THE PIVOT TO AFRICA 🌍 THREAD
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Junta-led Burkina Faso deepens Russia ties with new gold mining deal
Burkina Faso’s military-led government has granted an industrial mining license to Russian company Nordgold for a new gold project
Junta-led Burkina Faso deepens Russia ties with new gold mining deal
Adekunle AgbetiloyeBurkina Faso’s military-led government has granted an industrial mining license to Russian company Nordgold for a new gold project.
The move comes as the West African nation seeks to capitalize on record-high gold prices to strengthen an economy battered by ongoing insecurity, according to Reuters.
Last year, Burkina Faso reaffirmed its commitment to deepening ties with Russia, emphasizing that the partnership extends beyond military cooperation.
DON'T MISS THIS: Russia affirms that its relationship with Africa is nowhere close to falling apart
This latest development shows the country's growing economic alignment with Moscow, as the junta that seized power in 2022 pivots away from traditional Western allies.
Projected gold output and state revenue gains
The Niou gold deposit, located in Kourweogo province in Burkina Faso’s Plateau-Central region, spans 52.8 square kilometres (20.4 square miles) within the exploration license area previously held by Jilbey Burkina, now owned by Nordgold.
According to the Council of Ministers, the Niou project is expected to produce around 20.22 metric tons of gold over its eight-year lifespan.
DON'T MISS THIS: Africa denied more support as Russia detaches itself from the idea of sending aid
Under Burkina Faso’s new mining regulations, Jilbey Burkina will retain an 85% ownership stake in the project, while the Burkinabe government will hold the remaining 15% without any financial contribution.
The project is expected to contribute 51.5 billion CFA francs ($89 million) to Burkina Faso’s state budget over its lifespan, along with an additional 7.06 billion CFA francs to the country’s mineral wealth fund, according to the council of ministers.
Gold prices have surged by more than 25% this year, driven by geopolitical tensions and trade policies under U.S. President Donald Trump.
Burkina Faso, which has been battling Islamist insurgents since 2015, remains a major gold producer. According to the mining-focused NGO Swissaid, the country produced over 57 tons of gold in 2023.
How China is filling a weapons supply gap in Africa left by France and Russia
Beijing is expanding its military footprint in the region with rapid deliveries of affordable equipment.
www.scmp.com
Trump to end backing for African Development Bank fund
The Trump administration plans to slash funding for the bank’s main development fund as part of its sweeping cuts to foreign aid.
www.semafor.com
Congo and Rwanda submit draft peace proposal, Trump adviser says
May 5, 202511:40 AM EDTUpdated 2 days ago
U.S. President Donald Trump's Senior Advisor for Africa Massad Boulos addresses a press conference at the U.S. Embassy in Kigali
U.S. President Donald Trump's Senior Advisor for Africa Massad Boulos addresses a press conference at the U.S. Embassy in Kigali, Rwanda April 8, 2025. REUTERS/Jean Bizimana/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
KINSHASA, May 5 (Reuters) - Congo and Rwanda have submitted a draft peace proposal as part of a process meant to end fighting in eastern Congo and attract billions of dollars of Western investment, U.S. President Donald Trump's senior adviser for Africa said on Monday.
It is the latest step in an ambitious bid by the Trump administration to end a decades-long conflict in a region rich in minerals including tantalum, gold, cobalt, copper and lithium.
The two countries' foreign ministers agreed last month, at a ceremony in Washington alongside U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, to submit the draft proposal by May 2.
But neither Kinshasa nor Kigali has publicly confirmed doing so, and Rwandan Foreign Minister Olivier Nduhungirehe said on Saturday on X that the two sides' contributions "have not yet been consolidated."
Massad Boulos, who is Trump's senior adviser for Africa and the Middle East, said on X on Monday that he welcomed "the draft text on a peace proposal received from both DRC and Rwanda," describing it as "an important step" towards peace.
