The most important developments in sub-Saharan Africa. Six days a week.
Gabon raised pump prices on 1 November, lifting petrol from 595 to 735 CFA francs (about $1.30) a litre and diesel from 575 to 705, rises of about 23%. The national petroleum price commission kept kerosene and household butane unchanged to shield poorer households. The Council of Ministers said on 8 October that fuel price support cost about 30 billion CFA francs (about $53 million) in September alone, against seven to nine billion a month before the war in Ukraine; the revised 2026 budget set aside 55.3 billion for the whole year. The rise cuts a cost that exceeded half the annual allocation in one month, but passes higher costs to transport operators and households.
The African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) and the African Petroleum Producers' Organization (APPO) formally established the Africa Energy Bank at its first general meeting in Abuja on 31 October. The meeting appointed Helmy Ghazi, a former deputy chief executive of HSBC Bank Egypt, as its first president and named a board; the bank has authorised capital of $5 billion. Afreximbank and APPO signed the bank's charter in 2024, and launch dates set for that year slipped repeatedly. The bank will lend for oil and gas exploration, production, refining and transport as well as for power, a gap left as traditional lenders retreat from fossil fuel projects. Watch how much capital members pay in and which projects it finances first.
Rwanda Development Board, the bus operator Ecofleet Solutions and Chery Holding Rwanda signed an agreement on 30 October under which Ecofleet will buy 300 electric buses, about 200 of them assembled in Rwanda. The order is almost nine times the 34 electric buses the transport agency put out to tender in August; the first 100 are due by March 2027, the rest by December 2027, and 100 will be built in China. The cabinet approved Chery's plan for a vehicle assembly plant in Rwanda on 18 September. Local assembly would give Kigali's public transport a domestic source of buses and industrial jobs, but its scale depends on the investment, capacity and site, which the partners have not disclosed.
Ethiopian Electric Utility opened 11 fast-charging stations for electric vehicles on 31 October in six cities: five in Addis Ababa and the rest in Bishoftu, Mojo, Adama, Batu and Hawassa. Together they can charge 96 vehicles at once, and the utility plans to multiply its stations fivefold within a year, adding Dire Dawa, Mekelle, Bahir Dar and other cities. Ethiopia banned imports of petrol and diesel cars in January 2024, and its e-mobility strategy targets more than 2,200 charging centres by 2030. Stations along the road east to Adama and south to Hawassa make intercity travel by electric car more practical, easing one of the main limits on a fleet the import ban is pushing to grow.
