Recently, Tanzanian Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa announced that 10,361 villages out of the East African country’s 12,317 villages had been connected to electricity by October 2021, owing to the ongoing Tanzania rural electrification project.
Adjourning a two-week parliamentary session in the capital Dodoma, Majaliwa said that the number of villages connected to electricity was equivalent to 84.12% of the East African nation’s villages.
“The government of the United Republic of Tanzania will ensure that the remaining 1,956 villages will be connected to electricity by December 2022 the latest through the second phase of the Tanzania rural electrification program,” affirmed the Tanzanian Prime Minister according to who the electrification of the 1,956 villages will cost US$ 539M or its there about.
The project is being implemented by the Rural Energy Agency (REA), an autonomous body under the Tanzania Ministry of Energy and Minerals whose main role is to promote and facilitate improved access to modern energy services in rural areas of Mainland Tanzania, in collaboration with the private sector.
The objective of the Tanzania Rural Electrification Project
The development objectives of the Tanzania Rural Electrification Project are to increase access to electricity in rural areas and to scale up the supply of renewable energy in rural areas while strengthening sector institutional capacity.
The project also contributes to the Government of Tanzania (GoT) plans to achieve approximately 1.3 million connections in rural areas, including public facilities, and increase the average access rate to electricity, both urban and rural, to 35 percent by next year (2022).
Furthermore, it supports three of the electrification avenues of the NREP, which are grid extension, off-grid electrification, and within the category of off-grid electrification, renewable technologies, including solar photovoltaic (PV).