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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.

There may be strong economic arguments, as well as the ethical objections raised by campaigners, why development finance institutions (DFIs) should no longer focus on supporting extractives-led growth. A Chatham House research paper* asks whether such models of development are still appropriate as the global economy reduces its carbon dependency. Discussion of the paper at the Fossil Fuel Supply and Climate Policy conference in Oxford on 26-27 September tested the thesis made popular among DFIs during the long commodities boom that exploiting natural resources could end aid dependency and drive socio-economic development.

American and European businesses will remain key players across the continent, but their dominance is in retreat. The full effects of the global financial crisis have taken years to reveal themselves – not least in the impact of stagnant wages and widening social divisions on the politics of western economies – but have been reflected in western banks pulling back, in some places to be replaced by Moroccan and South African institutions.

The aftershocks will be felt across Algeria’s economy and society after the tremors caused by the 13 September departure from the Département du Renseignement et de la Sécurité (DRS) of Lieutenant General Mohamed ‘Tewfik’ Mediene. After more than 25 years of running military intelligence, Mediene had become a near legendary representation of the opaque powers that dominate Algerian politics. His agency was critical in prosecuting high-level corruption cases against Sonatrach and other major players, as well as countering radical Islam across the region.

Plans by Kosmos Energy and partner Cairn Energy to drill a well next year in a Moroccan-licensed block in the Western Sahara continue to provoke intense interest among oil companies excited by the disputed territory’s offshore potential, as well as political debate among the traditional protagonists. The territory is Moroccan-controlled, but officially under United Nations mandate, and debate centres on a legal opinion issued by UN general counsel Hans Corell in 2002, which stated that exploration and extraction of mineral resources in Western Sahara would be illegal “only if conducted in disregard of the needs and interests of the people of that territory”. This has allowed Morocco’s Office Cherifien des Phosphates to maintain output from its Phosboucraa subsidiary, which is a major employer in the region. However, the Corell judgment – which one official told African Energy, “we’ve all been re-reading recently” – has been generally interpreted as excluding new E&P work.

Cameroon may be the Central African Economic and Monetary Community’s largest economy, but it remains a political and commercial enigma. Decision-making can move at a glacial pace, in a political system dominated by President Paul Biya, whose apparent aspirations to be re-elected to a fourth seven-year term are a cause of concern, not least for a youthful population living in poor economic and social circumstances. However, progress has been made in delivering services, reflected in the energy sector by national utility Eneo, owned by UK private equity investor Actis, and Victoria Oil and Gas’s growing business selling gas to industry and consumers in commercial hub Douala.

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.

General Abdel-Fattah Burhan’s 25 October coup to depose his government partner (and key western ally) Prime Minister Abdullah Hamdok dismantled their carefully crafted civilian-military Transitional Council two years into its three-year term. It brought crowds onto the streets and consternation to Sudan’s friends in Washington, Paris and the region – although the empowering of the military/security elite is a less troubling prospect for authoritarian stakeholders such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Russia.

Considerable attention is being paid to Angola’s 24 August general election, as President João Lourenço and his ruling Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola (MPLA) party line up against a strong challenge from a revitalised União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola (Unita).

With sky-high prices apparently a thing of the past, the outlook is gloomy for liquefied natural gas (LNG) exporters, even in the most lucrative markets, such as Japan. With a predicted supply glut running into the next decade and price pressures accentuated by the fast-emerging spot market (for more on this see African Energy’s sister publication Gulf States News http://www.gsn-online.com/amid-shifting-global-gas-supply-gulf-states-emerge-as-their-own-best-market) only a few major projects are still expected to go ahead worldwide. In Africa, these include Eni’s Zohr field in Egypt and developments in Mozambique’s Rovuma Basin (as well as its smaller, more southerly fields supplying South Africa).

Autocratic Chadian President Idriss Déby Itno may not be a leader to suit everybody’s taste, but his deployment of troops against Nigeria’s Boko Haram militants – as against jihadists in Mali two years ago – has confirmed his reputation as a regional leader who understands the need to counter a threat proactively. By comparison, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan does not come out well: with his forces seen as ineffective, if not part of the problem, in countering Boko Haram, the ‘accidental president’ has kept a low profile as north-eastern states have borne the brunt of jihadist assaults.

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.

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.

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.

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.