TotalEnergies, together with its partners Hydra Storage Holding and Reatile Renewables, inaugurates Hydra project, the largest hybrid renewable energy project in Africa, located in South Africa’s Northern Cape province.

The project combines a 216 MW solar photovoltaic plant with a 500 MWh battery energy storage system, marking a significant contribution to the country’s Just Energy Transition program that aims to decarbonise the economy thanks to renewable energy sources.

The facility will supply 75 MW of dispatchable renewable electricity to the national grid continuously between 5:00 a.m. and 9:30 p.m., under a 20-year power purchase agreement signed with Eskom. This represents more than 400 GWh of electricity per year, equivalent to the consumption of approximately 200,000 South African households.

“We are delighted, together with our partners Reatile Renewables and Hydra Storage Holding, to bring the Hydra project into operation. It enables us to supply dispatchable renewable power to the South African grid, thereby strengthening the country’s energy security while decarbonising its electricity generation.

This project reinforces our renewable production capacity in South Africa, the continent’s largest power market in terms of electricity consumption”, said Magali Pailhé, Managing Director of TotalEnergies Southern Africa.

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Hydra project has been developed by a consortium composed of TotalEnergies (35%), Hydra Storage Holding (35%) and Reatile Renewables (30%). It is part of the South Africa’s Risk Mitigation Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme launched by the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy.

Bank of Industry (BOI) has secured a €60 million credit facility from the European Investment Bank to fund Nigeria’s cocoa and dairy value addition drive, with a focus on processing, ingredients and chocolate manufacturing.

Dr. Olasupo Olusi, Managing Director/CEO of BOI, disclosed this on Tuesday, during the Africa Cocoa Summit convened in Abuja by the Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment with the aim of transitioning Africa from exporting raw beans to local processing and branding.

Also known as the Cocoa Value Addition Summit with the theme: ‘From Bean to Brand,’ it was attended by leaders and stakeholders from Nigeria, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, and Cameroon who signed the Abuja Declaration to establish the Cocoa Value Addition Alliance (CVAA).

According to Olusi, the €60 million forms part of the €85 million EIB–BOI facility, backed by the European Union under the Global Gateway initiative, and designed specifically to strengthen these critical sectors in Nigeria.

“This agreement reinforces the Bank of Industry’s commitment to unlocking long-term, affordable finance for priority sectors that drive inclusive growth. Approximately 70% of the €85 million financing facility will be channeled to Nigeria’s cocoa and dairy sectors, which BOI considers among the industries with the greatest potential to create jobs and retain foreign exchange earnings.”

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“We are particularly focused on cocoa value chains, which provide livelihoods for thousands of Nigerians. Through this initiative, we aim to enhance productivity, value addition, and market linkages that will directly improve the incomes of farmers and processors,” he said.

The BOI MD said that the bank would prioritise lending to processors, cooperatives, and MSMEs that add value locally, rather than only to traders exporting raw beans, adding that the era of celebrating volume of raw exports must end, as Nigeria loses billions by shipping beans and importing finished chocolate. According to him, the goal is to create factories around cocoa communities so that value, jobs, and taxes remain in Nigeria.

However, Olusi noted that financing alone is not enough, and as such, BOI will complement the loans with technical assistance on compliance, climate standards, and access to the EU market. BOI, he said, will also support farmers and processors to meet the EU Deforestation Regulation and other international environmental and social standards.

Citing BOI’s track record, Olusi said the bank disbursed over ₦164 billion in 2025 to more than 3,500 agro and food-processing businesses. The support financed factories, mills, packhouses, and cold chains, and linked nearly 48,000 smallholder farmers into industrial value chains.

He said the new financing would target the entire ecosystem, from nurseries and farmer cooperatives to grinding plants, ingredient factories, packaging lines, and chocolate manufacturers.

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Speaking also at the summit, President Bola Tinubu called for a decisive shift from Africa’s long-standing dependence on exporting raw cocoa beans, urging producing countries to prioritise value addition and capture a larger share of the global chocolate industry’s wealth.

The President who was represented by the Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Abubakar Kyari, noted that although Africa accounts for about 70 per cent of global cocoa production, the continent retains only six cents of every dollar generated by the global chocolate industry.

He stressed that Nigeria was committed to processing more of its cocoa locally, expanding chocolate manufacturing, building indigenous brands and competing more effectively in international markets, rather than continuing to export raw cocoa beans.

