‘No middle economy without electricity for villages’

Short of this efforts towards the same will be stalled if not undermined altogether.The majority of rural Tanzanians have no access to modern energy services and the government admits that rural Tanzania cannot be transformed into a modern economy, and that rural Tanzanians’ livelihoods cannot be improved significantly without a dramatic improvement in their access to modern energy services.

For these reasons, the Rural Energy Board (REB), the Rural Energy Agency (REA), and the Rural Energy Fund (REF) were established and entrusted with the role of promoting and facilitating improved access to modern energy services in rural areas through empowering both public and private sector initiatives in rural energy.

At a recent press conference held in Dar es Salaam too brief the press on assessment of various REA projects, REA Director General Lutengano Mwakahesya said REA began with a capital base of 10bn/- with which it embarked on implementing various rural electrification projects across five districts Uyuwi, Lolo, Mkinga, kilindi and Bahi.

He also cited the National Energy Policy 2003 which sets national energy objectives to ensure availability of reliable and affordable energy supplies, and to promote efficient energy use in order to support national development goals.

The policy recognizes that, the main thrust has to be based on private initiatives and investments for exploitation of local energy sources.

The policy sets an entirely new approach to modern energy in rural areas of Tanzania and the government has committed itself to develop and implement the new strategy to address modern energy needs of over 85% of Tanzanians living in rural areas.

“However, the projects were slow and to pick the pace up, tenders were issued to contractors contracts were entered with TANESCO and the Rea tank phase I project was launched with support of the government and this is worth 120bn/-,” he said.

Mwakahesya went on to note that the efforts began to bear fruit and that more than 70,000 clients out of 250,000 are now connected to electricity through the Rural Energy Agency (REA); “this is our commitment, to ensure that electricity services are accessible to all Tanzanians living in rural areas,” he said.

Titled: Rural Electrification Densification, this most recent project has successfully connected electricity to 5200 villages out of 15,000 targeted villages across the country; “this is equivalent to 36 per cent of all villages across the country,” the Director General.

“We are now moving on to another three phase project that will see a total of 400 villages receive electricity this is a great opportunity for investors from within and outside the country to deploy their service in rural areas,” he added.

Commenting at the same press briefing, REA Manager, Engineer Elineema Mkumbo said in the second phase of the project, they expect to supply electricity across 13 more districts; “this project will go through the district headquarters since we believe that is where there are various key social services such as district hospitals are located," he said

He explained that a total of 800 transformers have been secured; “all that is remaining is to connect our customers,” he said confidently.

In this endeavour, he went on to detail, there are numerous projects including various renewable energy projects like solar power systems. All this is meant to ensure Tanzanians living in areas where are not connected to the national electricity grid can finally get electricity.

“REA has been working in partnership with the private sector to ensure all projects are completed on a time,” he reassured stakeholders.

He also reasserted that all their projects are supported by the government which contributes to 90 per cent of the project funding while only 10 per cent comes from development partners.

Eng. Mkumbo also took the opportunity to reassure Tanzanians that REA will continue to work hard and systematically to supply electricity to all rural areas ; “there are large projects in progress all designed to empower people living in rural areas with access to electricity,” he underscored.