The country's Energy Minister, January Makamba, told parliament that the project will entail upgrading “power sub-stations and transmission lines across the country to stabilise power supply”.
Interestingly, the Minister blamed Tanzania's erratic power supply problem on the persistent failure to invest in repairs and maintenance of facilities, despite having the resources to do so. For context, whereas the country's state-run public utility firm — Tanzania Electric Supply Co. —generated total revenue of $778 million (TZS 1.8 trillion) in 2021, less than 10% of that sum was invested in facility repairs.
The Minister's observation wasn't wrong. Stakeholders have always blamed Africa's power problem on governments' negligence. In their book The Challenge of Energy Access in Africa, authors Manfred Hafner, Simone Tagliapietra and Lucia de Strasser identified decades of neglect in building/upgrading necessary infrastructure as well as lack of investments as some of the major problems militating against energy access on the African continent.
The expectation for Tanzania, therefore, is that this $1.9 billion investment would contribute to changing the status quo, even a little bit.
Like most African countries struggling with poor electricity generation and distribution, Tanzania has significant gas reserves. But according to Bloomberg, only about half of the country's current electricity output of 1,600 megawatts is being generated through gas. Therefore, there is the need to explore more of this potential.
Meanwhile, Business Insider Africa understands that Tanzania is also building a 2,115 megawatts hydropower station. When the $3 billion project finally gets completed, Tanzania could end up exporting some of its electricity to its neighbours.
