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Etana Energy has secured a guarantee from the local Standard Bank and new equity funding from the bank and Norway’s Norfund. The funding has enabled financial close to be reached on the Du Plessis Dam PV2 solar project in Northern Cape, for which Etana is the sole offtaker.

The AfDB, IFC and Rockefeller Foundation have established Zafiri to fund mini- and metro-grids and other renewable energy projects in sub-Saharan Africa. Operations at Zafiri are expected to start in July, with a goal of raising up to $1bn to bring energy access to 30m people by the end of the decade.

The Niamey administration has pledged backing for the Salkadamna coal development, which would include an open-pit mine and 600MW coal-fired plant, as it tackles electricity shortages. Niger is also now due to receive a donated 40MW power plant from northern neighbour Algeria, in a wave of recent bilateral deals, but it has expelled three Chinese oil officials.

Reports that Brigadier General Abdourahamane Tchiani’s Conseil National pour la Sauvegarde de la Patrie (CNSP) junta has expelled Chinese oil officials have added a potential complication to Niger’s deep economic relationship with China.

Gulf companies have invested in some 59GW of renewable energy capacity across Africa, part of a global portfolio that now reaches above 100GW, according to research by African Energy’s sister publication Gulf States Newsletter. The international push is being driven by both commercial and diplomatic imperatives.

With a presidential election due in which ‘transition president’ Brigadier General Brice Clotaire Oligui Nguema now says he will stand, oil and gas players are keeping a close watch on political developments – not least after last year’s pre-emption of 48,000 b/d of producing assets by the state-owned GOC – but indies are nonetheless optimistic, with large new capital commitments going into new discoveries, infrastructure and major new gas plays, writes James Gavin.

Climate Fund Managers has invested $3.1m in a 30MW waste-to-energy IPP in Freetown that it will co-develop with Infinitum Energy Group. The project would generate renewable dispatchable energy while helping tackle the capital’s waste management difficulties.

The new NDC administration is promising a radical shake-up of Ghanaian institutions and spending, including another stab at electricity sector privatisation – in an attempt to carry through what John Mahama promised when he was last president, a decade ago. Delivering meaningful reform will provide an even greater challenge now than it did for his last government, writes Jon Marks.

The 5 March arrest of petroleum minister Puot Kang Chol, along with other senior allies of First Vice President Riek Macha, has raised tensions in Juba and provoked questions about the country’s seven-year peace settlement.

The Pastef party was handed a thumping parliamentary majority by Senegalese voters late last year, to add to its control of the presidency. Many see 2025 as the year that President Bassirou Diomaye Faye and Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko must make good on their reforming promises, writes Wale Dione Faye in Dakar.

The Emerging Africa & Asia Infrastructure Fund (Eaaif) has agreed to provide $45m of debt to CrossBoundary Energy (CBE). It forms part of a wider $300m debt raise by the pan-African C&I power specialist, which hopes to develop a $500m portfolio by 2027.

With the full takeover of Nigeria’s Prime Oil & Gas, Vancouver-headquartered Africa Oil Corporation is looking to accrue strategic benefits from an enhanced position in West Africa, at a time when its exposure to offshore assets in Namibia has been pared back.

The European Investment Bank has committed $52m to Africa Finance Corporation’s $750m Infrastructure Climate Resilient Fund that will back climate-related infrastructure across Africa, including renewable energy power projects.

TotalEnergies has bought a 51% stake in an Africa-focused hydroelectric power venture from Scatec. The deal confirms Scatec’s refocus on core technologies and markets and TotalEnergies’ burgeoning investments in large African hydro plays.

Luanda has chosen Moroccan family-owned civil engineering and port construction heavyweight Société Maghrébine de Génie Civil (Somagec) to build and operate a transmission interconnector linking Angola to the Southern Africa Power Pool. The first private sector investment in transmission since the amendment of the general electricity law in January, it is also an important step forwards for the regional trading ambitions of Enterprise Power DRC, which is linked to Somagec.