Hillary Clinton, the US secretary state, has pledged support for Tanzania’s power generating industry on her three-day visit to the east African country.
She was visiting the US-owned Symbion power
plant, which is still running at half its 120MW capacity because of a lack of gas supplies. Symbion, an electrical engineering contractor based in Washington DC, bought the troubled ex-Dowans plant in Ubungo, Dar es Salaam in May. The plant has been idle for three years because of supply difficulties and a dispute with TANESCO (Tanzania Electric Supply Company Ltd).
Tanzania suffers from an acute shortage of electricity and the commercial capital Dar es Salaam is subject to frequent outages. In recent months rationing has been brought in to tackle the worst effects of the sudden suspension of electrical supply.
At present only 14 per cent of Tanzanians have access to electricity. Tanzania has plans to expand country-wide capacity from the present 1,000MW to 2,789 MW by 2015.
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