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China’s involvement in a wide-ranging debt restructuring and refinancing deal with other bilateral and multilateral creditors, headlined by a $3bn IMF facility, could set a precedent for other debt-distressed countries around the continent, but some devilish detail remains to be negotiated, writes Jon Marks.

Is Africa’s upstream cementing its credentials as an exploration hotspot? The continent’s upstream has distinct advantages over other global basins, and has a window of opportunity in which to attract investment from companies that face tax burdens in other jurisdictions, writes James Gavin.

Egypt’s Prime Minister Mustafa Madbouly and Central Bank of Egypt governor Hassan Abdalla face an imminent decision on whether to allow the operators of solar power projects at the Benban Solar Farm to convert Egyptian pound profits into dollars so they can meet a mid-July debt repayment deadline. At stake are both short-term financial stability and long-term credibility.

Nigeria’s recently launched Energy Transition Plan aims to make Abuja’s target of net zero emissions by 2060 a reality, but the debt-for-climate deal proposed by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo could be even more important in relieving more immediate economic pressures – if creditors agree to provide the funds requested for a new deal that promotes gas as the key ‘transition fuel’.

Growing alarm over the scale of the climate emergency and the impossibility of limiting the global temperature increase to just 1.5ºC by 2100 has put Africa’s climate finance conundrum into the spotlight during COP27 in Egypt.  Divisions over the future role of gas in energy transition have split the continent – which will not get all the new money it wants to help it adapt to the consequences of climate change, writes John Hamilton in Sharm El Sheikh.

United States climate envoy John Kerry has held out the prospect of additional help being offered at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) to counties in Africa and elsewhere that are being badly affected by climate change issues.

Amid rising concerns about mining governance across sub-Saharan Africa – underlined by a new US advisory warning of ‘unique business risk’ – a contract awarding well-connected UAE company Primera Group the right to export and process much of Democratic Republic of Congo’s artisanal gold has attracted scrutiny and criticism within and well beyond DRC, writes Eleanor Gillespie.

Speeches made by African leaders at the 1-2 November opening of COP26 provided some insights into how they plan to move ahead with decarbonisation, while ensuring they don’t lose out on development opportunities for their economies. African Energy examines an A-to-Z of the leaders’ preoccupations

Cairo has got much of what it wanted from the COP27 climate-fest in Sharm El Sheikh, with $85bn of green hydrogen and renewable power mega-deals that have focused attention and foreign investment on a centrepiece of President Sisi’s economic strategy, Egypt’s energy hub concept. African Energy has analysed proposals from nine investment partners to calculate how much wind and solar generation capacity will be needed to produce green ammonia equivalent to 10% of current global production, which Egypt says it is ‘harvesting’, writes John Hamilton.

COP26 opened with high-minded speeches and a welter of public and private sector commitments, as dozens of African nations said they would accelerate their own decarbonisation. Governments called for existing pledges to tackle environmental disaster to be met, underpinning a ‘just transition’ in which poorer economies aren’t penalised by big emitters’ plans to cut carbon.

Egypt’s COP27 is likely to be a fractious affair after the illusory harmony of COP26 in Glasgow, reflecting the daunting scale of financial support African nations need to protect themselves from climate change impacts while achieving developmental goals and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. With developed nations’ budgets and stock of political capital for dealing with the climate crisis already depleted, African Energy’s monitoring of preparations for Sharm El Sheikh suggests it is becoming painfully clear that African negotiators’ demands cannot or will not be met at COP27.

More information has emerged about the mix of finance that will support South Africa’s Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP). An official source from a G7 country told African Energy “there is an amount of grant and technical assistance. It is significant but not enormous.”

Senegal is in line to receive $1bn in climate finance via the Africa Adaptation Acceleration Program (AAAP), a joint initiative of the African Development Bank (AfDB) and Netherlands-based climate foundation the Global Center on Adaptation (GCA).

A $7bn budget allocation made last year to National Oil Corporation was intended to boost crude output, but no new projects have yet been launched, prompting questions over the lack of oversight at NOC, in a state already hollowed out by smuggling, corruption and theft. It comes amid signs that Prime Minister Abdel Hamid Al-Dabaiba and rival warlord Khalifa Haftar are taking greater control over oil revenues, raising further questions for IOCs who are wondering whether to reinvest, writes John Hamilton.

World Bank Group (WBG) president Ajay Banga announced a ‘portfolio guarantee programme’ on 17 July, on the last day of the G20 meeting in India, in a package of measures the Washington-based multilateral said was designed to increase its lending capacity, “stretch every dollar” and “drive impactful development and take more risk”.