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South Sudan’s oil production has fallen by about 25,000 b/d, or 15%, due to problems with well maintenance in the key producing state of Upper Nile, according to the latest sales and marketing data from the Ministry of Petroleum and Mines. The ministry has outlined a lifting programme for 4.2m barrels of crude for November, equivalent to 140,000 b/d. Production in H1 2014 averaged 165,000 b/d. The drop is significant, and will be costly for the government. The outbreak of hostilities in mid-December had already resulted in a sharp drop in output from 220,000 b/d in November 2013.

Vopak Terminal Durban (Pty) Ltd has given Fluor Corporation an engineering, procurement and construction management contract for the Vopak Growth 4 Project in Durban. Vopak Terminal Durban (Pty) Ltd. is a partnership between Royal Vopak (70%) and Reatile Chemicals (30%). Vopak Terminal Durban is well connected via pipelines to the (refining) industry in the Port of Durban.

President Abdelaziz Bouteflika may be gone, but demonstrators continue to call for radical change to a system dominated by ‘deep state’ players, including a genuine crackdown on corruption. Senior establishment figures are trying to persuade the popular ‘Hirak’ street protest movement that the system can reform itself, with assurances that recent scandals such as the Kamel El-Bouchi cocaine affair and older cases including the collapse of Khalifa Bank should be revisited.

Negotiations over the disputed lake border between Tanzania and Malawi have broken down, with Malawian officials telling their Tanzanian counterparts that they will pursue their cause before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) rather than continue talks to resolve the dispute.

The Ministry of Energy is drafting regulations that will specify the dates and terms for Kenya Electricity Generating Company (KenGen) to enter the power sales market. State-owned Kenya Power currently has a monopoly on power sales but the Energy Act 2019 provides for the opening up of the sector to competitors. Until now, KenGen has been restricted to electricity generation, alongside IPPs, but the company is keen to carry out direct sales, especially to industries near its plants.

The World Bank’s International Finance Corporation and Dutch development bank FMO have invested in pay-as-you-go solar provider Mobisol GmbH to help supply renewable energy to off-grid communities in East Africa. IFC’s equity investment of €5.42m ($5.63m), and €9.2m from the AEF and Massif Dutch government funds managed by FMO, brings them into partnership with Investec Asset Management’s African Private Equity Fund and Germany’s DEG, which have already invested in Mobisol.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Russia are co-funding a $4m programme to improve access to water and power in southern Madagascar. Projects will include four solar power plants of up to 100kWp each, 2,000 solar PV kits for the most remote locations, plus drinking water and agricultural infrastructure.

The Central Energy Fund (CEF) has filled all the vacant chief executive positions at its group companies, including the CEF itself, the Strategic Fuel Fund (SFF), the Petroleum Agency of South Africa and PetroSA, which have not had permanent CEOs since 2014. The group said it had “experienced a turbulent period in fulfilling its mandate”. A number of strategic initiatives had been delayed, resulting in the group losing market share and suffering revenue decline.

The Nordic Development Fund (NDF) and Energy and Environment Partnership covering Southern and East Africa (EEP Africa) on 15 May launched the latest grant window, seeking applications from early-stage off-grid and on-grid clean energy projects in the active development phase in Southern and East Africa. EEP Africa is a multi-donor fund hosted by NDF which provides early-stage grant funding to innovative clean energy projects, technologies and business models.

President Xi Jingping’s call for China-Africa trade to exceed $400bn by 2020, with infrastructure investment a priority in driving that exponential increase, is a realistic target as ever more Chinese companies explore the continent’s markets. China Inc made a spectacular return to African business in the last decade, with bilateral trade rising from $10bn in 2000 to $210bn in 2013 – an increase many times greater than even optimists in the Beijing government had planned. Officials and company executives in Beijing often comment that things have not always gone as smoothly for China Inc as envious business rivals might think.

Lake Turkana Wind Power Ltd and the Kenyan government signed a letter of support on 28 February committing the government to the 300MW project and allowing it to move to the final phase of financing. 
The letter of support is designed to bypass a legal framework preventing the government from providing guarantees directly to the private sector. Over the medium term, the government intends to engage the private sector via public private partnerships (PPPs).

The declaration of the Transitional Electricity Market (Tem) – the crucial mechanism whereby power purchase agreements signed between generation and distribution companies and Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading Company (NBET) become active – is “imminent”, Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (Nerc) commissioner for market, competition and rates Eyo Ekpo told African Energy on 1 December. “The entire market is working towards the imminent declaration of Tem… three items are left on our checklist – first, a cost-reflective tariff, which Nerc is close to publishing, second, the provision of payment securities by discos [distribution companies] to NBET and the Transmission Company of Nigeria

Eskom has reported a net loss after tax of R20.7bn ($1.4bn) for the year to March 2019, up from R2.3bn for the year to March 2018. While expenditure was reduced by R9.9bn, this was less than the targeted R10.6bn and was fully absorbed in minimising load-shedding. The utility has a total debt burden of R440bn, equivalent to 17% of the total South African sovereign debt. The availability of its fleet of power plants had stabilised at 70%, but this remains well below its 80% target.

The World Bank board has approved a package of three loans totalling $535m to support government efforts to improve economic governance and stabilise the economy.

Serious questions about stability have been raised by the death of veteran opponent Afonso Dhlakama, who was believed to be close to negotiating a definitive peace deal with President Filipe Nyusi and was set to run once more for the presidency next year as candidate of his Resistência Nacional Moçambicana (Renamo). Given his personal hold over the party, there are questions of whether Renamo will collapse following Dhlakama’s death, or whether a new generation of leaders will emerge who might continue armed resistance to the domination of the ruling Frente de Libertação de Moçambique (Frelimo).