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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.

Nigerian petroleum minister Timipre Sylva has called on all parties to fast-track the African Union (AU)-endorsed Trans-Saharan Gas Pipeline (TSGP) from Nigeria to Algeria via Niger. The move follows federal government backing earlier this month for Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) to enter an agreement with the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) to build the ambitious Nigeria-Morocco Gas Pipeline (NMGP).

Cairo has not budged on its commitment to Rosatom and the Dabaa nuclear project, regardless of international sanctions and other western attempts to diplomatically and financially isolate Russia over Ukraine. Construction has begun in earnest at Dabaa, which says much about the underlying strength of Cairo-Moscow relations, but the project’s real drivers are domestic and regional, writes John Hamilton.

Popular uprisings in Algeria and Sudan have unseated longstanding rulers, but demonstrators remain hungry to sweep away the military/security structures that underpinned rule by Abdelaziz Bouteflika and Omar Hassan Al-Bashir. In Egypt, President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi has ruthlessly overcome the sort of popular protests that drove Hosni Mubarak from power in 2011 and will seek to keep a lid on potential dissent now popular unrest is breaking out again in North Africa.

The collapse of a deal under which the Segas liquefaction plant at Damietta would have restarted LNG exports in June is mostly due to the negative effect of the coronavirus pandemic. However, it highlights the difficult economics behind Cairo’s ambitions to revitalise its gas export business and eventually to turn itself into a regional energy trading hub. The plant stopped working in 2012 because Egypt did not have enough gas to supply it. Now there is almost certainly enough excess capacity but under current and possibly future market conditions the business does not add up.

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.

The Niger Delta’s Ogoniland crisis may seem to have peaked when Sani Abacha’s military regime hanged writer Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other activists in November 1995, but issues from that period have never gone away. A fresh action brought in the UK Supreme Court by lawyers Leigh Day on behalf of 40,000 Ogale and Bille people has the potential to cause major harm to Royal Dutch Shell, which has always argued it cannot be held liable for actions by its joint venture with the government, Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC), in which Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation held 55% but Shell was operator.

The State Capture Commission of Inquiry has applied to the Pretoria High Court for an extension of its term until December 2020. The High Court will consider the application on 11 February. Corruption at Eskom has featured prominently in the inquiry, which has heard from witnesses on dubious coal and consultancy contracts, among other issues. The inquiry began in August 2018 and was initially expected to last six months. This was extended to February 2020 after an assessment of the work carried out at the time.

Tunisia’s industry, energy and mines ministry is working on the early stages of a green hydrogen (GH2) scheme called H2vert.TUN with the German Federal Ministry for Economic Co-operation and Development (BMZ) and its Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) development agency.

In a month in which hugely damaging allegations of corruption and misconduct have been levelled at South Africa’s giant power utility Eskom, the government’s feeble responses to the crisis have become increasingly untenable. In the midst of the fallout from the latest round of leaked emails and documents, which have already resulted in General Electric and Murray & Roberts beginning court action against the utility over a contract to repair boilers at Duvha coal power plant, public enterprises minister Lynne Brown appointed a new interim chief executive and four interim non-executive board members to Eskom.

In his State of the Nation address on 13 February, President Cyril Ramaphosa reiterated several of the measures being taken to address South Africa’s power crisis. The speech takes place as Ramaphosa approaches two years in office without having procured any new capacity despite worsening load-shedding, aside from signing agreements with projects already selected in the fourth round of the country’s renewable energy IPP programme (REIPPP) in April 2018.

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.

South Africa’s new National Infrastructure Plan raises many welcome issues around planning, accountability and regulatory capacity – and talks a big game on new nuclear and renewable power. Whether implementation will match ambition remains to be seen, writes Dan Marks.

Far-reaching amendments aimed as enabling a competitive market for electricity preceded another infrastructure-heavy State of the Nation address from President Cyril Ramaphosa. The devil will be in the detail as the industry pores over South Africa’s latest draft bill and the president’s statements about upcoming generation procurement, writes Dan Marks.

Former Gabon Oil Company (GOC) director-general Christian Patrichi Tanasa Mbadinga, appeared before the Cour Criminelle Spéciale (CCS) in Libreville on 21 March, charged with misappropriating FCFA85bn ($143m) from the state oil company.