Washington wants to move quickly. In an interview with Reuters last week, Boulos said the plan was for Rubio to meet in mid-May in Washington with his Rwandan and Congolese counterparts in an effort to agree on a final draft peace accord.
Before that accord can be signed, Boulos said, Rwanda and Congo must finalise bilateral economic agreements with Washington that will see U.S. and Western companies invest billions of dollars in Congolese mines and infrastructure projects to support mining in both countries, including the processing of minerals in Rwanda.
The hope is that all three agreements can be signed in about two months, and on the same day, at a ceremony attended by Trump, Boulos said.
FIGHTING CONTINUES
The diplomacy comes amid an advance by Rwandan-backed M23 rebels in eastern Congo that has killed thousands and displaced hundreds of thousands more.
The United Nations and Western governments say Rwanda has provided arms and troops to M23. Rwanda denies backing M23 and says its military has acted in self-defence against Congo's army and a militia founded by perpetrators of the 1994 genocide.
Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi's government is engaged in separate talks with M23 facilitated by Qatar.
Last month Congo and the rebels agreed to work towards peace, but sources in the two delegations have expressed frustration with the pace of negotiations.
M23 is not involved in the talks in Washington, though Lawrence Kanyuka, spokesperson for the rebel alliance that includes M23, told Reuters last week that "we encourage any peace initiative."
Meanwhile, fighting in eastern Congo continues. Mak Hazukay, a spokesperson for Congo's army, on Saturday accused M23 of seizing the town of Lunyasenge on Lake Edward and said Congo "reserves the right to retaliate".
Reporting by Congo newsroom, Ange Adihe Kasongo in Kinshasa and Sonia Rolley in Paris Writing by Robbie Corey-Boulet; Editing by Ros Russell
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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Nigeria has more people without electricity than any other country
Fixing that will be fiendishly difficult
Nigeria has more people without electricity than any other country
Summarize
Fixing that will be fiendishly difficult
May 8th 2025
A welder sources power from fuel-powered generator in Nigeria
Noisy but necessaryPhotograph: Getty Images
Before George Etomi went to university in 1972, his home in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital, had near-constant power. When he returned from studying abroad a few years later, power cuts had become frequent. By 1984, Mr Etomi needed a fuel-powered generator to open his law firm. Today roaring generators provide the soundtrack to urban Nigerian life. They produce more than twice as much power as Nigerians get from the grid.
Decades of underinvestment in Nigeria’s power supply mean it has not kept pace with the country’s growth. More than 90m of its 230m people live without access to electricity, the highest number in any country. Deep dysfunction in the sector and a gaping lack of funds mean things are unlikely to improve soon.
Plenty of poor countries struggle with intermittent power. Yet Nigerians are uniquely deprived. Just under half the country has never been connected to the national grid, which has never carried more than 6 gigawatts (GW). South Africa, which has suffered blackouts and load-shedding, manages 48GW of grid power for its 63m people. Even Bangladesh, poorer than Nigeria until recently and home to 170m people in an area a sixth of Nigeria’s size, generates around 16GW. In Nigeria, when production reached a high of more than 5GW one day in March, the surge made the grid collapse. When the power comes back, “it’s as if a goal has been scored in football,” says Mr Etomi.
The lack of grid power is a massive drag on the economy and Nigerians’ quality of life. Frequent power cuts in hospitals cost lives. Air-conditioning is a luxury. Tech entrepreneurs are forced to build their own power plants to run their data centres. More than half the country’s manufacturers no longer even bother to try to connect to the grid, according to the power minister. In 2023 Nigerians spent 16.5trn naira ($10.3bn) on generating off-grid power, equivalent to 60% of the entire government budget for the following year. That brings total supply to some 20GW, a quarter of the country’s estimated power needs.
