more hearings.

Competition is believed to be intense as bidding closes to take over Sasol’s 50% stake in the Rompco pipeline, which runs 865km from the Temane gas field in Mozambique to Sasol’s Secunda complex in Mpumalanga.

Two decades ago, coups d’état were a norm across West Africa. The late historian Anthony Kirk-Greene in 1981 published Stay by your radios, gathering together the remarkably similar dawn broadcasts made by incoming military juntas across tropical Africa.

Relationships with China have become and will remain a defining feature of most African states’ economic and geopolitical relations. Those relations are not always easy, as reflected in the popular anger at Beijing’s handling of the thousands of African students and traders stranded by coronavirus. Tensions have been rising over many countries’ mounting debts. As Covid-19 drives global recession, China’s reluctance to join the International Monetary Fund and Paris Club in negotiating transparent long-term debt relief is a concern.

The impact of coronavirus on construction and project completions was underlined by figures for Q1 2020 produced by African Energy Live Data and presented at a 6 July Africa Investment Exchange (AIX) webinar on Africa power negotiations. This showed that only 240MW of net installed capacity was added in Q1 2020 (as a total of 438MW was installed but several big rental contracts ended). If this performance continued across the year, there would be a historic low in the installation of new generation capacity.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s announcement that the Department for International Development (DfID) would merge with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) in September is more than an institutional rearrangement of the international relations machinery in post-Brexit Global Britain. The move has been long promised, and Johnson says it will strengthen the United Kingdom’s ability to project itself abroad as a force for good.

Debt restructurings and budget cuts, and reform commitments still to be implemented: in many respects, newsflow from Republic of Congo is much as usual. However, the coronavirus lockdown and oil price slump have severely exacerbated the problems confronting President Denis Sassou Nguesso’s government and the population’s daily lives.

Questions of greater social equity and sustainable development, more stringent governance and controls over globalisation widely discussed in a world looking to emerge from coronavirus are all ideas that President John Magufuli has worked into Tanzania’s policy mix since taking office in November 2015. Magufuli has built up popular support with his assaults on international capital, donor interference and even Beijing and the burden of Chinese debt. However, Tanzania’s experience suggests that good ideas do not make for good policy if they are wrongly implemented.

With West Africa in its first weeks of confronting the coronavirus pandemic, nothing would have been easier, and more face-saving, for President Alpha Condé than to announce another postponement of Guinea’s National Assembly elections (originally due in April 2019) and its parallel referendum on constitutional changes. But the vote went ahead on 22 March, leaving Guinea in an uncomfortable, and potentially explosive, place.The new law is certainly desirable, replacing the hastily drafted constitution that was introduced as Guinea turned its back on decades of dictatorship in 2010.

Egypt is a country full of ambiguities for investors and risk analysts, let alone for a population living under the economic restructuring and authoritarian rule of President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi. “The Egyptian power sector is viewed as an attractive destination for investment due to a relatively stable government, economy and policy direction,” observes the new Egypt Power Report from the African Energy consultancy. In the upstream, the huge Zohr offshore gas find has revived optimism about an industry that was mired in debt and problems with investors.

The 22 January announcement that Globeleq and its partner IPS had reached financial close for the 253MW expansion of their 460MW Azito gas-fired plant at Yopougon, near Abidjan, was timed to coincide with a visit to London by an Ivorian delegation led by President Alassane Dramane Ouattara for the UK-Africa Summit. General Electric will provide gas turbine technology and services for the Phase IV project. The new and enlarged 20-year Azito concession agreement underscores Côte d’Ivoire’s ability to finance major private sector infrastructure projects.

The growing number of energy sector professionals working in West Africa’s Sahel region can point to positive signs emerging from markets that must develop as quickly as possible to serve fast-growing and youthful populations seeking opportunities for a better future. The year ends with the first turbines being connected to Senegal’s national grid from the 158.7MW Taiba N’Diaye wind farm, developed by Lekela Power. Wind and solar developers are evolving projects across West Africa that are drawing in multilateral, bilateral and even commercial finance.

Nigeria has endured another long wait for President Muhammadu Buhari to announce his new government. Re-elected in February, Buhari finally swore in members of his new cabinet on 21 August. During the long interim, key officers of state have worked to steady the ship; Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor Godwin Emefiele has won praise for his stewardship of an under-pressure economy, while vice-president Yemi Osinbajo continues to reassure investors.

Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s announcement that he will not seek a fifth term as Algerian president has once again raised questions of gerontocracy and failed governance in Africa. Tunisian head of state Béji Caïd Essebsi benefits from a degree of popular legitimacy but many citizens are concerned that the spry ‘BCE’ at 92 is too old to stand again when presidential elections are held in December. Before that, his fractured Nidaa Tounès (NT) will come under a strong challenge from the Islamist Ennahda party, now the two major parties’ alliance has broken down, and from other rivals, when parliamentary elections are held in October.

One region seems above all others to stubbornly buck the positive political and economic trends recorded over two decades by African Energy: it comprises the six Communauté Economique et Monétaire de l’Afrique Centrale (Cemac) countries and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Events in the last month, including a failed coup in Gabon and contested elections in DRC, underline Central Africa’s chronic crisis of leadership. Such political behaviours are increasingly seen as an anachronism in a world structured by social media, as well as by older social bonds and traditional patterns of coercion by elites.