Page 10 - AfrElec Week 46

AfrElec
NEWS IN BRIEF
AfrElec
Burkina Faso, Herrenknecht’s work on Cairo’s train tunnels, and a water project in Côte d’Ivoire with engineering firm Gauff and KfW bank.
Already there are 220 projects submitted to the “AfricaConnect” program, which launched in June as a way for other medium-sized European firms to invest in African projects.
“A lot has started, but I do not want to paint too positive a picture because we still have problems to solve,” said Merkel. “This includes the big question of security, especially in the Sahel region.”
Other challenges include data and digital access, Africa’s young population and jobs, and good-governance reforms. Merkel said Senegal and Ethiopia had joined Ghana, Tunisia and Côte d’Ivoire in working on the bilateral reforms outlined in the compact.
PERFORMANCE
Nigeria’s electricity
generators threaten
nationwide blackout
Nigerian electricity generation companies (GenCos) have threatened to shut down power generation across the country if the federal government does not intervene and call the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading Company (NBET) to order.
The GenCos through the Executive Secretary of their umbrella group, the Association of Power Generation Companies (APGC), Joy Ogaji, said in Abuja on Sunday that the federal government must prevail
on the NBET to rescind its insistence on its “unilateral and arbitral directive.”
n September, NBET had directed all thermal GENCos to comply with its directive to submit their respective board approvals or resolutions affirming commitment to pay 0.75 per cent administrative charge on all collated and submitted gas and transportation cost invoices to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)
for payment. NBET (Bulk Trader) is a public liability trading licensee established by the federal government as a creditworthy off-taker of generated electricity in support of private sector investment in the NESI.
The support, in the form of bearing the off- take market and default risks such as liquidity/ payment risks, was the incentive GENCOs required to invest in the transition electricity market.
DEBT
China accuses Zimbabwe of underestimating debt
China has accused Zimbabwe of making a “serious mistake” in massively understating how much financial aid it gave to the southern African nation in the first nine months of 2019.
At a 2020 budget presentation last week, Zimbabwean Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube said the country received a total of $194mn from donor countries in the year through September, of which just $3.6mn came from China.
The Chinese embassy in Harare put the figure at close to $137mn.
“This is a very serious mistake,” deputy ambassador Zhao Baogang said immediately after the figures were released. “The Zimbabwean officials must give a full and convincing explanation.”
The embassy issued a statement saying that according to its records the total financial support provided by China in the period was $133.2mn more than stated.
“The embassy has noted that in the statement [issued by Ncube] ... the figure for support provided by China to Zimbabwe is $3,631,500,” it said. “The actual [figure] is $136.8mn.”
The embassy said that its figure also did not include other forms of financial support, such as the cost of providing expert help and donations made by the mission itself to local
groups. It urged the Zimbabwean government to “make a comprehensive assessment of
the bilateral support figures and accurately reflect the actual situation when formulating the budget statement”. The embassy said it understood “bilateral development support” to include funding for cooperative projects, cash and the value of donated goods.
NUCLEAR
Rosatom to train 2k
personnel working in Dabaa
Nuclear Power Plant
Rosatom chief human resources officer Tatyana Terentyeva said her corporation plans to train about 2,000 people of operational
and maintenance personnel who will work in Al Dabaa Nuclear Power Plant starting early 2020.
“Training and upskilling employees is our top priority. During implementation of a project we do our best to help partner countries on each step related to nuclear education,” Terentyeva affirmed.
“Together with the Egyptian side, we are working on updating the country’s higher education system to ensure continuous training of young personnel for the developing nuclear industry in Egypt,” Terentyeva stated.
“Since 2014, there has also been a program of state scholarships under the government of the Russian Federation for Egyptian students wishing to master nuclear and engineering specialties in leading Russian universities. All 30 available places have been filled for class 2019/20. We are currently in the process of gauging how many available places we will have for class 2020/21,” Terentyeva added.
In 2014, Egypt and Russia announced their cooperation in the nuclear power field. On November 19, 2015, an agreement was finally signed between Cairo and Moscow that allows Russia to build a nuclear power plant in the Mediterranean city of Dabaa, with Russia extending a $25bn loan to Egypt to cover the cost of construction. The loan will cover 85 percent of the plant, with Egypt funding the remaining 15 percent.
According to the deal, Russian nuclear firm Rosatom will finance and construct four third-generation reactors, with a capacity of 1,200MW each, for a total of 4,800MW. The plant will be built on approximately 12,000 feddans and is expected to create over 50,000 job opportunities.
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Week 46 21•November•2019