Sunday Oduntan

Nigeria’s federal government, the UK and state governments are seeking private investment in small run-of-river hydropower, presenting a draft National Small Hydropower Policy in Abuja alongside three pilot projects, among them a 100MW solar and hydro hybrid at Ikere Gorge in Oyo State expected to reach financial close by mid-2027.

Zambia’s Rural Electrification Authority opened the call for proposals on 15 October for its Results-Based Financing Facility under the World Bank-backed ASCENT Zambia programme, which pays private providers once their solar home systems and clean cooking appliances have been independently verified, with targets of 120,000 and 60,000 households.

Tanzania has made its first natural gas discovery since 2015, with Energy Minister Juma Homera putting the Kasa find at Mnazi Bay in Mtwara at 223 billion cubic feet, and operator Maurel & Prom, which holds 60% alongside TPDC, expecting first production from the new well from November.

Burkina Faso’s Council of Ministers has adopted a decree creating Faso Wa-Fulu, a presidential initiative for universal access to electricity by 2030, with more than CFA2,800 billion budgeted over ten years and 44 electrification brigades that will employ 1,200 people, in a country where 34.2% of people had access in 2024.

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.