Tanzania has announced that it will receive US$27mn from Germany to set up a new electricity transmission line in the East African country
The transmission line will cover regions from Geita to Nyakanazi in north-west Tanzania, providing electricity to 32,500 rural households.
The German Embassy had said in a statement earlier that the power line will connect the regional 80MW hydropower project at Rusumo Falls to the national grid.
Once implemented, the project will enable exchange of power with neighbouring countries Rwanda and Burundi, government sources said.
Tanzania, which currently imports around 14MW of electricity from its neighbours and suffers from chronic shortages, is poised to become a net power exporter in the next two years. It has 1.22 trillion cubic metres of recoverable natural gas reserves and expects this to rise five-fold within the next two years.
Sixteen firms are licensed to explore oil and gas in the country including UK’s BG Group, Norway’s Statoil, Brazil’s Petrobras, Royal Dutch Shell and ExxonMobil, which are already operational.
Meanwhile, a new natural gas pipeline from Mtwara to Dar es Salaam, funded by a US$1.2bn Chinese loan, will be completed by December this year. This is likely to enable Tanzania to double its power generation capacity to 3,000MW, industry sources said.
