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Plastics manufacturer Miniplast Ltd has begun commercial operations at a 700kWp grid-tied solar PV plant developed and built by Stella Futura at Spintex Industrial Area in Accra. The plant is funded by Empower New Energy, the owner and asset manager, which sells power to Miniplast through a 20-year power supply agreement. 

Norway’s Aker Horizons has taken a 75% equity stake in Mainstream Renewable Power. The deal, valued at about €900m ($1.095bn), should enable Mainstream to bring 5.5GW of power to financial close by 2023. The other 25% equity is held by Mainstream founder and chairman Eddie O’Connor.

Nigerian businessman Tony Elumelu’s Heirs Holdings has announced the acquisition of a 45% stake in onshore OML 17 from Shell, Total and Eni. The licence, which includes the Agbada field, has current production capacity of 27,000 boe/d and estimated 2P reserves of 1.2bn boe, with an additional 1bn boe of further exploration potential. The transaction, valued at $1.1bn, was carried out via TNOG Oil and Gas Limited, a subsidiary of Heirs Holdings and Elumelu’s Transnational Corporation of Nigeria (Transcorp) as part of Elumelu’s strategy of creating an integrated energy business.

Botswana has released its 2020 integrated resource plan (IRP), which provides policy scenarios for the generation mix until 2040, approving procurement of 795MW of new capacity at the same time. This includes 135MW of solar PV to come online next year, and 10MW-100MW of coalbed methane generation (CBM) by 2025. Procurement is well under way for both technologies, with five bidders submitting proposals for two 50MW plants in December and Tlou Energy and Sekaname both negotiating CBM projects with the government.

UK-based developer Globeleq announced this month that it has acquired a 74% stake in Nigerian commercial and industrial (C&I) power company CPGNL. CGPNL was owned by Clean Energy Group, which will retain 26% of the company, and used equipment supplied by Cummins. The company will be rebranded as Globeleq Power Solutions Nigeria Ltd (GPSN). GPSN has a portfolio of 12 operating gas power plants with combined capacity of 58MW in the south of the country.

General Electric (GE) will supply power generation equipment to the 300MW West African Energy combined-cycle plant in Cap des Biches, Dakar, the company announced on 28 January.

Two sets of rehabilitation work on the Kariba dam are progressing on schedule and will be completed before the end of 2024, the Zimbabwe River Authority (ZRA) has said. Work on the Kariba Dam Rehabilitation Project comprises reshaping the plunge pool and refurbishing the spillway gates to enhance the structural integrity of the dam wall. The dam, on the Zambezi River, was built between 1955 and 1959.

Kenya Electricity Generation Company (KenGen) is inviting bids for the design, supply and installation of a silicon-based solar PV panel production plant at the company’s Tana power station in Murang’a, central Kenya.

Société Nationale des Hydrocarbures (SNH) has given New Age (African Global Energy) Ltd formal approval to apply for a new exploitation agreement for the Etinde licence. This would replace the existing Etinde exploitation agreement (EEA) which came into force by presidential decree in January 2015 and had been due to expire. Partner Bowleven said the new agreement, reached following talks with SNH, “would be for the production of hydrocarbons including the delivery of gas to thermal power plants or any other projects confirmed by the state”.

Following several block awards announced in early January, minister of petroleum and mineral resources Tarek El-Molla has signed a concession agreement with Royal Dutch Shell, Mubadala Petroleum and Tharwa Petroleum for Red Sea Block 4. The 3,084km2 block in the northern Red Sea owned by the South Valley Egyptian Petroleum Holding Company (Ganope) was offered in a licensing round in 2019.

London-listed Energean announced on 21 January that it had taken a final investment decision on the North El Amriya and North Idku (NEA/NI) concession subsea tieback project offshore Egypt. The NEA concession contains two discovered and appraised gas fields, Yazzi and Python, while the NI concession contains four discovered gas fields, one of which is ready for development. NEA/NI is due to deliver first gas in H2 2022 from 49m boe of 2P reserves, 87% of which is gas. Peak production is expected to be approximately 90mcf/d, plus 1,000 b/d of condensates.

China’s decision to participate in the World Bank-led Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI) was a rare indication that Beijing was willing to join an international initiative to tackle rising financial pressures on developing economies. Its concerns about its African and other liabilities means Chinese lending “fell off a cliff in 2020”, an AIX panelist observed on 19 January, but Beijing’s commitment remains huge: the African Energy Live Data platform records some $38bn-worth of Chinese investment committed to African power projects in 2014-19.

South Africa’s TBI Investment Managers has completed its first renewable energy deal with a R440m ($29m) refinancing of Emvelo’s 15% equity stake in the 100MW Karoshoek Solar One  concentrated solar power project, which came online in 2018. The deal was done through TBI’s Amandla Renewable Energy Fund, which was set up in 2019 to focus on refinancing equity stakes in South Africa’s renewable energy IPP procurement programme (REIPPP), TBI head of renewable energy Laurentius Human told African Energy.

Chevron subsidiary Cabinda Gulf Oil Company Limited has given Subsea 7 a contract for the Sanha Lean Gas Connection project in Block 0. The work comprises the construction and installation of a lean gas platform system at a water depth of approximately 70 metres. The lean gas platform is planned as a fixed-leg structure bridge-connected to the existing Sanha condensate complex. Gas from the Sanha field, which started condensate production in 2005, will be supplied to the Angola LNG plant at Soyo.

Australian junior miner AVZ Minerals on 21 January said its $500m-plus green lithium mine project at Manono would be fully supplied by the Piana Mwanga hydroelectric plant – once it has been refurbished – and would aim to achieve a number of other sustainability goals. Analysts said AVZ’s investor call, which focused on sustainability issues following a greenhouse gas assessment at the Manono lithium and tin project by Environmental Resource Management, produced an uptick in its share price as it focused on the project “as potentially having one of the lowest carbon footprints of any lithium mine across the globe”.