The most important developments in sub-Saharan Africa. Six days a week.
Equatorial Guinea signed a $750 million framework contract in Malabo on 3 November with China Machinery Engineering Corporation (CMEC) and Beijing Weineng Investment to build and operate a 500-megawatt-peak (MWp) solar plant. The Chinese companies will finance the plant privately under a build-own-operate-transfer model and hand it to the state after a period still to be agreed; the site, schedule and power price have not been disclosed. The contract follows talks opened in September with Beijing Weineng on a smaller $150 million solar investment. The government says the plant would double national generating capacity, but its value depends on the price the state utility agrees to pay and on grid links able to absorb the output.
Ethiopia's government has revised the size of its economy up by 59.2% to $201.4 billion for 2024/25 after moving the base year for gross domestic product (GDP) from 2015/16 to 2024/25, Reuters reported on 5 November. Officials put output for 2025/26 at 31.86 trillion birr, or $210.7 billion. The new base captures activities the old one missed, such as digital financial services, ride-hailing and large solar installations, and follows the birr's steep fall after it was floated in 2024 under reforms tied to an International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme. A larger GDP lowers Ethiopia's debt and tax ratios as it completes its external debt restructuring, which the government expects to improve its credit ratings and cut borrowing costs.
Zambia's electricity minister, Peter Kapala, told parliament on 5 November that the power interconnector to Tanzania will be commissioned in the second quarter of 2029, a year later than the 2028 completion date given in 2025. Zambia is building about 613 km of high-voltage line from Pensulo through Mpika and Kasama to Nakonde, funded by $292 million in grants from the World Bank, the European Union and the United Kingdom; China's Sinotech Consortium won the first two sections. The 2,300 km Zambia–Tanzania–Kenya line, agreed in 2014, would join the Southern African and Eastern Africa power pools. The delay leaves Zambia, whose hydropower-dependent grid forced rationing in the 2023–24 drought, without up to 500 megawatts of trading capacity until 2029.
