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State owned power utility Eskom has signed commercial lease agreements with four independent power producers (IPPs) for land use at two of its coal power stations in Mpumalanga, in a plan to grow renewable energy capacity by the private sector.

TotalEnergies is to face a group of environmental pressure groups in a French court on 7 December, in a dispute over the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (Eacop) and Tilenga projects in Uganda and Tanzania.

The recent election win for President João Lourenço and the MPLA has prompted renewed talk about a campaign to privatise national oil company Sociedade Nacional de Combustíveis de Angola (Grupo Sonangol). While a wide ranging programme may yet be some years off, would-be purchasers of businesses owned by Sonangol will likely be concerned over reputational issues associated with the company’s management under former Angolan Vice President Manuel Vicente, the late president José Eduardo dos Santos’ daughter Isabel dos Santos and other senior officials.

The appointment of a new board of directors for struggling state power utility Eskom has been greeted by a mix of optimism and scepticism. Organisations like the Black Business Council have called for the board to dismiss chief executive Andre de Ruyter, a man it blames for the blackouts.

A huge increase in generation capacity indicates that the long-sought boom in renewable generation has materialised, as African grids are set to add 15GW of solar, 9GW of wind and 14GW of hydroelectric power by 2025, according to the African Energy Live Data platform’s latest analysis.

South Africa has many problems, stemming from the enduring legacies of apartheid and the fallout of more recent misrule, but could it be load-shedding and the perpetual crisis at state utility Eskom that finally ends the African National Congress (ANC)’s control of the state?

Energy and power development minister Zhemu Soda has removed the board of directors of state petroleum company PetroTrade for alleged malpractice, including recruiting senior staff without following company procedures.

An early September judgement confirming the Eastern Cape High Court’s rejection of Shell’s attempt to conduct seismic surveys along South Africa’s eastern coast will leave the government – and oil companies – with plenty of food for thought, as South Africa and many other countries look to produce more hydrocarbons in sensitive environments, James Gavin writes.

The three core Mano River Union countries are confronted by major decisions that will shape their future direction, from potential progress on major resources plays led by Guinea’s huge Simandou iron ore mining and infrastructure development and Liberia’s struggles with major investor Arcelor Mittal to Sierra Leone’s political crisis. All three have searching questions of governance and equity for their populations, writes Jon Marks with correspondents in Freetown, Conakry and Monrovia.

A wind of change is blowing through Seeg, whose electricity and water activities are to be split into two companies under a new chief executive, but the Gabonese state utility remains dogged by structural problems, including large debts owed by state entities and under-investment in the grid – all of which makes Seeg’s potential privatisation a huge challenge.

Governments are assessing their positions over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (Gerd) project, after the dam’s third filling was completed, despite an escalation of rhetoric from Egypt and Sudan as the downstream nations continue to complain at a threat to their dependency on Blue Nile waters for irrigation and basic water supply.

One of the kingdom’s most widely known energy executives, Moroccan Agency for Sustainable Energy (Masen) development director Tarik Hamane, is joining Total Eren.

The addition of Senegal to the list of countries negotiating a Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) with G7 counterparties is an important diplomatic achievement for those countries in the developed world striving to keep the concept of just transition alive. It would have been difficult for the just transition concept to maintain its claims to moral credibility – that it is a viable route to justice in climate finance – if it could not find even one more African partner to sign up for a JETP.

The global take-off of corporate power purchase agreements (PPAs) is driving an evolution in contracts across the supply chain as companies push to achieve environmental, social and governance (ESG) targets, writes Dan Marks.

Seplat Energy’s $1.6bn acquisition of ExxonMobil’s Nigerian shallow-water assets faces the very real prospect of being blocked after Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) won a court decision temporarily blocking the US major from selling its Mobil Producing Nigeria Unlimited assets to the ambitious London- and NGX-listed independent