AfricanFinance

Nigeria’s state oil firm NNPC has extended its crude-for-product swap contracts, the country’s main avenue to meet the bulk of its fuel needs, until June 2019, sources familiar with the matter said. Despite having a refining capacity of about 445,000 barrels per day, its plants have been underperforming for years, making Africa’s biggest oil producer almost wholly dependent on imports to meet its domestic gasoline and diesel needs. (Reporting by Julia Payne; Additional reporting by Alexis Akwagyiram in Lagos; Editing by Adrian Croft)

South Africa state-owned power utility Eskom has successfully synchronized unit 2 of the Medupi Power Station, set to be the largest dry-cooled power station in the world once complete to the national power grid eight months ahead of schedule. Eskom’s group executive for group capital, Abram Masango confirmed the report and said, the unit was loaded to 400MW, making it the fifth of the six Medupi units to be synchronised to the national grid. “The achievement of Unit 2 first synchronisation, marks a key milestone towards the full commercial operation of the unit. Lessons learnt on previous units were implemented on Unit 2, leading to the swiftness in delivering first power,” said Mr. Abram. Medupi Power Station The plant which will also be the fourth largest coal-fired power plant, is located in Lephalale, Limpopo. It is a greenfield coal-fired power plant comprising six units rated in total at 4,764MW installed capacity. It will be able to meet the elec...

From basic lighting solutions to mini-grids, Africa’s decentralised renewable energy (DRE) market has recorded significant growth with 11.2 million units of branded pico-solar products sold between 2009 and the first quarter of 2015. Geospatial analysis by the International Energy Agency suggests that the most cost-effective solution for electrifying at least two-thirds of rural households by 2030 will be through DRE. Are you ready to take up the opportunities that this market presents? According to the IEA, 588 million people in Africa are currently without access to electricity. While Asia’s off-grid population has halved since 1990, in Africa this has increased by 211 million people since 1990 and is projected to continue rising for the next decade. These statistics put Africa’s DRE market opportunity at the very top of the energy access prospect ladder globally, second only after India. This article first appeared in ESI Africa Edition 4, 2018. You can read the full digita...