Decades of underinvestment have kiboshed the system in so many different places that it is fiendishly hard to fix. The grid, still run by the government, is dilapidated and prone to collapse. That limits the amount of power it will agree to buy from generator companies. These, in turn, have problems beyond the lack of demand from the grid. Gas plants, which produce most grid power, are badly maintained and often fail to pay their suppliers. What’s more, gas prices are capped, which means it can be cheaper for suppliers to burn off gas rather than ship it to plants that may pay them very little or nothing. On average, plants run at less than half their capacity.
Distribution companies, 60% of which are privatised, struggle to cover their costs as people often fail to settle their bills. The government is the worst offender. Last year the distribution company in Abuja, the capital, threatened to disconnect the presidential villa and 86 government agencies over 47.2bn naira ($29m) of unpaid bills. When one company in Lagos asked the air force to pay for a nine-year backlog, soldiers stormed its headquarters and beat up the staff.
Powering up
Government initiatives have not got off the ground. A partnership between Nigeria, Germany and Siemens, a German firm, is supposed to add 12GW to the grid’s ability to handle throughput. But the project has completed only a pilot phase since it was signed in 2019. Privatisation, which helped improve telecoms and banking in the 1990s, has failed to revamp the power sector. More than half the distribution companies that were privatised in 2011 have gone bust, dampening investor appetite. “Why would anyone put a dime in the sector?” asks Noelle Okwedy, an energy analyst.
It is politically hard to persuade more people to pay for electricity, given the service’s shoddy quality, but the government has been trying. Still, even after prices quadrupled for the richest households last year, today payments cover only around 65% of the cost of providing power.
Most progress is being made off the grid. A consortium involving the World Bank and the African Development Bank wants to spend up to $55bn to provide electricity to 300m Africans, including many Nigerians, by the decade’s end. Concessional financing has helped build off-grid solar projects, such as a 12MW solar hybrid plant powering a university that was recently completed in the northern city of Maiduguri. In March, a group of organisations including Nigeria’s sovereign-wealth fund launched a $500m fund for bigger renewable-energy projects.
Such projects alone will not cover Nigeria’s massive electricity shortfall, so fixing the grid is still vital. Yet successful off-grid options may make it harder. As reliable solar alternatives or private power plants become more widespread, as in South Africa and Pakistan, the cost of maintaining and upgrading the grid will be shouldered by fewer people. As costs go up and service fails to improve or deteriorates, opting out entirely becomes ever more attractive. The government’s response looks muddled: it wants to integrate more solar power into the grid, but is also mulling banning the import of solar panels.
If the electricity problem is not fixed, the economy will also continue to operate below capacity. Nigeria cannot be Africa’s economic powerhouse until it can power its houses. ■
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U.A.E. Is Pouring Money Into Africa, Seeking Resources and Power
As the United States and other economic powers reduce their investment, aid and presence in Africa, the United Arab Emirates is wielding its wealth.
May 17, 2025Updated 2:21 p.m. ET
A long line of copper plates on wagons.
Last year, the Emirati International Holding Company acquired a 51 percent stake in Zambia’s Mopani Copper Mines for over $1 billion.Zinyange Auntony/Bloomberg
Patricia Cohen
By Patricia Cohen
Patricia Cohen, global economics correspondent, reported from Nairobi, Kenya; Lusaka, Zambia; and London.
Look at the chief economic and strategic spots across Africa — ports for key trade corridors, mines that produce critical minerals, large renewable energy projects — and you will find the United Arab Emirates.
As the United States and, to a lesser extent, China reduce their investment, aid and presence on the African continent, the Emirates is using its enormous wealth and influence to fill the void.
Persian Gulf investments in Africa, primarily by the Emirates, have exploded in recent years. Since 2019, $110 billion worth of deals — mostly by firms tightly aligned with the ruling powers — have been announced, dwarfing amounts pledged by any other country.
“The U.A.E. is turning into a dominant foreign player” in much of Africa, said Anna Jacobs, a nonresident fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington.
