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The global campaign to provide vulnerable and marginalised communities with sustainable and affordable energy has gained considerable momentum in the past decade. The Africa-EU Energy Partnership’s target of giving electricity access to 100m more Africans by 2020, set in 2010, was exceeded by mid-decade. The United Nations’ Sustainable Energy for All (SE4All) initiative should achieve its target of pulling 1bn people worldwide out of energy poverty by 2030; some 500m of these people live in sub-Saharan Africa.

The government is considering various options to increase the capital of Rwanda Energy Group (REG) in order to finance planned infrastructure development. Corporate communications adviser Prosper Mubera Birori told African Energy one possibility was to bring in a strategic investor who would acquire an equity stake in the group as a whole, or in REG’s Energy Utility Corporation Limited (EUCL) subsidiary, which is responsible for the operation and maintenance of the existing generation plants, the transmission and distribution network, and selling electricity to end-users.

Nigeria has sold a $1bn US dollar bond on the international market, finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala announced on 3 July. It is the country’s first move into the international capital market since selling a €500m Eurobond in 2011. The US dollar bond offered in two categories, a $500m five-year bond at 5.375% interest rate and a $500m ten-year bond at 6.625%, was four times oversubscribed.

Higher oil revenues and settlements with vulture funds have given Republic of Congo the space to bow to Bretton Woods demands for more transparent accounting for petroleum income, writes Paul Melly.

Securing early-stage project development financing is a major hurdle to getting renewable projects off the ground in many African countries, and a new facility aims to address this. On 4 December, the UK Department for International Development (DfID) and the Department of Energy and Climate Change approved the Green Africa Power (GAP) fund, a new facility housed under the Private Infrastructure Development Group (PIDG) umbrella.

London-based private equity firm Helios Investment Partners led a $55m funding round in January for Off Grid Electric, a solar home system provider with Silicon Valley origins. The round, supported by General Electric Ventures and existing investors, is believed to be the biggest equity investment to date in the off-grid power sector. “As the largest private equity firm exclusively focused on Africa, energy access is a priority theme for Helios,” Helios co-founder and managing partner Tope Lawani said.

Having weathered many storms as head of Office National de l’Electricité et de l’Eau Potable (ONEE), Ali Fassi-Fihri was sacked as head of the state utility on 24 October. He was dismissed along with four prominent ministers and another parastatal boss by King Mohammed VI in response to a report by the Cour des Comptes (public accounts court) on the failures of a multi-faceted project to revive the economy of the northern Al-Hoceima region.

In a series of bold and politically risky moves, the Egyptian government has attempted to stabilise its economy and reduce its dependence on financial support from the Gulf by devaluing its currency, reducing subsidies and turning to Iran as an alternative source of imported fuel. President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi’s administration appears to be banking on the assumption that it can contain any public unrest provoked by domestic price rises and shortages of essential goods. It believes it can weather a geopolitical storm with its former patron, and that in the long term the economy will rest on firmer ground.

President Macky Sall looked at his confident best on 12 June as he hosted a day of dialogue over the future shape of the oil and gas industry and the expected revenue boost to the Senegalese economy. The event sought to bring together politicians, business and civil society, but significant elements of the opposition boycotted the event in Dakar’s new conference centre. Sall’s opponents demand that the government should publish all the natural resources contracts it has signed to date.

Ophir Energy has revived plans to seek a share listing to help fund its growing exploration activity. The company was considering an initial public offering in 2007, but opted to stay private. It argued that markets liked to see short-term results, but that it was still a couple of years from drilling, and private equity was a better way of meeting its needs (AE 126/14

The past four years have been a period of intense frustration for National Oil Corporation (NOC) and its international partners as persistent violence and political mayhem have cut oil production to one-quarter of the 1.6m b/d maximum and made it impossible to implement exploration and development plans. NOC’s inability to make progress on a practical level has not stopped it from working up new investment schemes, which it has presented to international oil companies (IOCs) in increasing detail over the past several years.

Peter Bosshard left campaign group International Rivers on 22 December and will take up a new position on 1 February as director of the finance programme of the Sunrise Project, leading a new campaign to accelerate the shift from fossil fuels to clean energy. Under Bosshard’s leadership, International Rivers has campaigned vigorously against large dam projects in Africa. The NGO has been a staunch critic of the Inga scheme in Democratic Republic of Congo, which it argues will not benefit most Congolese, and has gathered evidence of the problems encountered by communities resettled as part of Sudan’s Merowe dam project.

The US’ continued domination of the World Bank Group (WBG) was confirmed on 16 April, when President Barack Obama’s candidate, Korean-born Dartmouth College head Jim Yong Kim, was named president of the Washington-based institution; he will replace Robert Zoellick at the end of June

UK regulators have approved a new London-based non-life reinsurance company established to focus solely on business from the African continent. One Re on 26 November said it was the first traditional start-up reinsurance company to be approved under the UK’s new regulatory regime that came into effect in April 2013. One Re – whose founders have invested an initial $50m in cash as start-up capital – is offering local African insurance companies what it calls “well-capitalised and transparent reinsurance solutions

In a dramatic sign of the effect of the global downturn, middle-income Botswana has been forced to turn to the African Development Bank for a big chunk of budget support