H.E. Honourable Alex Wachira

Zimbabwe’s energy minister, July Moyo, wants to bring part of the country’s captive power, which the government puts at about 1,500MW, onto the national grid, after the Zambezi River Authority cut Kariba’s water allocation for power generation in 2027 to 23 billion cubic metres from 36 billion this year.

Afreximbank has disbursed $975m to finance a management buy-out of Oryx Energies, the petroleum products and lubricants group that serves customers in more than 20 African countries, bringing the company under majority African ownership for the first time, with the bank acting as sole lender to the deal.

President Hakainde Hichilema has sworn in Peter Kapala as Zambia’s Minister of Electricity and Makozo Chikote as Minister of Petroleum, splitting the former Ministry of Energy in two a week before the Zimbabwe-Zambia Energy Projects Summit opens in Livingstone, and giving the power sector a ministry of its own.

ECOWAS energy ministers meeting in Accra on 22 October adopted a regional directive on battery energy storage, setting a common framework for storage on West Africa’s grids, as Ghana’s energy minister, John Abdulai Jinapor, told them his country is procuring a 200MW battery system and a 200MWp solar plant to charge it.

Helen Zulu, Regional Director for Southern Africa at Ignite Energy Access, tells ENN that over 40% of its solar home systems now sell with an appliance, and sets out the changes she wants from regulators in Zambia and Zimbabwe, from proportionate licensing to taxes that fall due as customers pay.

South Africa’s Independent Power Producer Office is still evaluating bids from the first gas-to-power round, three weeks after Electricity and Energy Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa determined that 5,000MW of new gas generation and 4,600MW of battery storage should be procured, and the briefing he had set for today on the programme was postponed.

Naomi Ndele, Head of MSME Banking at KCB Bank, writing for ENN on how clean energy loans launched in 2022 have taken LPG cooking into 594 basic learning institutions and 38 tertiary institutions, and why she says the programme has no life span while Kenya works towards universal clean cooking by 2030.

BluEnergy, the electricity business of JSE-listed Blu Label Unlimited, and its development partner IBS Crafts have broken ground on a 25.6MW solar plant costing R360 million at the Springs Fresh Produce Market, and the plant will sell its power to the City of Ekurhuleni under a 20-year power purchase agreement.