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Chair of the US House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights and International Organisations, Democrat senator Karen Bass, and Republican ranking member Christopher Smith last month introduced a resolution to the House of Representatives (HoR) calling for free and fair elections in Tanzania. If passed, the resolution would give the US administration the legal basis to impose economic and other sanctions on the country.

Angolan power projects contractor Aenergy and its Portuguese owner Ricardo Leitão Machado are continuing an extensive and detailed legal campaign in the United States and United Kingdom against Luanda-based state entities and various General Electric (GE)-related businesses.

Despite vigorous opposition from a number of quarters, the South African government’s recently appointed electricity minister – who has been given new powers – still wants to procure 2GW of emergency electricity in a revised contract with Turkish-owned Karpowership. Meanwhile, generation is not the only factor causing difficulties, as the grid reaches its limit in some parts of the country.

Amid rising concerns about mining governance across sub-Saharan Africa – underlined by a new US advisory warning of ‘unique business risk’ – a contract awarding well-connected UAE company Primera Group the right to export and process much of Democratic Republic of Congo’s artisanal gold has attracted scrutiny and criticism within and well beyond DRC, writes Eleanor Gillespie.

After months of speculation that President Macky Sall would bid for a constitutionally-prohibited third term, his announcement in July that he wouldn’t run was greeted with relief. Yet continued political violence and a fear Sall may seek to install a proxy candidate underline wider governance concerns, not least over hydrocarbon revenues, writes Waly Dione Faye.

Former Lundin Energy executives denied charges of any complicity in Sudanese atrocities as their trial opened in early September, with hearings in the Stockholm District Court that fit into a growing trend for prosecutors to target companies and senior personnel for war crimes and similar outrages, no matter when they were committed, writes Chris Stephen in Stockholm.

Mpho Makwana will leave Eskom at the end of October, having served for only slightly over a year as chair of the state utility’s board of directors, with further divisions among decision-makers apparent in the protracted search for a new group chief executive officer (GCEO).

Former finance minister Manuel Chang pleaded not guilty in a New York court on 13 July to charges over the long-running ‘tuna bond’ scandal, having been extradited to the United States from South Africa the previous day. Chang was sent to New York after a South African court had rejected his request to be tried in Maputo.

Energy minister Matthew Opoku Prempeh is resisting calls for electricity tariffs to rise, despite Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) recording an annual loss of at least $400m. 

Washington-based social impact project developer C-Quest Capital (CQC) has secured significant new finance for its deployment of clean cooking stoves in sub-Saharan Africa, in the latest sign of growing interest in the sector.

The Ministry of Hydrocarbons’ mid-May roadshow event in London was an effort to firm up international interest in a string of blocks across central DR Congo and along its eastern border. In a problematic region, one big element for success could hinge on linking any finds into export infrastructure due to be built in neighbouring Uganda.

The South African government’s decision to approve state-owned PetroSA’s selection of an affiliate of Russia’s sanctioned Gazprombank as the preferred investment partner for the Mossel Bay GTL plant has sparked controversy.

With crude now flowing through the 1,982km Niger-Benin Export Pipeline, a fivefold increase in oil production beckons for Niger, amid signs that Niamey is emerging from post-coup isolation and has mended ties with Ecowas and the US – a critical factor in developing the greenfield uranium mine at Dasa.

Making the most of hydrocarbon resources and tackling perceived governance abuses are among the hot dossiers at the top of incoming President Bassirou Diomaye Faye and Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko’s agenda. Policy-makers and investors need to be acutely aware that Senegal is waiting on radical change from its new Pastef government, write Waly Dione Faye and Jon Marks.

A four-day hearing opened in London’s High Court on 21 November to decide whether the English courts can hear two legal claims on behalf of over 40,000 Nigerians against Royal Dutch Shell and its Nigerian subsidiary Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria for environmental damage caused by oil pollution in the Niger Delta.The first claim is being brought on behalf of 2,335 individuals from the Bille Kingdom, mostly fishermen who claim their environment has been devastated by oil spills over the past five years.