About

Number of years practice: 40

Principal practice areas: Energy, infrastructure and public-private partnerships, project finance and development

Languages spoken: English

What is the geographical focus of your practice in Africa?

North and Francophone Africa, West Africa, East Africa, Central Africa and South Africa.

Please describe the most important matters you have worked on in the African market in the last two years, including your role and the significance of the matter (if any) to the development of business and law.

Key matters that I have handled within the last two years include acting as the lead counsel for the government of Mozambique on LNG matters, including all aspects of the development and financing of the extraction, transportation, liquefaction, sale and shipping of approximately 35 million tons per annum of liquefied natural gas from multiple gas fields, some of which straddle the boundaries of multiple blocks. The capital expenses associated with the development of
these projects is expected to total tens of billions of US dollars.

Lead project counsel to the Government of Egypt through the Egyptian Electricity Holding Company in connection with the development of the 2,640 MW Ayoun Moussa coal generating facility and the 2,250 MW Dairut combined cycle gas generating facility.

I have also advised the government of Nigeria on the development of the framework for the implementation of the Nigerian Gas Flaring Commercialization Program.

What differentiates your practice from that of other private practice lawyers?

I have 40 years of experience advising clients. For a large portion of those 40 years, I have advised governments, parastatals and development finance institutions, as well as investors, in complex, large-scale transactions on the continent. I am also an internationally recognised author and speaker on the principles of energy and infrastructure transactions and finance, renewables and extractive industries. I co-authored the World Bank’s ground-breaking treatise on resource-financed infrastructure. I have consistently been ranked for Africa-wide projects and energy law since 2007 and am recognised as a leading energy and infrastructure lawyer for sub-Saharan Africa.

Why has Africa been a particularly strong focus for you?

For the past 30 years, I have worked on landmark projects for the World Bank and its client governments, often on the largest ground-breaking projects in a country. These are projects that make a difference in people’s lives, in most cases by dramatically increasing power supply and reducing debilitating blackouts. They include the Kainji Hydropower Project in Nigeria, the Songo Songo gas-to-Electricity project in Tanzania, the Bumbuna Hydropower Project in Sierra Leone and the Bujagali Hydroelectric Project in Uganda. Bujagali, with capital costs of approximately US$1bn, was awarded Project Finance magazine’s “African Power Deal of the Year” and serves as the largest private sector investment in East Africa. Since then, my practice has focused largely on energy and infrastructure project development, domestic and international contract and finance matters, and the purchase and sale of energy-related assets in Africa and other emerging markets.

What changes have you seen in the appetite for Africa-based ventures and investments over the last five years?

The appetite for Africa-based ventures and investments in the electricity sector, in particular, over the last several years has
transitioned from American and European firms to Middle Eastern and Asian firms, and from affiliates of integrated electric utilities
to private equity funds with a dramatically different risk and investment appetite. In oil and gas and LNG, there has been a migration through farm outs from smaller, specialty exploration companies to the larger producers as the significance of the reserves becomes clear, particularly in East Africa.

Are there any aspects of the African legal market that you would like to see change?

The African legal market has consolidated and matured over the past five years and this is a trend that I hope will continue. There have been some countries where the rule of law has been under pressure, but the negative reaction of the investment community is often a very effective antidote.

What megatrends do you think will shape the African market over the coming five years? How (if at all) will these trends affect your practice?

There is an unmistakable tension throughout Africa between Chinese investment into Africa and investment from the rest of the world. Indeed, I have heard the Chinese investment strategy compared to “loan to own” strategies that have historically preyed on vulnerable populations. Yet the ease of borrowing from Chinese entities, coupled with the associated loan documentation’s limited conditions and social and environmental safeguards, continue to make Chinese loans attractive to governments that see their sovereignty under threat by conditions that they see as tantamount to economic neo-colonialism.

The resolution of this tension will affect all legal practices, as historically Chinese investment and financing in Africa has had little international legal involvement.