Africa-Press – Tanzania. AFTER electrifying over 80 per cent of all villages across the country, the gov- ernment now targets to connect over 37,000 hamlets in the next four years.
The undertaking, which is set to be completed before the next general election, is expected to benefit over 3 million Tanzanians residing in those hamlets.
Tanzania has a total of 64,384 hamlets and so far, 27,000 hamlets have been supplied with power through the government’s ambitious rural electrification drive.
The rural electrification project is undertaken by the Rural Electrification Agency (REA), which is currently implementing phase III, second round of the project.
The country has so far managed to connect over 10,300 villages out of a total 12,319 villages countrywide with the government saying the remaining 1956 villages will all be electrified during phase III, round two of the rural electrification projects.
“We are now taking the next step of bringing electricity down to the community level as we want to connect 37,000 hamlets in the next four years,” Energy Minister January Makamba stated yesterday in Dar es Salaam.
He was on a working visit to the Africab Company, one of the major manufacturers of wires, cables and transformers in Tanzania.
The minister, who was accompanied by his deputy Stephen Byabato, visited the industry to see its capacity, as he envisaged high demand for electric materials supply for the planned rural electrification projects.
“There will be a high demand of materials when we embark on the electrification of these hamlets. We will need 122,000 kilometres of electric wires for low voltage electricity and over 110,000 kilometres for middle voltage lines. In addition to high voltage lines, we will need a total of over 340,000 kilometres of electric wires,” Mr Makamba stated.
“We therefore hope that we would get quality materials but at good prices from the local manufacturers like the Africab,” he said.
He commended the company for enhancing production capacity to meet the rising demand, but challenged the company to keep on increasing its production.
Commenting, Africab Marketing Officer David Tarimo said their industry has a huge production capacity and currently it is setting up another big industry at Kimbiji, in Kigamboni District, Dar es Salaam region.
“When this new industry becomes operational, we will increase our capacity to supply materials for the mega projects. This proves that we Tanzanians have the capacity to do big things for our country,” he said.
He appealed to the government to continue supporting the local manufacturers by using locally made materials during the implementation of development projects.
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