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A realignment of global alliances is ever more apparent as the first anniversary of Russia’s attempted conquest of Ukraine approaches and global power and wealth seem to concentrate in ever fewer hands. This has been seen in the solidarity among members of the Opec+ oil exporters’ alliance, in which long western-aligned Saudi Arabia and President Vladimir Putin’s Russia remain the driving forces.

Commercial and industrial (C&I) power has experienced a tremendous boom in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), as companies look for alternatives to failing state utilities, not least in the continent’s largest economies South Africa and Nigeria.

Establishing a reliable financial framework for building cross-border power interconnections may be the single most effective way to improve electrification across sub-Saharan Africa. Yet bureaucratic impediments are holding up progress at an important scheme, the Southern Africa Power Pool (Sapp)’s Regional Transmission Infrastructure Financing Facility (RTIFF), which could implement its first projects in two to three years – with the right support.

Even before the new Middle East war shattered comfortable assumptions about regional security, the global economic climate remained hostile to many heavily-indebted and financially stressed governments, and to populations who have struggled to live with fallout from the pandemic and Ukraine war, which has included painful levels of inflation and costly currency volatility. African Energy offers a few pointers towards another difficult year ahead, as the IMF issues its annual appraisals of the global outlook and regional economic performance, and the Israel-Palestine conflict returns to centre stage in an increasingly polarised world.