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The multi-donor Climate Investment Funds (CIF) has announced an agreement to provide Nigeria with $50m towards an African Development Bank-supported programme to promote investment in renewable energy and energy efficiency through local banks.

Revised February 2013, this map provides a detailed overview of South Africa's electricity supply infrastructure. Actual and planned generation projects (including hydroelectricity, coal, gas, nuclear, solar, wind and waste-to-power) are shown alongside exisiting and future transmission lines ranging from 220kV to 765kV.

The South African utility’s updated ten-year transmission development plan is intended to prepare the network for the demands being made by the huge planned increase in new generation capacity. Having admitted that large parts of the system are not fit for purpose, Eskom’s plan also recognises the need to bring existing networks up to scratch, in a major investment plan that envisages new infrastructure in each of South Africa’s nine provinces.

The Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) is seeking a hydropower engineer to act as project manager for the regional Rusumo Falls project on the Kagera River. The scheme’s projected 80MW output will be shared between Burundi, Rwanda and Tanzania, which will establish a special purpose vehicle to oversee implementation and operation.

On 30 January the Opec Fund for International Development (Ofid) signed a $12m supplementary loan agreement with Rwanda for the Electricity Access Scale-Up programme and a $10m loan with Uganda for the Energy Development and Access Expansion project.

Chinese seismic company BGP is acquiring 2D seismic in the Morondava Basin using the BGP Challenger vessel. The company, a subsidiary of China National Petroleum Corporation, said the new 13,300km long offset survey was adjacent to recent giant gas discoveries in Mozambique and Tanzania.

The decision by the Milan prosecutor to include Eni and its chief executive, Paolo Scaroni, in its investigation of Saipem’s activities in Algeria has focused attention on a key associate of former energy and mines minister Chakib Khelil.

As the standoff with Khartoum continues, South Sudan is looking at alternatives for its oil. Three refinery projects are in discussion and an export pipeline to Kenya seems increasingly likely, writes Richard Nield

Sharjah-based Dana Gas has raised $135m through the sale of 1.675m of its shares in MOL Hungarian Oil and Gas Company. Dana Gas took a 3% shareholding in MOL in 2009 as part of an agreement to farm into the Kurdistan region of Iraq, and the 8 February transaction leaves Dana Gas with a remaining interest in MOL of 1.486m shares, or about 1.4% of the share capital.

The European Investment Bank has started the formal appraisal process for a potential €100m ($135m) loan to the 300MW Lake Turkana wind project in Kenya. The project will also receive further backing from the African Development Bank, which has confirmed to African Energy that it will provide partial risk guarantees (PRGs) to the project and that it is in negotiations with the Kenyan government with an announcement expected later this month.

WesternGeco plans to start acquiring 32,000km of 2D seismic in April covering the country’s entire offshore area. The survey, on behalf of the National Petroleum Institute (INP), is thought to represent more 2D data than were acquired in the whole of Africa in 2012.

The government has signed a E50m ($67m) loan agreement with the European Investment Bank for the rehabilitation of the Mount Coffee hydro project. The 64MW facility on the St Paul River was built in 1966 and extensively damaged during Liberia’s civil war.

The Opec Fund for International Development (Ofid) on 4 February signed a $15m loan package with the government for the Kenya Electricity Expansion project.

The upstream partners are about to issue a tender for front-end engineering and design work for the development of the offshore Kudu gas field, with the aim of reaching a final investment decision in Q1 2014 (AE 243/5). The long-mooted project had been delayed while the Namibian authorities considered whether to develop a coal-fired power scheme instead.

Work is under way to rehabilitate and upgrade the Tazama pipeline, which runs from Dar es Salaam port to the Indeni refinery. The 1,710km pipeline was commissioned in 1968, and the project is replacing damaged sections of pipe, then upgrading the pipeline’s seven pumping stations to increase throughput and raise capacity, as well as upgrading the communications system.