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A new guarantee facility provided by PIDG’s GuarantCo arm could help to increase the number of creditworthy, long-term offtakers able to sign power purchase agreements.

Electricity sector reform is high among new Liberian President Joseph Nyuma Boakai’s much-trailed ‘100 day deliverables’, but the challenges of delivering improved services remain enormous in an industry still impacted by years of mismanagement and graft. State utility LEC has improved its performance, funding for new interconnections offers hope of more imports and there are rumours that a powership could provide short-term supply, writes Marc Howard.

Climate Fund Managers and Microsoft’s Climate Innovation Fund have invested $18m in UK-based Konexa to finance the launch of its renewable energy trading platform, with Nigerian Breweries the first customer. Konexa initially plans to wheel power across the national grid to two Nigerian Breweries’ facilities.

Swedfund International (Swedfund) and the European Union (EU) have offered finance to carry out environmental and technical feasibility studies for the Malawi-Zambia interconnector, a 330/400kV cross-border transmission line that spans about 184km between Zambia and Malawi.

The $2.9bn Julius Nyerere dam’s first 235MW turbine has started dispatching power, and a second unit is expected online very soon, as the much-delayed 2.1GW megaproject starts to fulfil its potential to supply national and regional demand – provided long-standing questions around the transmission infrastructure can be overcome, writes Marc Howard.

CFM’s appointment to manage the Southern African Power Pool ’s $1.3bn Regional Transmission Infrastructure Financing Facility could free up a decades-long blockage in the development of cross-border transmission infrastructure. How quickly this happens depends on the success of fundraising efforts in the coming months, and the willingness of utilities and finance ministries to make the RTIFF scheme work.

Commissioning of Geometric’s 141MW Aba gas-to-power plant adds sorely-needed on-grid capacity.  Selling to its own ringfenced distribution network, Aba also points to a potential new model of vertical integration. Meanwhile, the Tinubu government’s bold macro reforms have contributed to a significant economic crisis. It is nonetheless pushing on with efforts to repay $2.16bn owed to IPPs, although some question where the money will come from, write Leonard Lawal in Lagos and Marc Howard.

An arm of public utility Rwanda Energy Group is seeking contractors to build a substation at Bugesera Industrial Park.

Sasol South Africa and Air Liquide have signed a third power purchase agreement (PPA) with Enel Green Power RSA for wind power supply to their site in Mpumalanga province.

In a development that could destabilise Namibia’s electricity export initiative, industry sources have told African Energy the authorities have drastically downsized the amount of power allowed for export from 750MW to 100MW, making export-oriented independent power producers’ plants economically unviable.

Johannesburg-based data company Teraco plans to build a solar PV plant in Free State province, after being allocated grid capacity by state utility Eskom. Electricity generated from the plant will be wheeled across Eskom and municipal power networks to Teraco’s operations throughout South Africa.

The World Bank Group has approved a $202m finance facility to help address grid constraints and enable regional interconnections – opening the way for a doubling of hydropower imports from Ethiopia – under the second phase of its ten-year green energy programme for Kenya.

State utility Kenya Power and Lighting Company (KPLC) has given African Energy an update on the progress of procurement and project milestones for the Kenya Off-Grid Solar Access Project (Kosap).  Under the first phase of the World Bank Group-funded project KPLC will implement 89 mini-grids in eight counties.

Commercial operations for the $127m Mozambique-Malawi (Moma) transmission interconnection project has been delayed, a source with knowledge of the project told African Energy. The delay to the Moma link into the Southern Africa Power Pool comes after a previous hold-up from demining complications, while other milestones remain to be met for the long-awaited regional interconnection scheme.

The United Kingdom is guaranteeing an African Development Bank loan whose funds will be used to further improve Kenya Electricity Transmission Company (Ketraco)’s network and increase the deployment of renewable energy.