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The International Monetary Fund (IMF)’s latest World Economic Outlook (WEO) Update, issued at the end of January, underlines China’s importance both globally and for an African continent where it has made considerable efforts to build political relations and infrastructure, in order to secure resources vital to its domestic growth.

Competition among international powers over access to critical raw minerals was intense even before Russia’s President Vladimir Putin launched an invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. But the conflict has focused minds even more sharply in the United States and European Union over the ground they have ceded to China in relation to rare earth minerals and other essential supplies.

African Union and European Union leaders met for the sixth EU-AU Summit in Brussels on 17-18 February, co-chaired by European Council president Charles Michel and AU’s Senegalese chairman President Macky Sall. It had been three years in the making – due to Covid and other delays – and, as with previous summits, there was talk of huge financial flows, boundless co-operation and commitments to a future of inclusive development.

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has ticked a lot of the right boxes for those hoping Nigeria will at last tackle the thorny problems that have hobbled the country’s economic and political prospects. In some respects, he has moved even more quickly than even those close to his transition team expected, in response to the deterioration of key indicators during his predecessor Muhammadu Buhari’s two terms. 

The agreement for Senegal to become only the second African economy to secure a Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) has the potential to salvage the climate financing framework’s credibility, which appeared to be flatlining.

In a recent conversation, an independent power producer (IPP) told African Energy that its southern African utility client has been paying for its electricity “more or less on time”. The problem was those payments were being made in a local currency that cannot be exchanged as “the central bank has no money”. The IPP could turn to international arbitration to try and enforce its contract terms, “but what’s the use of that,” the executive asks, “when there’s nothing to be had?”

Côte d’Ivoire’s three times oversubscribed $2.6bn dollar Eurobond issue underlines President Alassane Dramane Ouattara’s reputation for prudent economic management – a status that will add to pressures from supporters for ‘ADO’ to stand for a controversial fourth term – and offers some hope for under-pressure African borrowers who could benefit from renewed access to international capital markets and the relatively attractive interest rates CdI has secured.

Multi-faceted crises in the six Communauté Economique et Monétaire de l’Afrique Centrale (Cemac) countries – Cameroon, Central African Republic (CAR), Chad, Equatorial Guinea (EG), Gabon and Republic of Congo (RoC) – and their giant neighbour Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) make for uncomfortable reading. Acute political problems, and governance and financial shortfalls across the region provide one inescapable reason why the Inga dam and other plans for closer African integration fail to progress.

The protracted resignation of Robert Mugabe was met with relief and elation in Zimbabwe, and much further afield by those who have seen one of Africa’s most promising countries driven into misery by the former guerrilla fighter’s capricious 37-year rule. Many Zimbabweans of all political tendencies celebrated the prospect that “it is our time now”, rather than facing the prospect that the 93-year-old president may force his wife Grace Mugabe on the country.

Mainstream print and broadcast media are increasingly of the view – thereby making it the prevailing orthodoxy – that growth across sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is creating a significant emerging market for the next decade.

Political decisions are likely to come thick and fast as a successor is chosen to Hailemariam Desalegn, who resigned on 15 February amid turbulent scenes across the country. The 180-member ruling council of the crisis-ridden Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), comprising 45 members from each of its four regional parties, has convened a three-day congress from 1 March to elect a new prime minister. Providing a degree of consensus can be maintained, this should be a set-piece event; the powerful EPRDF executive committee began deliberations on 26 February to hammer out a deal.

The party’s over in Juba following South Sudan’s independence day on 9 July, but the new, officially English-speaking state carved out of the Republic of Sudan remains under intense scrutiny, from international organisations and business groups, as well as from international oil companies which must come to terms with the region’s new political configuration (AE 213/1).

It is easy to forget that Côte d’Ivoire remains classed as a ‘fragile state’, when viewed from Abidjan’s refurbished hotels and burgeoning malls, many developed by long-established Lebanese families who are trading up from their traditional supermarkets. The African Development Bank’s return after 11 years in Tunis exile is one factor pushing up real estate prices and school fees in wealthier neighbourhoods.

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.

The conflict over the former Spanish Sahara is all too often forgotten. But there is a growing feeling in policy circles – shared by companies eager to exploit the territory’s hydrocarbons and mineral potential – that the Western Sahara standoff is overdue a promotion up the international policy agenda. Crisis in the Sahel, where French and African Union forces have confronted jihadist radicals in Mali, has added to pressures to revisit the intractable conflict, more than 40 years since the Polisario Front liberation movement was formed, 38 years since Morocco’s late King Hassan II organised his ‘Green March’ into the territory, and 22 years since a United Nations-sponsored ceasefire was declared.