NEW YORK (Reuters) – More than $1 billion in debt and financing commitments from U.S. agencies and private investors is set to be announced on Wednesday for U.S. President Barack Obama’s signature Africa energy initiative, Power Africa, a top USAID official said.

The latest deals were finalized around a U.S.-Africa business forum on the sidelines of annual U.N. meetings in New York this week, USAID chief Gayle Smith said in an interview with Reuters.

Obama launched the initiative in 2013 with an initial investment of $7 billion, which aims to install 10,000 megawatts of new generation capacity, connect 20 million new customers, and improve electric reliability across the Sub-Saharan Africa.

The program hoped to attract private capital into energy projects in a region where regulatory hurdles and lack of risk instruments have often kept Western investors away.

Smith said the deals covered funding for regional infrastructure facilities, risk insurance and renewable power projects in Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa and Tanzania.

To date, Power Africa has mobilized more than $52 billion in additional commitments, of which $40 billion is from private companies, according to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which coordinates the program.

Power Africa is tracking more than 500 deals, and 40 transaction advisers working across Africa have identified 60,000 megawatts of potential deals, Smith said.

While the initiative has been criticized for its slow start, she said projects were starting to come online.

“We’re starting to see some of these projects go online and actually start the generation,” Smith said.

“We’re seeing an uptick in commitments, which is because confidence of the market is building and they’re seeing you can actually get these transactions done.”

Smith said the passing this year of the Electrify Africa Act, which unanimously passed the House of Representatives and Senate, and aims to build on Power Africa, sent a “a signal that this is something the United States will continue to do” even as the Obama administration winds down.

The legislation is largely symbolic and declares it the policy of the United States to encourage electrification in Africa and instructs the U.S. Treasury and other agencies to make electrification funding a priority.

(Reporting by Lesley Wroughton; Editing by Robert Birsel)

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By Libby George

ABUJA (Reuters) – Nigeria must consider selling stakes in joint ventures with oil majors and other assets as talks to borrow abroad have not succeeded yet and would in any case not generate enough funds to stimulate economic recovery, the leader of the Senate said.

Senate President Bukola Saraki, the third most powerful official in Africa’s biggest economy, also said the oil producer might struggle with recession for up to nine months or even longer unless it got serious about attracting investors.

The government said this month it had approved loans from China, the World Bank, Japan and the African Development Bank, but Saraki, whose relations with the president have cooled since last year, said such talks were still ongoing with no deals yet.

“There is a big hole now in the fiscal deficit because that funding is not coming through. So we’ve got to look for alternative ways to fund that,” Saraki said in a joint interview with the Financial Times on Monday when asked about the loans.

The government has said it plans to borrow as much as $10 billion, with half of that coming from foreign sources, including a planned $1 billion Eurobond issue, to fund a budget deficit of 2.2 trillion naira ($7.21 billion) and boost an economy hammered by low oil prices and hard currency shortages.

Saraki said that even if the loan talks succeeded, the amount raised would not be enough to plug the hole in public finances. “My take is that even if it does come through, it’s money too little, too late,” he said, referring to the loan talks.

He said Nigeria needed to sell stakes in oil and gas joint ventures, oil exploration contracts and refineries to raise funds. “In my view, I really can’t see any other pathway to recovery. We need investors, we need to raise capital.”

Such an asset sale would be necessary even if global crude prices recovered to $70 a barrel and Nigeria managed to restore oil production to 2 million barrels per day (bpd) with an end to militant attacks in the Niger Delta oil hub, Saraki said. Officials say the attacks have reduced output by 700,000 bpd.

Saraki said Nigeria could overcome recession in six to nine months if swift action was taken — a more downcast view than that of the government, which has forecast a quick recovery.

Central bank governor Godwin Emefiele was due to hold a news conference at around 1315 GMT after a meeting of the rate-setting Monetary Policy Committee. The finance minister said on Monday the central bank should lower interest rates so that the government can borrow domestically to boost the economy.

Economists polled by Reuters last week predicted that the central bank would keep its key interest rate at 14 percent and reiterate its focus on resuscitating growth.

The government has said it is considering asset sales, but has given no details.

“If we do things right, the confidence will come in,” Saraki said. “If we carry on waiting for government revenues to go up, if we don’t do anything seen as thinking out of the box” the recession could drag on longer.