Its efforts to become a world leader, particularly in finance and technology, are likely to be bolstered under President Trump, Ms. Jacobs said. The president, seeking to draw Emirati money to the United States, paved the way this week for the sale of American advanced artificial intelligence chips to the Emirates.
The Emirates’ wide-ranging investments and efforts to become a world leader in A.I. are part of an ambitious plan to increase the country’s influence, particularly over global supply chains.
People standing in a dark room at the World Future Energy Summit. The walls and ceiling are covered in screens.
A pavilion at this year’s World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi. The Emirates is pushing into artificial intelligence and global investments as part of a broader bid to boost its influence over world supply chains.Ali Haider/EPA, via Shutterstock
Like other oil-producing nations in the Persian Gulf, the Emirates is looking to diversify its economy away from fossil fuels, and it sees Africa as an essential part of the plan. The continent has vast mineral resources, a growing population, agricultural potential and a strategically important location bordering the Red and Mediterranean Seas as well as the Indian and Atlantic Oceans.
Powerhouse Emirati corporations based in Dubai and Abu Dhabi with political connections are in dozens of countries across Africa.
AMEA Power is already building or operating clean energy plants in Burkina Faso, Djibouti, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Morocco, South Africa, Togo, Tunisia and Uganda and has plans to expand. Abu Dhabi National Energy Company has projects in Morocco, Senegal and South Africa and is participating in a project to invest $10 billion in renewable energy in sub-Saharan Africa.
DP World, the gargantuan government-backed ports and logistics operator, has invested billions of dollars in ports and economic free zones from Algeria to Zambia, including in the Berbera port city in the breakaway republic of Somaliland, where the Emirates also has a military base. Last summer it announced that it would spend another $3 billion on African ports over the next three to five years.
Last year, the Emirati International Holding Company invested more than $1 billion for a 51 percent share in the Mopani Copper Mines in Zambia.
Spending in Egypt has also soared. Last year, the Emirates agreed to invest $35 billion to develop a new city and tourism destination on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast.
Emirati investment in Africa has ramped up as China’s has tapered off. Once the biggest foreign investor on the continent through its Belt and Road Initiative, China still has a large presence, but Beijing has pulled back in recent years after a series of debt crises in Africa and economic problems at home.
The Bosaso Port in Somalia. Cranes are moving packages off ships.
The Emirati logistics company DP World has invested billions of dollars in ports and economic free zones, including in the Berbera port city in the breakaway republic of Somaliland.Daniel Irungu/EPA, via Shutterstock
In 2022 and 2023, the Emirates announced a total of $97 billion in investments in Africa — three times China’s total, according to fDi Markets, a database of foreign investments. U.S. investment in 2023 was about $10 billion.
Experts said that even though not all of these pledges would pan out, they showed an overall commitment to doing business on the continent. The Emirates is also looking to build trade and has signed bilateral economic partnership pacts with three African nations, including Kenya, since the year’s start.
The Emirates has focused its investments on “key future-focused sectors such as renewable energy, food security, digital transformation, infrastructure, and logistics over the past five years,” said a spokesperson for the Emirati ministry of foreign affairs. In addition, the country’s total foreign assistance in Africa exceeded $1 billion in 2023-24, according to a government spokesperson on trade.
Meanwhile, Mr. Trump has fast-tracked America’s exit from Africa, ending billions of dollars in funding, dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development and ending all contributions to the African Development Bank. The State Department’s reorganization plan also calls for the elimination of most operations in the region.
Britain has also tightened its flow of money into the continent in recent years as it has increased aid to Ukraine and increased its own military spending.
The Trump administration’s actions are extreme, said Ricardo Soares de Oliveira, a co-director of a program on African governance at Oxford University, but they reflect a larger global trend away from development aid and liberal values.
The world is transitioning to an era in which the focus on democracy and free markets is becoming less significant, Mr. Soares de Oliveira said. “A more business-focused approach is going to be the shared norm,” he added.
