Thoughts on YES! 2023 from Thuso Kuali, Standard Bank of South Africa

Deneys has returned as an independent South African law firm, reviving a name part of the country's legal landscape for over a century, now with 200 legal staff across three offices and a pipeline weighted towards energy and infrastructure. Jackie Midlane, Head of Banking & Finance, Projects, tells ENN what independence unlocks for clients building across the continent.

Energy Minister El Hadji Abdourahmane Diouf has opened a competitive upstream bidding round covering 109 blocks to force domestic gas-to-power allocations. The strategy marks an abrupt regulatory turn from offshore export terminal infrastructure toward local industrial consumption mandates.

TotalEnergies has agreed a 1.8-billion-dollar infrastructure deal with Global Infrastructure Partners, selling equity stakes in its African pipeline and export network. The transaction secures institutional capital from the BlackRock subsidiary while maintaining operational control through a fifteen-year throughput tariff framework.

Kenya Power has started work on a KSh900 million transmission line to connect Lodwar to the national grid, decommissioning a weather-vulnerable diesel generator facility that costs the utility the same amount to run annually.

Camco built REPP 2 expecting commercial investors in the debt tranche and development finance institutions in the equity. Speaking to ENN, Fund Director Benjamin Hugues says the opposite happened within the equity, and puts it down to defence spending shrinking the development finance available and Western governments choosing returnable capital over grants.

Vincenzia Leitich is Executive Vice President for Power and Renewables, Client Coverage at Standard Bank. Across two episodes of the Let's Talk Energy Podcast she told ENN how open access has turned mining into an anchor customer for African renewables, and why transmission rather than capital is now the binding constraint.

ReconAfrica holds licenses covering 13 million contiguous acres across the Kavango Basin, where successful flow testing at the Kavango West 1X well has recorded the first onshore hydrocarbon recovery in Namibian history. The commercial transition pits state-backed financial targets against the protections of the Okavango Delta watershed.

British International Investment and Alexforbes each put R500 million into the Revego Africa Energy Fund in January, taking it to R3 billion. BII conditionally approved a further R250 million, subject to being matched locally. Speaking to ENN, Revego's Chief Investment Officer Ziyaad Sarang says that match is still open.