IN THE CONVERSA11ON AROUND THE DEVELOPMENT OF AFRICAN GAS, the continent’s needs and capacity to power its economies with the resource is often at the bottom of the agenda. Angola is kickstarting a Liquefied Natural Gas project without much of a say about its chronicelectricity shortage. Equatorial Guinea is stuck in pre-industrial darknessand yet it is about to import Nigerian gas to make up for a second LNGscheme.
Uganda and Kenya could do with an east African power pool, fuelled by gas from Tanzania and perhaps, Sudan. Are these pipe dreams? They don’t look so anymore. From 2007, Nigerian gas-militant insurgency willing-is set to flow to Accra, Cotonou and Lome, to energise those dormant economies. Mozambique has been feeding South Africa with gas and the latter’s power utility (Eskom)’s plans for a first gas fuelled power plant is banking on Namibia’s gas resource.
North of the Sahel, half of Egyptian gas production is committed to domestic use, which is good, even though some western investors find it problematic. Algeria also powers its economy with its gas and has a robust internal utilization scheme that is unmatched in the resource-rich countries to the south.’ Still the major news is about export. Huge projects abound from Algeria (Gassi Touli) to Nigeria (OK LNG). This edition is meant to provide you a document of these activities for reference. We wish all our readers a happy new year.
Cairo had a very old-fashioned literary culture, with cliques and salons. The City’s most endearing characteristic was that all this socializing was accomplished through word-of-mouth. Raymond made a call and found out thata certain time Mahfouz would be in a certain hotel in a certain district near the Nile.
We arrived at the place at the same as Nahguib Mahfouz, who was being guided, a burly man on each side of him, steering him to an upstairs lounge, for he is somewhat enfeedled, and almost blind, and nearly deaf; he is sallow and diabetic, yet looked much healthier than the last time I had, supine in the intensive care unit of the Military Hospital
