Tanzanian Rural Electrification Agency seeks consulting support

Tanzania’s Rural Energy Agency is looking to the consulting industry for support with conducting an Islands Electrification Study,  which includes an overall assessment of the anticipated energy demands for a number of islands and the expected resource expenditure to serve this demand.

Development projects in the energy infrastructure domain are currently rampant across Africa. Late last year, reports suggested that Sub-Saharan Africa faces a gap in infrastructural investment of approximately $100 billion, most of which is concentrated in the domain of power and energy.

Since the start of this year, a number of African countries have been engaged in power development projects of various kinds, to which end they have sought support from consulting firms with expertise in the energy domain. Tanzania has now called for consultants for conducting a study.

In April this year, the government of Tanzania called upon consultants to help develop a liquefied natural gas plant that has been a work in progress for over eight years. Now, the country’s Rural Energy Agency has called upon the consulting sector for support with electricity distribution to its islands.

The selected consulting firm is expected to obtain an overview of the population levels of individual islands and the general trends in their economic activity. Based on this information, an energy forecast can be developed and an electrification plan can be devised, both of which will also fall within the firm’s responsibilities.

To develop this plan, the firm will need to assess the possible options for energy generation and distribution across the various islands, in comparison with the current energy resources and the anticipated demand, while also being weary of the overall socio-economic and environmental costs involved.

The firm will also be expected to obtain an idea of the willingness of the indigenous island populations to contribute to energy projects on a monetary basis, alternative to which it will have to develop plans to finance the projects. The options for financing will have to be sustainable, given the long duration involved in the development of power projects.