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The African Development Bank board has named a three-member panel to review a report by the bank’s ethics committee into whistleblower allegations against bank president Akinwumi Adesina.The review was agreed after US Treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin and several other bank shareholders rejected the findings of the committee’s report and said the complaint warranted further examination.

The renewal of load-shedding, which looks likely to remain for some time despite continued suppressed demand has led to a cull of senior staff at Eskom’s generation division. The utility said on 4 September that there were 5GW of planned outages and 10.95GW unplanned, resulting in a 3GW deficit.

The US decision to remove Sudan from its list of state sponsors of terrorism, announced on 19 October, should open the way for a multilateral debt deal and big new financial flows, but pressure to normalise relations with Israel will not play well with many Sudanese, adding to pressure on a transitional government struggling with severe economic pressures.

The Irish government has decided there are sufficient grounds to proceed with a complaint against San Leon Energy over its past activities in the onshore Tarfaya and Zag licence areas in the disputed territory of Western Sahara. The Global Legal Action Network (GLAN), an Irish NGO, filed a complaint in October 2018 claiming San Leon was not complying with a number of guidelines for multinational companies set out by the OECD, specifically the principle of meaningful engagement with stakeholders – in this case the Sahrawi people – and the principle of respect for internationally recognised human rights.

Ex-president Mohammed Ould Abdelaziz used an interview with Paris-based Jeune Afrique (JA) to deny he had ever taken “a single ouguiya fraudulently” from state funds. The regime of his successor – and for many decades close ally – Mohammed Ould Ghazouani has claimed Abdelaziz mismanaged public funds over his two terms (2009-19).

 The Angolan government and General Electric have succeeded in having a court case against them dismissed by the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, after a judge ruled the dispute should be heard in courts in Angola.

Following a series of setbacks for the government this year in its attempt to declare CEC’s network common carrier, there had been hopes a negotiated settlement could be agreed. However, further legal action now looks a certainty, writes Chiwoyu Sinyangwe in Lusaka The Zambian government has made a fresh bid to seize control of Copperbelt Energy Corporation (CEC)’s transmission and distribution lines by issuing a new statutory instrument (SI) declaring the company’s network as common carrier.

The Copperbelt Energy Corporation (CEC) has gone to the Lusaka High Court seeking a judicial review to halt the government’s latest attempts to seize its transmission line network, including those it jointly owns with Democratic Republic of Congo’s Société Nationale d’Electricité (Snel).

Oil and gas minister Mohammed Aoun is doing his best to impose his authority on an industry which has been dominated by his powerful rival National Oil Corporation (NOC) chairman Mustafa Sanalla for the past seven years. There is a strong personal animosity between the two. Indeed, Prime Minister Abdelhamid Dabaiba may have appointed Aoun with the intention of making Sanalla’s position as awkward as possible.

The island’s ‘Saint Louis Gate’ power procurement scandal and other corruption enquiries, plus the government’s loss of a petroleum supply arbitration appeal, highlight the potential pitfalls of doing business in Africa’s most highly rated economy, writes Marc Howard.

Energy minister Newton Kambala was fired by President Lazarus Chakwera on 11 August, following his appearance at Lilongwe Magistrates Court on graft charges. Kambala had been arrested by the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) two days earlier.

Alongside the change of energy minister in mid-September, President Samia Suhulu Hassan replaced the board and senior leadership of Tanzania Electric Supply Company (Tanesco). The national utility’s new managing director Maharage Chande previously worked at MultiChoice Africa, which owns cable TV channel DStv, where he was Tanzania managing director and then regional managing director for East and West Africa.

Local developer Sunrise Power and Transmission Company (SPTCL) has waived a $500m arbitral award owed to it by the federal government in relation to the 3GW Mambilla hydroelectric power (HEP) plant, and has ceased arbitral proceedings.

Mozambique’s hopes for attracting interest to its sixth licensing round need to be set against the increasingly pressing environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals set by international oil companies (IOCs).

A High Court ruling left critical questions unanswered over the UK government’s proposed $1.15bn funding for the Area 1 liquefied natural gas scheme in Cabo Delgado, Mozambique. The Court of Appeal will now be asked to decide on what could provide an important legal precedent for export credit financing, writes James Gavin