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As the economic powerhouse of southern Africa, with a legacy burnished by its emergence two decades ago from apartheid, South Africa is expected to take a leading role in the continent’s politics. Through players such as African Union secretary-general Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma and the expansion of its corporate presence north of the Limpopo, SA is doing just that. Its ambitions are huge: for example, taking a lead in developing the Inga hydroelectric resource in Democratic Republic of Congo. But concerns that high political ambitions are often tainted by low economic motivations have become pervasive during Jacob Zuma’s presidency, emerging again in Central African Republic.

Central African Republic | South Africa
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The African Development Bank (AfDB) announced on 29 June that South Korea’s Ministry of Economy and Finance (MoEF) and the Export-Import Bank of Korea had signed an agreement to provide $600m to co-finance energy projects in Africa. It adds to the glut of funds targeting the African power sector, but oversupply of donor money – or undersupply of projects – is driving interest rates down and causing concern amongst financiers.

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Prizes and league tables should often be treated with great caution (as underlined by Nobel laureate Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s war in Tigray), but credit should be given when it is due and, in that context, Uganda’s fourth consecutive first place in the African Development Bank (AfDB)’s Electricity Regulatory Index should be acknowledged as a triumph for the rule of law and sound management.

Uganda
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The proliferation of coups d’état across West Africa and the wider region over the past 18 months points to the return of chronic instability to one of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable (not least to climate change) regions. Many parts of the post-colonial continent, and especially its emerging West African nations, were defined by the speedy demise of civilian government as military rulers took over in the 1960s.

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The extent that markets have shifted since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February has been underlined by a surge of energy diplomacy in recent weeks. Complex security issues were integral to United States President Joe Biden’s mid-July fist bump with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman Al-Saud, but an effort to reduce oil prices was the real agenda-setter.

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Brave efforts are being made to continue with business as usual in the Sahel, despite an apparently never-ending security crisis, which has been further aggravated by a split in the western-backed G5 Sahel (G5S) alliance of Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger, as the military-led regime in Bamako seeks to distance itself from France and its allies.

Mauritania | Niger | Chad | Burkina Faso | Senegal | Mali
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As his presidency passes its second anniversary, Muhammadu Buhari is back in a London clinic, being treated for cancer. His absences, about which few facts filter officially, are causing jitters. The president had been expected to deliver a major anniversary speech on 29 May but remained abroad. Chief of army staff General Tukur Buratai’s 16 May warning that “some individuals have been approaching some officers and soldiers for undisclosed political reasons” added to the febrile atmosphere.

Nigeria
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South Africa has many problems, stemming from the enduring legacies of apartheid and the fallout of more recent misrule, but could it be load-shedding and the perpetual crisis at state utility Eskom that finally ends the African National Congress (ANC)’s control of the state?

South Africa
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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.

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As Africa enters the 2020s, issues of climate change and sustainability have gained greater urgency even if not everyone agrees on the way ahead. With desertification and water shortages affecting many regions, Africa has joined the stop-start transition away from a carbon-based economy; the percentage of on- and off-grid renewables is growing in the energy mix, with solar, and to a lesser extent wind, taking a lead, promoted by large public procurement projects and ever more private initiatives.

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Launched by President Barack Obama in Cape Town one year ago, the US Power Africa initiative has been making bold claims about its early successes in a campaign to boost sub-Saharan Africa’s installed generation capacity by some 10GW and connect some 20m more homes and businesses to the grid by 2020 (AE 258/5). Power Africa claims it will make some $7bn available in financial support and loan guarantees from 12 government agencies, led by the Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank), Overseas Private Investment Corporation and US Trade and Development Agency (USTDA).

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Few countries in sub-Saharan Africa have impressed investors, donors and governments as much as President Paul Kagame’s Rwanda. With a development strategy crafted in co-ordination with advisers such as former UK prime minister Tony Blair’s Africa Governance Initiative, Kagame has rebuilt Rwanda, making Kigali one of Africa’s best-functioning capitals and attracting infrastructure and other commercial investments. As one long-time Central Africa-watcher expresses it: “Rwanda has taken the uniquely organised structures of the pre-colonial Tutsi kingdoms and transposed that to a modern state.”

Rwanda
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While renewables projects in North Africa have been making progress – led by Moroccan solar development agency Masen’s 125MW first concentrated solar power phase of the 500MW Ouarzazate scheme – the most highly publicised, ambitious scheme of all, the Desertec Industrial Initiative (Dii), is struggling to convince sceptics it can revolutionise patterns of electricity generation south of the Mediterranean and of supply within the European Union area.

Morocco
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The Algerian national football team’s first Africa Cup of Nations victory for 27 years fed a renewed sense of national pride, which has soared since 22 February following anti-government protests that led to president Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s resignation and have maintained pressure on a weak government manipulated by ambitious military strongman Lieutenant General Ahmed Gaïd Salah. At the Cairo final, the interim president, Abdelkader Bensalah, represented a nation that does not want him to continue in office.

Algeria
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The meeting of the Libyan British Business Council in Tunis at which National Oil Corporation (NOC) chairman Mustafa Sanalla set out ambitious plans to increase crude production was also notable for an altercation with Central Bank of Libya governor Sadiq Al-Kebir. Speaking in Arabic at the start of the meeting, Sanalla berated the governor for allowing central bank funds to be dispersed to the armed militias who control Tripoli.