That isn’t to say the Emirates does not have substantial strategic and political interests in Africa.
What’s different is that it has delegated statecraft to private interests and businesses, almost all of which have ties in some way to the government or ruling families, said Andreas Krieg, a fellow at the Institute of Middle Eastern Studies at King’s College London. These enterprises are expected to generate both economic and strategic returns.
President Trump and the prime minister of Saudi Arabia seated and leaning in to talk to each other.
President Trump visited the gulf region this week to meet with business leaders and government officials, including Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia.Doug Mills/The New York Times
“The U.A.E. has revolutionized statecraft for a small country,” Mr. Krieg said. It has fewer than one million citizens, is smaller than the state of Indiana and has a relatively tiny military. Yet, he said, “it’s very much playing the game of a middle power.”
Some of the Emirates’ political choices have stirred concerns. Sudan’s government has accused the Emirates of fueling genocide with its backing of the Rapid Support Forces, the paramilitary group engaged in a civil war that has killed 150,000 and displaced 14 million people. Recently, Sudan’s military cut diplomatic ties with the Emirates, which has said it has provided only humanitarian assistance.
The Emirates has also been accused of funneling money to the Russian mercenary group Wagner in both Sudan and Libya.
“There is no such thing as clean or dirty money in the U.A.E.,” Mr. Krieg said.
Ken Opalo, an associate professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, said the Emirates aimed to be the world’s gateway to Africa for investment and trade, whether legal or smuggled. The gold trade alone that passes mostly through Dubai is worth $30 billion, he said.
“The U.A.E. has developed a robust regulatory framework that ensures that the trade in gold is conducted with the maximum security, integrity and transparency,” an Emirati official said.
As Mr. Trump’s visit to the gulf region this week illustrates, Washington considers the Emirates a reliable ally in the region and in Africa. The two countries have maintained close security ties.
But Washington may underestimate just how valuable the commercial partnership between the Emirates and China is. Ambitious investments in green energy in Africa rely on Chinese technology, minerals and goods.
“The U.A.E. ultimately militarily relies on the U.S., but it also wants to position itself as the Switzerland of the gulf where everyone is welcome,” Mr. Opalo said. “They want to be a renewables hub, and it’s hard to play that game without engaging China.”
The Nigerian companies leading historic shift in oil wealth ownership
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Local producers are stepping in to fill the gap vacated by foreign majors retreating from Africa’s largest producer
© Frédéric Soltan/Corbis via Getty Images
Oil executive Osayande Igiehon grew up in an area of Nigeria intersected with pipelines — part of the extensive infrastructure established by foreign energy companies to tap his country’s rich reserves.
Igiehon believes this first-hand knowledge of the country gives Heirs Energies, the company he leads, a distinct advantage as it steps in to fill the gap left by the majors pulling back from Africa’s largest oil producer.
Heirs is among the domestic companies at the forefront of a historic shift in ownership of Nigeria’s oil wealth, as the international groups retreat and ambitious local companies step up to replace them.
“The previous operators lost their social licence to operate,” the Heirs chief executive said, referring to the strained relationship between large oil companies and the local populations where they operated.
“We’re able to move around unfettered because we have a robust relationship with the communities,” added Igiehon, who previously worked for Shell. “This is an indication of what indigenous companies are able to do.”
Oil workers on the Agbami floating production, storage and offloading vessel (FPSO), in the Niger Delta, Nigeria
Nigeria’s companies are aiming to move up from providing ancillary services to operating their own oilfields © George Osodi/Bloomberg
The withdrawal of the majors that once dominated Nigeria’s onshore oil industry is a result of dwindling returns, long-standing concerns about environmental damage and oil theft, as well as tensions with communities.
The emergence of a cohort of locally led companies that have invested large sums to buy up the same assets constitutes a pivotal moment for Nigeria and the domestic companies seeking to move up the value chain from providing ancillary services to operating their own oilfields.
