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Rwanda’s style of governance was a positive factor in developing Gigawatt Global’s solar PV project. Developer Chaim Motzen told the Infrastructure Consortium for Africa’s annual conference in November that, “from the time we started negotiations [February 2013] to full production there were three ministers of infrastructure, two [ministers of state for] energy, three Rwanda Development Board heads and three heads of the utility”. Whereas in most countries such frequent churn in key institutions would be seen as a sign of instability, he claimed that in Rwanda it pointed to President Paul Kagame’s rigorous demands for maximum performance.

The US Treasury on 21 December placed sanctions on Israeli businessman Dan Gertler, a close business associate of President Joseph Kabila whose substantial mining and oil interests in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have long been controversial. The Treasury said Gertler had amassed his fortune through hundreds of millions of dollars worth of opaque and corrupt mining and oil deals in the DRC.

President Muhammadu Buhari has been preoccupied with fighting Boko Haram. In line with his inaugural pledge to reform the armed forces, the chiefs of the army, air force and navy were sacked on 13 July. A seven-month offensive by the militaries of Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon and Chad has notched up a number of successes against the Islamist insurgent group, marked by the retaking of significant amounts of territory and increasing speculation surrounding the fate of Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau, who has not been heard from since March.

Central bank governor Yussur Abrar, the first woman to occupy the post, has resigned after only seven weeks in the job, citing corruption concerns. In a letter to Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, widely reported in the media, she said that, from the moment she was appointed, she had “continuously been asked to sanction deals and violate my fiduciary responsibility to the Somali people as head of the nation’s monetary authority”. She said the deals “put… frozen assets at risk and open the door to corruption”.

The government has made a $350m payment to BG Group, reducing its outstanding debt to around $1.2bn. Egypt’s total arrears to foreign companies reached some $6.3bn in 2013, and the government has started paying off part of its debt to encourage companies to stay and continue investing in the upstream exploration and production sector. BG was obliged to declare force majeure on its liquefied natural gas agreements in January because of the quantity of gas diverted to the domestic market.

Nigeria’s Malabu Oil & Gas has brought a case at Southwark Crown Court in London appealing against the freezing of $85m in proceeds from the OPL 245 deal. The funds were frozen last year at the request of the Italian prosecutor amid an investigation into corruption at Eni relating to the granting of the licence. Malabu, owned by former Nigerian oil minister Dan Etete, is seeking the release of the funds, arguing that the Italian prosecutor was exceeding his powers in getting them frozen in the first place, and that nothing has happened with the Italian investigation to warrant their continued freezing.

Algeria’s lower house of parliament on 14 November approved the long-awaited – but hotly contested – revised hydrocarbons law, in the run-up to a presidential election announced for 12 December by interim president Abdelkader Bensalah. IOCs welcome the changes but will proceed with caution because Algeria remains a tough place to do business.

Events in South Africa, whose sovereign debt has been reduced to junk status by President Jacob Zuma’s crony capitalist rule, are another reminder that when power is exerted abusively shortfalls in governance can be highly damaging for the wider economy. This is also apparent in Democratic Republic of Congo’s minerals and Nigeria’s oil kleptocracies, which are both under renewed scrutiny, with international judicial authorities contemplating action against President Joseph Kabila’s long-time business partner Dan Gertler and sifting through new evidence against former Nigerian oil ministers from Dan Etete to Diezani Allison-Madueke.

The Norwegian Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG) – previously known as the Norwegian Petroleum Fund – decided on 28 June to exclude Cairn Energy and Kosmos Energy from its portfolio because of the two companies’ decision to explore for oil and gas in areas offshore Western Sahara under licences issued by the government of Morocco. According to a statement by Norges Bank, which runs the fund, its executive board’s decision was made following an “assessment of the risk of particularly serious violations of fundamental ethical norms”.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) on 21 October released a 63-page report, ‘Letting the Big Fish Swim’, which details how the Ugandan government has failed to hold to account senior officials implicated in the theft and diversion of public funds. 
According to the report, no high-ranking government official, minister or political appointee has ever served a prison sentence, despite investigations into numerous corruption scandals over the years. This is despite repeated official pledges to eradicate corruption and an array of anti-corruption institutions. 


New prime minister Aminata Touré has named a cabinet, including Maîmouna Ndoye Seck, head of the electricity regulator, as energy minister. The appointment of veteran human rights advocate Sidiki Kaba as justice minister suggests the crackdown on high-profile corruption is set to remain a priority.

State utility Sonelgaz has faced capacity and financial pressures, but is generally seen to have performed to an acceptable level (by current Algerian standards) under Noureddine Bouterfa’s leadership, since January 2004. Algiers analysts noted that power cuts were no longer endemic on the new minister’s watch.Announcing Sonelgaz’s 2015 results on 5 June, Bouterfa pointed to investments worth AD577bn ($5.3bn) in 2015, when 1,285.6MW of new generation capacity was brought online.

Abdelhamid Zerguine was sacked as chairman and chief executive of Sonatrach on 26 July in a move confirmed by Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal. In Algiers, the sacking was widely linked to a further round of faction fighting surrounding the Algerian energy giant, but it may also have much to say about years of paralysis within Sonatrach, which has slowed its project pipeline to an extent that threatens exports in the latter part of this decade. Vice-president for upstream Saïd Sahnoun has been appointed interim president director-general (PDG). Director of associations Kamel Chikhi has taken over Sahnoun’s old job.

A Lusaka magistrates court on 30 June acquitted former president Rupiah Banda, who had been accused of personally benefiting from a $2.5m oil deal with Nigeria’s Sarb Energy. Magistrate Joshua Banda ruled that the prosecution had failed to prove its case, and called the prosecution’s evidence inconsistent and contradictory.

Despite his incapacities, President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, with his Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal, has spent recent weeks giving the impression of action at the top. New senior management is bedding in at national oil company Sonatrach, and military promotions on independence day, 5 July, signalled business as usual, even if there is still no movement on the retirement of key players such as military intelligence chief General Mohamed ‘Tewfik’ Mediene and chief of staff and deputy defence minister Lieutenant-General Ahmed Gaïd Salah.