Over 7,000 new villages in rural Tanzania to be connected to electricity

More than 7,000 new villages in rural Tanzania will be connected to electricity in a 3.5 billion-US dollar third phase implementation of the east African nation's rural electrification programme, an official said on Monday.

Boniface Nyamo-Hanga, Acting Director General of the Rural Energy Agency (REA), said the implementation of the third phase is expected to be completed by 2021.

About 4,395 villages out of 12,268 villages in the country, east Africa's second largest economy, have been connected to electricity, an equivalent of 36 percent during the implementation of the first and second phases of the programme, said Nyamo-Hanga.

"Our agency has targeted at least one million villagers to be connected to electricity in our initial estimates although this will depend on the infrastructure. We could connect more villagers than these," he told a news conference in the commercial capital Dar es Salaam.

He said funds for the third phase of the rural electricity connection will be sourced from the government's development budget, annual levy on petroleum products, electricity and contributions of development partners.

Nyamo-Hanga said in this financial year the government has set aside 267 million US dollars for implementation of the project.

"The implementation of phase three officially started on Monday and we started the project by advertising on various newspapers urging local and foreign contractors to bring their proposals so as to bid for the tender," he said.

"We are encouraging local companies to use this opportunity to implement the project," he said. Endit