Nigeria’s 2016 budget was the largest in the nation’s history, but the oil price drop and Delta attacks have left the government scrambling for funds.

Saraki is from the same ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) as President Muhammadu Buhari, who was elected in March 2015 on a promise to end graft and mismanagement in the West African nation.

But relations between the two have been strained since Saraki ran unopposed for the position of Senate president last year, mainly with the backing of the opposition. He was not the APC’s preferred candidate.

(1 = 305.0000 naira)

(Reporting by Libby George; Editing by Ulf Laessing and Philippa Fletcher)

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CAIRO (Reuters) – Egypt’s trade deficit has narrowed by $7 billion since January, Trade and Industry Minister Tarek Kabil said on Tuesday, adding that exports could rise by 10 percent – helping close the trade gap even more – if authorities devalued the local currency.

Pressure has been mounting on the central bank to devalue the currency as Egypt struggles to revive an economy hit by political unrest that has driven away tourists and foreign investors, two major sources of hard currency.

The central bank has been responding to the crisis by rationing dollars, giving priority to imports of essential goods and to exporters who need to import raw material for manufacturing.

Its policy of keeping the pound artificially strong has seen foreign currency reserves tumble to around $16.5 billion in August from $36 billion before a mass uprising in 2011.

“If and when a devaluation happens it will help trade on both sides, limiting imports and boosting exports … We expect it could boost exports by 10 percent,” Kabil told a Euromoney conference.

The central bank’s rationing of dollars has also led to a sharp fall in imports.

Kabil said Egypt’s imports had decreased by $6 billion since January while exports had increased by $1 billion, narrowing the trade gap by $7 billion.

For the January-June period the trade deficit came to about 173 billion Egyptian pounds ($19.5 billion), down 11.3 percent from the same period last year.

($1 = 8.8799 Egyptian pounds)

(Reporting by Eric Knecht; Writing by Asma Alsharif; Editing by Hugh Lawson)

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JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – South Africa’s rand strengthened early on Tuesday, consolidating gains that saw the unit rally to near two-week highs against the dollar as investors anticipating a rate hold by the Federal Reserve kept demand for the local currency alive.

* At 0640 GMT, the rand was 0.3 percent firmer at 13.9750per dollar, a touch off Monday’s session high of 13.9600. * Rand at firmest level since Sept. 8, breaching testingtechnical resistance at 14.10 for the first in seven sessions.Next landmark 13.8500. * Analysts expecting further gains with risk in favour aheadof U.S. Federal Reserve and Bank of Japan policy decisionsWednesday, local rates decision Thursday. * On the fixed-income market, the yield for the benchmarkgovernment issue due in 2026 down 1.5 basis point to 8.61percent. * Blue chip stocks futures index down 0.2 percent,indicating bourse opening lower at 0700 GMT.

(Reporting by Mfuneko Toyana; Editing by Tiisetso Motsoeneng)

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ALGIERS (Reuters) – OPEC Secretary-General Mohammed Barkindo said the meeting of OPEC members and non-OPEC producers in Algiers this month would be an informal meeting for consultations and not for decision making, Algerian state news agency APS said on Satuday.

Algeria’s energy minister has said there is a consensus among OPEC and non-OPEC producers about the need to stabilise the oil market to support prices.

“It will be an informal meeting, it is not a meeting for making decisions,” Barkindo said during a visit to Algiers, according to APS agency, referring to an energy conference between Sept. 26 and Sept. 28.

“We met in June, it is September now and a lot of things happened between the two dates,” he said.

His comments appeared to play down suggestions of a major decision at the Algiers meeting where Russia, Iran and other major oil producers were due to meet on the sidelines.

Saudi Arabia and Russia agreed this month to cooperate in oil markets, saying they could limit future output. That pushed up prices on the view in markets that the two top oil producers would be working together to tackle oversupply.

Several OPEC producers have called for an output freeze to rein in the glut, which arose as supplies from high-cost producers such as the United States soared. A price collapse in the last two years has hit the revenues of major producers.

OPEC’s de facto leader, Saudi Arabia, has also signalled willingness to cooperate as it faces such pressures.

But any deal between OPEC and non-OPEC producer Russia would be the first in 15 years. Moscow agreed to cut output in tandem with OPEC at the turn of the millennium, although Russia never followed through on that promise.

(Reporting by Lamine Chikhi; Writing by Patrick Markey; Editing by Louise Ireland)

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