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Saudi authorities have released Saudi-Ethiopian billionaire Mohammed Hussein Al-Amoudi after more than 14 months in detention, initially in the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Riyadh, in the corruption purge ordered by Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman Bin Abdelaziz Al-Saud. As with other business figures held in November 2017, Al-Amoudi seems to have engineered his release in a settlement process involving the transfer of cash and assets. “He paid and he paid a lot,” the Wall Street Journal quoted “a person familiar with Amoudi’s situation” saying.

Mini-grid financing facility CrossBoundary Energy Access (CBEA) has reached first close with commitments from the Rockefeller Foundation and Ceniarth. CBEA has raised $16m to invest in mini-grids serving around 170,000 people. The facility will initially target Nigeria, Tanzania and Zambia, as markets that have supportive regulatory frameworks for mini-grids.

Cameroonian economist Vera Songwe has been appointed head of the United Nations’ Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), having been West and Central Africa director at the World Bank Group’s International Financial Corporation (IFC). Songwe is the first woman to lead the ECA, and comes in with a strong remit to marry sustainable development and business; she is also likely to be a dynamic force in an often-fusty institution.

The Infrastructure Consortium for Africa (ICA) reports that out of the four sectors it analyses – energy, transport, water, and information and communications technology (ICT) – transport operations attracted the most financial commitments ($34.5bn) of any sector in 2014, taking all sources of finance into account. This was largely due to $17.6bn in national government budget allocations and the $8.4bn of investment certificates for Egypt’s Suez Canal expansion. Among ICA members, which include leading national and multilateral donors, the energy sector received more commitments than any other sector in 2014, when ICA members committed $9.2bn out of the $22.4bn committed to the sector from all sources of finance.

A significant market is emerging across the continent for renewables-based commercial and industrial (C&I) energy projects. In all but a handful of markets, the talk is of a potential that will soon be measured in gigawatts, rather than the usual dozens (at most) of megawatts of an established business. As Kenya-based Astonfield Solar’s chairman Ameet Shah puts it, the technology is still in its early days – as in some cases is the quality of its delivery to clients – but the C&I industry will reach lift-off even before the ‘transformational’ 24-hour storage becomes the norm.

The impact of lower oil prices on long-term supply contracts has driven a rise in Sonatrach’s piped gas sales to Italy and Spain. Data from Italian grid operator Snam Rete Gas show Algerian gas flows into the Mazara del Vallo entry point more than doubling to 23.5mcm on 7 April, from 10.7mcm at end-March. Bloomberg reported that imports of Algerian fuel fell in March to the lowest level for that month since at least 2010; Italy imported 6.8bcm in 2014, down from 12.5bcm in 2013, according to Snam data.

Development of Guinea’s mineral resources has long been hampered by a lack of infrastructure, but the government is keen to harness donor support for post-Ebola recovery to attract large-scale investment. Guernsey-based Alufer Mining signed a mining convention for the Bel Air bauxite mining project on 1 February, the first to be completed under Guinea’s new mining code. The Bel Air deposit is just 15km from the coast, which minimises the infrastructure required. Alufer, part of Pella Resources Group, eventually plans to develop the higher grade Labé deposit in central Guinea, but this would require a 200km railway to evacuate the bauxite.

IFC: New director for environment and social development; JAPAN: JICA expansion

AIM-listed Aminex has announced a share placing and open offer to raise £19.5m ($25.4m) with Oman’s Zubair Corporation acting as cornerstone investor. The fundraising follows the start of gas production at the Kiliwani North field in April. Proceeds will be used principally to finance the drilling of the Ntorya-2 appraisal well and the Ntorya-3 exploration well on the Ruvuma licence. The Ntorya-1 discovery drilled in 2012 tested 20mcf/d of gas, with 139 b/d of associated condensate.

Flex LNG has completed a private placement to raise $350m. The final subscription price was set at NOK60/share and a total of 29,580,834 new shares will be issued.

The reunification of the management of Libya’s rival national oil corporations after more than a year of division is an important victory for the Tripoli-based chairman Mustafa Sanalla. His authority over Libya’s oil industry is now unquestioned even in Cyrenaica, which until recently was making repeated efforts to set up its own oil export deals and to establish an independent stream of oil revenue.

Côte d’Ivoire has priced a $750m ten-year bond at a final yield of 5.625%, according to a government statement. Government debt is rated B1 (positive outlook) by Moody’s and B (positive outlook) by Fitch. The country missed coupon payments on its outstanding 2032 Eurobond in 2010–11 as it emerged from political and economic crisis, and had to restructure its external and domestic debt in 2012. But a growing number of African countries are now seeking to tap debt markets as borrowing costs have fallen to record lows.

The decision to impose stricter rules regulating currency transfers and payments across the Central African Economic and Monetary Union (Cemac) countries – heavily promoted by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and its key ally in the process, the regional Banque des Etats de l’Afrique Centrale (BEAC) – reflects an urgent need to improve governance and macroeconomic management in much of the region. But a pile-up of payments delays and the sketchy implementation of currency controls have emerged as a major threat to day-to-day business for companies operating in the Central African franc zone.

Office National de l’Electricité et de l’Eau Potable has invited technical and financial proposals from consultants by 6 July for studies to optimise the operation and evaluate the potential of the Afourer hydropower complex. The contract will entail studies to improve, optimise and integrate a series of modifications in the design and operation of the complex, in pumped storage and in conventional hydropower mode, to increase its production and efficiency.

The European Investment Bank invested €1.41bn in North Africa in 2012, according to vice-president in charge of the Facility for Euro-Mediterranean Investment and Partnership (Femip), Philippe de Fontaine Vive. Morocco took the lion’s share of this with €1bn, of which €180m was spent on the third phase of the country’s 2012-15 energy access programme. The programme aims to reduce power losses, connect new power plants to the grid, and install 1,300km of transmission lines. The EIB is providing €100m for the construction of the 125-160MW Ouarzazate concentrated solar power (CSP) project, the largest to date under the Mediterranean Solar Plan, alongside the European Commission (€30m), the AFD (€100m) and KfW (€115m).