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Rare is the Inga contract that is signed on time, and even rarer is its implementation, but according to officials in Kinshasa, the governments of Democratic Republic of Congo and South Africa should finally sign a power purchase agreement (PPA) for the sale of electricity from the future Inga III hydroelectric dam to Eskom when President Jacob Zuma visits Kinshasa in late October. DRC Ministry of Water Resources and Electricity officials announced on 27 September that Kinshasa was about to conclude its much-anticipated PPA with South Africa for the sale of 2,500MW from Inga III. This would allow for construction to start in October 2015. The DRC government anticipates the plant’s inauguration in 2020-21, with Eskom purchasing more than half of Inga III’s projected 4,800MW capacity. Katanga-based mining industries would take 1,300MW, while the rest of the vast country, including Kinshasa, would take the remaining 1,000MW.

The Department of Energy has released the draft Integrated Energy Planning (IEP) report for public consultation “as part of a process to formulate an integrated energy plan, which will outline a recommended energy roadmap for South Africa and guide investment decisions”. A period of public discussion will follow, as different stakeholder groups try to hammer out consensus on a sustainable long-term trajectory for the country (the IEP looks towards 2050). The IEP – with the expected new Integrated Resource Plan – will encompass Eskom’s plans for more coal-fired capacity, and also consolidate the so far successful effort to install major renewables capacity; it should also push forward the debate over new gas and nuclear infrastructure.

Federalists in Cyrenaica are publicly maintaining a hard line in their seven-month stand-off with the central government. Negotiations have stalled, and a sense of crisis pervades every part of Libya’s transitional institutions, but military options to retake the terminals – although discussed – seem remote. The high-risk strategy being promoted by the main federalist grouping behind the blockades, the Political Bureau of Cyrenaica (PBC), is to push for the failure of the current transitional institutions in the hope of claiming the right to self-determination and to sell oil independently in the ensuing vacuum.

The second high-level meeting of the Africa-EU Energy Partnership (AEEP) in Addis Ababa on 11-13 February has provided another opportunity for experts to assess how far Africa and Europe have come in reaching a set of ‘political targets’ set in 2010. The targets for 2020 provided shared goals for energy access and efficiency, energy security (including electricity interconnections and gas trade) and generation from renewables. The findings of this work by the AEEP Secretariat, whose consultant is African Energy’s parent Cross-border Information, are available in a Status Report downloadable in English and French.

South Africans, with President Jacob Zuma at their head, have long dreaded Nelson Mandela’s death, as not only a sad close to a major chapter in history, but also because it will force the nation to look more closely at its values, leadership and governance. Many South Africans do not like what they see, to the extent that Mandela’s political legacy may no longer be the ruling African National Congress (ANC)’s sole preserve, as new movements emerge on the left and the Democratic Alliance (DA) seeks to widen its appeal.

Angola has some very ambitious plans, but traditionally suffers from sliding deadlines, and it is unlikely to meet its most immediate target of doubling electricity generation by end-2014. Even so, a number of major schemes are lining up, including Cambambe II – for which HSBC is leading financing – and later in the decade the 2,070MW Luca hydroelectric power plant on the Kwanza River. A number of targets were written into the government’s 2013-17 Plan of Action for the Energy and Water Sector, drawn up by the Ministry of Energy and Water.

A wave of strikes, adding to the localised protests across the country over social and economic issues, says much about the current mood in a North African state that has so far resisted the galvanic change that marked the early months of the Arab Spring.

Another Sudanese drama beckons with President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir’s threat to shut off the main pipeline linking oil fields in the soon-to-be-independent south with the export terminal at Port Sudan unless the Government of South Sudan (GoSS) continues to share revenues or pays a transit fee on every barrel exported

There is speculation that Rachid Ghannouchi’s Islamist Ennahda (Renaissance) party will gain a big slice of the vote when Tunisia goes to the polls on 23 October to elect the constituent assembly that will draw up a new constitution, and that polling will be followed by significant changes in the interim government ahead of an elected administration emerging by H2 2012.

A government move to cut the subsidy it pays to keep electricity prices low for domestic and industrial consumers has fed into new fears of civil unrest and underlined the burden of paying for imported diesel until the Bujagali IPP eventually comes on stream

Continued fighting in Côte d’Ivoire’s main city underlines that, despite the dramatic capture of former president Laurent Gbagbo, the conflict is far from over. Some 16 years after he was excluded from the 1995 election, Alassane Ouattara finally gets to be president, but in the worst possible circumstances.

Dramatic events across the Sahel have heightened concerns about instability and security threats across the region, where criminal networks and jihadist cells – including Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) splinter groups – have been increasingly active from southern Algeria to northern Nigeria

A pattern is emerging in the way big resources contracts are being reallocated to unknown companies that the authorities say meet their criteria for fit and proper partners criteria

Tunisia’s Jasmine revolution, which drove Zine El Abidine Ben Ali into exile in Saudi Arabia on 13 January, was the unexpected trigger that has made Arab populations wake up after decades of submission to personalised, autocratic regimes. But it is events in Egypt that will drive how the ‘Arab street’ and those who seek

Eight African states have applied to the United Nations to extend their territorial waters beyond the 200-mile limit, while the other eligible coastal states have put in preliminary claims (AE 137/21). Ghana, South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Mauritius, Seychelles, Côte d’Ivoire and Namibia