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Botswana Power Corporation has published plans for a 25MW battery with 100MWh of storage beside the Mmadinare solar cluster, with the World Bank funding its construction, as Botswana presents a climate plan at COP31 in Antalya that ranks energy generation as its largest opportunity for carbon market activity.

Masen has opened prequalification for its Noor PV Multisites programme, at least 350MW of solar in plants of 40MW to 170MW, with contractors invited to apply by noon on 30 November to build the plants on a turnkey basis and then operate and maintain them.

Nigeria has cleared the first 98 of more than 300 containers of transmission equipment that sat at its ports for nearly 20 years, and the Minister of Power, Joseph Tegbe, says the government is working to release the remaining 200-plus without further delay.

Gabon’s presidency has put the cost of reviving the Mabounié niobium and rare earths deposit at about $2bn, after UAE-backed New Energy Metals and its subsidiary Dusk Gabon presented a technical study to President Brice Clotaire Oligui Nguema in China, with construction targeted for 2027 and processing planned inside the country.

Egypt’s Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty pressed in Tripoli on 7 November for faster progress on gas pipeline links with Libya and on refining Libyan crude in Egypt, and Libya’s acting Minister of Oil and Gas, Khalifa Abdulsadek, says he will take the technical talks to Cairo.

The African Development Bank has approved $503.75 million for South Africa’s Infrastructure Governance Reform Program, aimed at drawing private capital into electricity transmission, as a licensed market operator inside the National Transmission Company South Africa prepares the ground for 10% of electricity transactions to be traded wholesale by December 2027.

The World Economic Forum’s framework for future power systems sets out five enablers for grids that are flexible, secure, affordable and resilient. Set against the IEA’s latest forecast and what Africa’s financiers and mine operators have told ENN this year, the African test is whether new generation reaches the customers who pay for it.

Rose Ndong, President of the Nigerian Mining and Geosciences Society (NMGS), tells ENN for its women’s voices series that lithium processing is Nigeria’s most investable opportunity now that unprocessed minerals can no longer be exported, and sets out how a single approval window could move projects from licence to construction faster.

Mainstream South Africa has reached financial close on a 27MW second phase at Ilikwa Solar in the Free State, with Investec again holding 30%, and the extension will take the plant to 77MW for businesses buying on five to 10-year contracts when it starts operating in late 2027.

John McLaughlin of Storegga argues that the near-term case for carbon capture and storage in Africa rests on exporters facing the EU’s carbon border, with North African stores for southern European emissions and credits for carbon removal as later possibilities, and sets out what governments can do now to prepare.