The most important developments in sub-Saharan Africa. Six days a week.
Burundi signed a 25-year, $1.4 billion partnership on 15 October handing electricity distribution in about half the country to Weza Power, part of the American-backed Anzana Electric Group. The company plans to build or upgrade 52,000 kilometres of lines and connect over 1.2 million homes and businesses, reaching about eight million people by 2030. Only an estimated 12–20% of Burundians have grid power; the state utility REGIDESO keeps transmission and distribution in the other half. Development lenders including the World Bank and the US International Development Finance Corporation are financing the deal, which its backers say adds nothing to public debt while putting half of one of Africa's least-electrified grids under private operation.
Angola and Namibia agreed in Luanda on 16 October to build the Baynes hydropower dam on the Cunene River under a public implementation model, with both governments financing it to keep tariffs affordable. The 860-megawatt plant, with four 215-megawatt units, is estimated to cost about $1.5 billion, excluding the transmission lines and roads each country will build separately. Studies began in the 1990s; a project unit and its financial advisers have now drafted a funding strategy, with support from the African Development Bank and the Southern African Power Pool. The dam would give Namibia, which depends on electricity imports, a large new source of supply shared with its neighbour. No financing package or construction date has been set.
Senegal will stop sugar imports again from November for eight to nine months, the Ministry of Industry and Commerce said on 17 October. Import permits will end once Compagnie Sucrière Sénégalaise (CSS) restarts its factory, and importers must hold a stock equal to one month of consumption. The government halted imports from late 2025 but reopened the market on 15 July to avert a shortage, as demand of about 25,000 tonnes a month far exceeds CSS output of some 140,000 tonnes a year. The ministry admits that imported sugar is cheaper, so the ban supports local cane processing at the expense of consumers and importers.
The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger agreed in Dakar on 17 October to set up joint working groups to prepare a cooperation agreement. Senegal's foreign minister, Cheikh Niang, who chairs the ECOWAS Council of Ministers, and Burkina Faso's foreign minister, Karamoko Jean-Marie Traoré, co-chaired the meeting and signed a joint communiqué. The three military-led states announced their exit from ECOWAS in January 2024; an earlier round of consultations took place in Bamako in May 2025. The talks open a formal channel to protect the trade, free movement and security cooperation that the split put at risk.
