DAR ES SALAAM, (Reuters) – Tanzania and China have signed investment deals worth more than $1.7 billion, including one to build a satellite city to ease congestion in the commercial capital Dar es Salaam – deepening Beijing’s ties with East Africa.
The money will be used to develop infrastructure, power distribution and business cooperation, Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete said in a statement yesterday, a day after the deals were formally signed in Beijing.
Tanzania later announced a $85 million in grants and zero-interest loans from China. It did not say what the money would be used for.
The deals extend China’s growing economic presence in Tanzania, which has made major natural gas discoveries off its southern coast.
The satellite city, on the outskirts of Dar es Salaam, will be a self-contained urban zone equipped with water, electricity, roads, banks, schools and hospitals.
The project, as well as a $500 million financial centre that will also be built in Dar es Salaam, are joint projects by the China Railway Jianchang Engineering Company Ltd (CRJE) and Tanzania’s state-run National Housing Corporation.
Tanzania’s state-run power company, TANESCO, meanwhile signed a deal with China’s TBEA Hengyang Transformer Co. for a rural electrification project that Kikwete’s office said would be worth “millions of dollars”. It did not elaborate.
