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FMO is considering up to €146.5m of senior debt for Tamba Solar, a 100MWp plant in Tambacounda whose 180MWh battery would hold two and a half times the storage of AXIAN’s Kolda project, with its output contracted to Senelec for 25 years under a sovereign guarantee.

Nigeria’s Minister of Power, Joseph Tegbe, says procurement has begun on a $2bn East-West Super Grid with capacity for at least 19,000MW, alongside repairs that have taken supply to the Lagos complex past 1,000MW and a technical audit of power assets, some of them more than 50 years old.

Prime Minister Mwigulu Nchemba says the Julius Nyerere Hydropower Project has given Tanzania the capacity to generate more power than it currently uses, with 4,646MW installed against a 2,271MW peak when the 2,115MW plant was commissioned in August, and a surplus the government hopes to sell to neighbours including Zambia and Kenya.

ENN’s Women’s Voices series puts the same three questions to women making the decisions in Nigerian energy and mining. Felicia Dairo, Executive Director of the Nigerian Indigenous Women in Mining and Natural Resource Organisation (NIWIMNRO), tells ENN where investors should look as Nigeria pushes to process its own minerals, and how women are organising to negotiate.

Envusa Energy, the joint venture between Anglo American and EDF power solutions, now has its 520MW Koruson 2 wind and solar cluster fully running, supplying Valterra Platinum and two other mining customers over Eskom’s grid.

Durodoluwa Femi-Ajala, co-founder of the Youth Sustainable Development Network, and Chibunna Ogbonna, Founder and CEO of Brave Energies, join Ayomikun Joshua Kukoyi, Co-founder and Head of Programmes at Eco-Learn Nigeria, in telling ENN what they are building and who they want in the room ahead of YES! Nigeria on 19 November.

The Africa Energy Bank has named Egyptian banker Helmy Ghazi as its inaugural president, following its formal establishment by Afreximbank and the African Petroleum Producers’ Organisation. With $5bn in authorised capital, the Abuja-based institution is intended to finance projects across the energy value chain as African countries seek greater control over the funding of their energy industries.

Ghana’s Energy and Green Transition Minister John Abdulai Jinapor has called on African countries to develop domestic solar manufacturing, arguing that the continent’s renewable energy ambitions must extend beyond installing imported equipment. Speaking at the International Solar Alliance Assembly in India, he identified technology transfer, local industrial capacity and affordable long-term finance as requirements for building an African solar industry.

Zimbabwe’s Deputy Minister of Energy and Power Development, Yeukai Simbanegavi, told reporters at the Zimbabwe-Zambia Energy Projects Summit in Livingstone that both countries can reach their generation targets, and that the government will take what investors raised at the summit and come back with changes.

Tengi George-Ikoli, Nigeria Country Manager at the Natural Resource Governance Institute, on what it will take to turn Nigeria’s mineral wealth into investable projects. In written answers to ENN ahead of Nigeria NOW!, she argues that credible geological data and predictable regulation will do more for investors than requiring every mineral to be processed at home.