The Government has signed a contract with a Chinese company for a project to construct the country’s first-ever solar photovoltaic power station to feed into the national electricity grid, TPJ can report.

Speaking during the contract signing ceremony at Kishapu recently, Minister for Energy January Makamba said the project, which will generate 150 MW of power when completed, is part of the government’s plan to ensure the country has reliable power through the year and to meet the National Development Plan of supplying 5000 MW to the national grid by 2025 from various sources, including wind and geothermal.

According to Minister Makamba, the 275bn/- project, which will be the largest in East Africa, is financed by French Development Agency (AFD) and will be implemented by Sinohydro Corporation in two phases, with the first scheduled to kick off in June 2023 while it is expected to be completed in 14 months.

The minister also said the government is working on a renewable energy policy plan which is set to be ready in the Financial Year 2023/2024, whereby the public private partnership arrangement will be used mostly to implement the projects and that it will provide subsidies to facilitate small-scale renewable energy producers, especially in rural areas.

“[This way] they will benefit from the country’s natural energy resources such as the sun and wind by generating and selling power to the Tanzania Electric Supply Company Ltd (Tanesco) thereby contributing towards improving the welfare of the people and the nation’s economy,” he said.

He encouraged local experts to become fully involved in generating renewable energy, “as the government is preparing the guidelines which will facilitate the selling of such energy to Tanesco for the national grid.”

The minister commended Kishapu residents for helping the country’s history-making venture by vacating 1000 acres of land for the project.  

“Kishapu is a place that will bring solar photovoltaic electricity into the national grid for the first time and as one of the best sources in the world today.”  

Earlier, Tanesco’s Managing Director, Maharage Chande, mentioned that the second phase of the project, which will produce 100MW of power, will commence in August 2023 under the public private partnership arrangement and that Tanesco will ensure that residents who vacated their land for the project, will be compensated accordingly before commencement of the project.