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National Oil Corporation (NOC) chairman Mustafa Sanalla has pushed production of crude to 760,000 b/d, its highest level for nearly two and a half years. But while he is achieving results, his pragmatic vision for the development of a depoliticised oil sector has yet to gain support from the United Nations and the dominant international powers or from the Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli.

Both Putting America First and Making America Great again were mentioned by US speakers at the Powering Africa Summit in Washington on 9-10 March. Congressman Ed Royce, who is chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and a central force behind the Electrify Africa Act alongside former Republican staffer Nilmini Rubin, now vice-president for investment at engineering services company Tetra Tech, said that Africa had “great potential” to be a trade partner and to create jobs in Africa and the United States.

A group of bureaucrats and politicians in the planning, works, energy and finance ministries stand accused of manipulating the state’s policy and procurement procedures since 2012 to steer control of the energy sector into the arms of Xaris Energy, a company closely linked to the ruling Swapo party. Xaris is partly owned by Swapo secretary-general Nangolo Mbumba, who holds a direct interest via his AMA Family Trust, according to an investigation into the N$7.4bn ($554m) expansion of Walvis Bay harbour.

The Private Infrastructure Development Group (PIDG)’s £98m ($150m) Green Africa Power (Gap) facility aims to finance ten projects by 2016, adding around 270MW of renewable power capacity by 2018. It has been designed to mitigate some of the challenges preventing renewable energy projects reaching financial close. According to the Business Case and Intervention Summary put together by the UK’s Department for International Development (DfID) and Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), Gap aims to change the cost profile of renewable energy projects to attract long-term debt structured in a way which is cheaper in the early stages of a project’s operation, and “to mitigate some of the risk associated with construction delays and cost over-runs”.

While little has been heard since UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown met Nigerian President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua last July and promised to help tackle illegal bunkering of fuel from the Niger Delta, officials say technical work has been going on behind the scenes (AE 144/24).

The ruling military council has named Mahmoud Latif Amer as new petroleum minister in the interim cabinet appointed after the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak. Previously chairman of Egyptian Natural Gas Holding Company (Egas),

Total has signed an agreement with the government to set up a joint task force to ensure security for the Mozambique LNG project. The news comes after insurgents seized the port of Mocimboa da Praia in Cabo Delgado province, just south of the Afungi Peninsula where the LNG project is under construction.

The Maetig-Haftar deal addresses a number of vital economic issues which previous attempts at compromise have failed to touch on. However, it leaves huge political questions unanswered.

Moroccan operations to end a blockade by the Polisario Front of the border with Mauritania have flared into a shooting match that ends nearly three decades of UN-monitored ceasefire in the disputed Western Sahara.  Both sides have previously held back while the UN and African Union debated the former Spanish colony’s future without finding a definitive settlement.

The government is set to pass a decree revising the boundaries of a 97,000km2 nature reserve in eastern Niger to address the concerns of environmentalists, oil companies and donors. French NGO Noé, which manages the Termit and Tin-Toumma National Nature Reserve (RNNTT) hopes the decree will be adopted before the first round of the presidential election on 27 December.

President Denis Sassou Nguesso confirmed on 23 January that he would seek a fourth consecutive mandate when elections are held on 21 March. The 77-year-old president will again stand as candidate of the ruling Parti Congolais du Travail. Before then Sassou is hoping for progress with Brazzaville’s International Monetary Fund-led debt restructuring, agreed in 2019 but still incomplete.

In a further stage in the battle for control of Democratic Republic of Congo between past and present heads of state, President Félix Tshisekedi on 15 February named Sama Lukonde Kyenge as prime minister.

 It is far from a done deal, but the potentially transformative measures in Nigeria’s Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) might eventually pass through the National Assembly this year. Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) chief financial officer Umar Ajiya told IHS Markit’s online CERAWeek event on 2 March that he hoped the PIB would reach the statute book “on or before the middle of this year”.

After two months of negotiations, a new government led by President Félix Tshisekedi’s Union Sacrée has created a 57-member coalition government (down from 66 ministers), led by prime minister Sama Lukonde Kyenge. The government – comprised of four  deputy PMs, nine ministers of state, 31 ministers, a ministre délégué and 11 deputy ministers – includes supporters of leading opponents Moïse Katumbi and Jean-Pierre Bemba.

In the short period since the death of Tanzania’s divisive President John Magufuli in March there have been hints that his successor Samia Suluhu Hassan and the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party will seek to move away from Magufuli’s combative approach to private investment. Hassan has spoken about the need to encourage private investment to broaden the tax base and to move forward with long-delayed energy projects, while new foreign minister Liberata Mulamula, a career diplomat, has been making overtures to business.