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The International Monetary Fund (IMF) said on 4 October it had reached an agreement with Côte d’Ivoire (CdI) to release a further $500m in financial support, following a review of its economic reform programme. 

Momentum continues to build for the two large export-oriented liquefied natural gas projects on Mozambique’s Afungi peninsula. TotalEnergies has confirmed longstanding speculation that work will resume at Mozambique LNG this year, while ExxonMobil is aiming for a final investment decision on its Rovuma project in 2025 – underpinned by the continuing role of foreign security forces in Cabo Delgado, writes Marc Howard.

Abu Dhabi has yet to give a clear explanation for the extensive airlift to Amdjarass in north-eastern Chad that has been under way since May, but recent reports by a number of US media outlets suggest the UAE has been using the operation to supply anti-tank missiles and drones to Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo (Hemedti)’s Rapid Support Forces, one of the two main protagonists in Sudan’s civil war.

The Lomé-headquartered West African Development Bank (Boad) has approved a CFA15bn ($24.2m) loan for the 30MWp Niakhar solar PV plant, which includes a battery energy storage system.

The International Monetary Fund has agreed to extend $1.3bn to Rabat under its resilience and sustainability facility, to support renewables and energy efficiency schemes, and to strengthen Morocco’s resilience against natural disasters. It comes just ahead of the IMF and World Bank Group annual meetings, which are going ahead as scheduled in Marrakech on 9-15 October.

Uganda has got itself into hot water with donors and investors on several fronts, but President Yoweri Museveni’s new Anti-Homosexual Law and his robust response to the campaign against the controversial Eacop pipeline play very differently to a domestic audience. As Museveni has taken umbrage at ‘being lectured to’, finding a way out of the donor row will be a tough challenge for all concerned, writes Thalia Griffiths.

There are pockets of progress in building infrastructure across Democratic Republic of Congo, with commercial operators and development finance institutions supporting a range of projects. But with eastern regions traumatised by violence and an uncertain election looming in December, the country remains as challenging an environment as ever, writes Jon Marks.

Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed triumphantly announced on 10 September that the fourth and final filling of the $4.2bn Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (Gerd) reservoir had been completed, raising the 74km3 reservoir’s water level to 625 metres; last year’s third filling had brought levels to 600 metres.

Cairo is pressing on with the implementation of its existing electricity supply industry (ESI) strategy in the face of severe headwinds. Some major reforms, including energy sector liberalisation, are certain to be delayed, but the authorities continue to drive big ticket projects forward – and to pile on new ones – while striving to keep international investors on-side in a highly precarious financial situation.

German development bank KfW has offered a €200m ($214m) loan to Eskom to help the state utility  improve transmission grids in the Northern and Western Cape, as western nations look to step up their support for South Africa’s creaking electricity system.

Egyptians are hoping for cooler weather and with it the end of severe rolling power outages which have caused difficulties throughout the summer. However, the social and economic legacies of the electricity supply crisis will outlast the ferocious Mediterranean heatwave, which has provided the government’s only – but far from satisfying – explanation for why the outages happened, writes John Hamilton.

Disasters in Morocco and then Libya in the first half of September – the first a natural disaster, the second largely the product of human mismanagement – have put renewed pressure on the authorities in both countries.

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.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa has appointed the little-known Edgar Moyo as his energy and power development minister in a new, bloated cabinet – in which the re-elected president stirred up a storm by naming his son David Kudakwashe Mnangagwa (Kuda) as deputy finance minister and his nephew Tongai Mnangagwa as deputy tourism and hospitality minister.

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has named Olayemi Cardoso to head the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). Cardoso was Lagos state’s economic planning and budget commissioner from 1999 until 2005, when Tinubu was governor. He is the latest member of that team to be appointed to high office. Cardaso fills the vacancy left by Godwin Emefiele’s suspension and arrest in June, as the ex-governor was closely linked to disastrous policies enacted by outgoing president Muhammadu Buhari’s government.