“This is the most significant of the divestment cycles that has happened in Nigeria,” said Ufoma Immanuel, managing director of Chappal Energies, another domestic champion.
“The bulk of Nigeria’s production will sit with local players. Every other divestment cycle hasn’t moved the needle in that respect, but this one will in terms of scale, relevance and significance.”
In the past year, London and Lagos-listed Seplat acquired ExxonMobil’s assets in Nigeria, Chappal Energies bought the local operation of Norway’s state-owned Equinor for $1.2bn, including its share in one of Nigeria’s largest deep water fields, and Italy’s Eni sold its Nigerian arm to Oando, a company listed in Lagos and Johannesburg, in a deal worth $783mn.
Shell also sold its onshore business in a $1.3bn deal. The Anglo-Dutch company, which is synonymous with Nigeria’s oil industry and drilled the country’s first successful well in 1956, is not leaving entirely, but is switching focus to offshore fields in the Gulf of Guinea with the potential for greater returns and fewer security issues.
The Nigerian owners operate differently, eschewing the large corporate structures of their well-funded predecessors and developing assets that had often been neglected.
Wale Tinubu, chief executive of Oando, said his company has kept costs down by hiring local suppliers and staff, a process that also included letting go of 75 expatriate workers inherited from Eni.
“We have speed, agility and very good knowledge of our local environment,” said Tinubu, a nephew of President Bola Tinubu. “This will enable us to deliver projects at much cheaper costs.”
Shell worker speaks on a radio
A Shell worker at the perimeter security fence in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. Security remains a challenge for oil companies, as pipeline theft continues to disrupt operations © George Osodi/Bloomberg
Another savings comes from the use of brownfield sites that do not always require the full exploration costs associated with new fields.
Igiehon said Heirs, which in 2021 paid $533mn for 45 per cent of an onshore oilfield jointly owned by Shell, Total and Eni, had doubled oil output to 55,000 barrels a day in the time since it took over the assets.
“We’ve not drilled any new wells to double production,” he explained, but had instead “reactivated existing wells and infrastructure [that had] been neglected for quite some time”.
The key advantage for locally led companies was in better managing the tensions that have plagued oil drilling in Nigeria for almost seven decades.
Host communities have often felt their concerns over environmental degradation were not taken seriously by foreign majors or the Nigerian government. Clean-up operations of decades-old oil spills have floundered.
“Indigenous companies are able to build a more respectful and more inclusive relationship and ecosystem in working with communities,” Igiehon said.
“This has a knock-on effect on security,” he added, “because if you have a strong alignment with the community, it increases the security of the operating environment. Those twin risks are tied together.”
Security remains a challenge, as pipeline theft continues to disrupt operations. International companies were frustrated by a lack of progress from national government in stemming the problem.
The current administration has sought to address the issue, including by renewing the contract of a former militant to protect installations in the oil-producing Niger Delta. Nigeria’s production has risen steadily over the past year, and was at 1.4mn b/d in March, according to Opec data.
“We see the prevention of oil theft as critical and see security as our main challenge,” said Oando’s Tinubu.
The new owners also need to raise capital to operate the assets. African energy groups have complained about their inability to secure investment for capital-intensive projects, with foreign financiers often wary of injecting finance into the continent. Renaissance Africa Energy faced questions from Nigeria’s industry regulator about whether it could fund the Shell deal before it was approved.
Critics have also questioned how much of Nigeria’s oil wealth is available to extract, given the majors exited after peak production. Oando’s Tinubu insisted there was “substantial life” in his company’s assets, with about 1bn barrels of oil yet to be tapped.
Igiehon of Heirs also thought US President Donald Trump’s love for fossil fuels provided scope for fresh investment in Nigeria’s oil industry.
“Companies that talked about making a significant shift [away] from hydrocarbons . . . are beating a retreat,” he said. “The position of the US administration is a marked change in posture towards hydrocarbons and that’s rippling through the whole ecosystem.”