Author Archive for: Engineering News

Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa will visit Mozambique and Zambia in a bid to save the country’s electricity import contracts that are being eyed by Eskom. Mnangagwa’s trips come at a time when South Africa, which is undergoing an electricity crisis, seeks to replace Zimbabwe as an importer of electricity from Mozambique and Zambia.

Africa deserves the highest priority attention at the upcoming twenty-seventh United Nations’ climate conference – the Conference of the Parties 27 (COP 27), to be held in Egypt, in November, panel members said in a discussion of the the African Development Bank’s (AfDB’s) African Economic Outlook 2022 report during an event hosted by the Atlantic Council on July 27.

A team from the AfDB, led by acting chief economist and VP Kevin Urama, is in Washington DC, in the US, to present the African Economic Outlook 2022 – a flagship publication of the bank – to international thought leaders and other targeted bodies.

Nedbank Group wants to almost double its lending to green energy projects in South Africa over the next two years as it seeks to cement its position as a market leader in funding renewable power projects. The bank’s lending toward the government’s Renewable Independent Power Producer Programme – aimed at boosting privately generated electricity in the nation – may jump to about R50-billion n the “short-to-medium term” from 29 billion rand, said CEO Mike Brown.

State-owned electricity utility Eskom has confirmed the award of contracts, with a combined value of R4.4-billion, to Hyosung Heavy Industries, of South Korea, and the Pinggao Group, of China, for battery energy storage system (BESS) projects that will be delivered across several sites by the end of June next year. The contracts cover the lion’s share of the individual projects included as part of Phase 1 of a two-phase roll-out being funded by the World Bank, the African Development Bank, the New Development Bank and the Clean Technology Fund.

South Africa’s Treasury is finalising a plan to take over a portion of Eskom Holdings’ R396-billion debt as part of a process to place the struggling electricity company on a sustainable footing, a top official said. The “broad brush strokes” of the debt transfer will be announced in the mid-term budget scheduled for October, Duncan Pieterse, head of assets and liability management at the National Treasury, said in an interview Wednesday. The authorities will seek cabinet and parliament’s approval for the plan after determining the amount, along with the conditions the utility will need to meet before and following such a transaction.