According to the President, cocoa value addition remains a key component of the Renewed Hope Agenda and the country’s broader industrialisation strategy, and disclosed that investors are developing a 70,000-tonne cocoa processing facility in Shagamu, Ogun State, while Nigeria’s cocoa grinding capacity has already surpassed 120,000 tonnes annually.

Earlier, the Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Dr. Jumoke Oduwole, said the summit aligns with the Federal Government’s ambition of building a one-trillion-dollar economy by 2030.

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She observed that despite Nigeria’s significant contribution to global cocoa production, the country continues to earn only a small fraction of the value created across the cocoa value chain.

According to Oduwole, the Federal Government is promoting greater value addition through manufacturing incentives, investment promotion and stronger collaboration among relevant institutions.

She added that the government would also deepen market access by leveraging existing trade partnerships and opportunities under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), while encouraging investors to take advantage of regional and global value chains to unlock the sector’s full economic potential.

Also speaking, the Minister of State for Industry, Senator John Owan Enoh, described the summit as another milestone in implementing Nigeria’s Industrial Policy, and announced plans for the establishment of the Cocoa Value Addition Alliance, bringing together Nigeria, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire and Cameroon, countries that collectively account for about 75 percent of global cocoa production.

According to Enoh, the alliance is designed to strengthen regional cooperation, promote local processing, and enable producing countries to capture greater value from the global cocoa market.

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“We are not here to disrupt existing partnerships but to expand them,” he said.

Enoh urged African cocoa-producing nations to move beyond exporting raw beans and instead focus on developing branded cocoa products capable of competing successfully in global markets.

On his part, the Chief Executive of the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD), Dr. Ransford Abbey, urged African cocoa-producing countries to deepen domestic processing.

“I am here to support the effort and commit to a joint effort towards increasing value for our hardworking cocoa farmers and our respective economies,” Abbey said.

He said Africa produced about 75 per cent of the world’s cocoa but earned less than 10 per cent of the global chocolate industry’s wealth.

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“This system cannot continue. We must shift the paradigm from exporting raw poverty to creating refined wealth right here on the African continent,” he said, adding that stronger regional collaboration, investment and technology transfer will help African countries capture greater value from the global cocoa economy.

The Head of Cooperation of the European Union Delegation to Nigeria and ECOWAS, Mr. Massimo De Luca, reiterated the importance of value addition in the cocoa value chain. While expressing the support of the EU, he called on governments of the various countries to ensure they play their part in ensuring that proper framework necessary for the success of the initiative was established and clarified.

National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), has explained why kidnappers and terrorists are not always traceable despite the country’s expanding digital identity infrastructure.

NIMC explanation pointed to a simple but significant gap in the system.

Abisoye Coker-Odusote, director-general of the agency said that: “A lot of the time, you find out the kidnappers use the phones of the people they have abducted, which means how do you trace them because they are not using their own phones?” she said.

Coker-Odusote spoke during an appearance on Channels Television, where she was asked to explain why criminals remain difficult to trace despite the mandatory NIN-SIM linkage policy.

She said criminals frequently frustrate investigations by using mobile phones belonging to their victims, instead of their own registered lines.

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“We already know the NIN is the foundational identity for the security architecture, but a lot of the time, you find out the kidnappers use the phones of the people they have abducted. Which means, how do you trace them because they are not using their own phones?” she said.

She also suggested that some criminal elements involved in kidnapping operations may not even be captured in Nigeria’s identity database.

“There is a theory that it may be possible that these kidnappers are not Nigerians and are brought into the country 48 or 72 hours before a kidnapping takes place specifically for that purpose. I’m not insinuating anything, but if that were the case, they naturally would not be captured in our database,” she added.

The comments have revived questions about whether expectations placed on the NIN-SIM linkage have exceeded what the system was designed to deliver.

The NIN-SIM linkage exercise was introduced by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) in collaboration with NIMC to strengthen identity management, eliminate anonymous SIM ownership and support national security.

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Over the years, the exercise resulted in millions of subscribers linking their SIM cards with their National Identification Numbers, while telecom operators also deactivated millions of lines that failed to comply with regulatory directives.

Earlier, the NCC maintained that the policy was aimed at improving the integrity of Nigeria’s SIM registration database, strengthening identity verification and supporting security agencies in criminal investigations.

The regulator also described the exercise as an important component of the country’s digital economy and national security framework.

Telecommunications operators have consistently maintained that while they play a critical role in implementing the NIN-SIM linkage policy, they are not responsible for tracking criminals.

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