Tanzania has embarked on a megaproject to expand the Port of Dar es Salaam in an effort to transform the facility into the preferred gateway to the East Africa region by 2020.

Tanzania’s Ministry of Transport permanent secretary, Dr Shaaban Mwinjaka, recently launched the expansion project, which will cost $596-million.

Mwinjaka said the project directly supported Tanzania’s Big Results Now (BRN) programme, which forms part of the country’s Vision 2025. “The project is aimed at generating capacity to cater for the projected traffic growth at the Dar es Salaam port,” he said.

The project is jointly funded by bilateral and multilateral donors, including the World Bank, the UK’s Department for International Development (DfID) and TradeMark East Africa (TMEA). TMEA, a nonprofit consultancy, is also overseeing the implementation of the project. The World Bank is to contribute $400-million as a loan under the Dar es Salaam Maritime Gateway Project (DMGP), while the DfID is to provide a $136-million grant. The remaining $60 million will come from TMEA.

The expansion project, to be implemented in two phases, will involve the demolition of Shed 2 and Shed 3 to create more space so that the port can accommodate the increase in the number of containers.

The reconstruction will involve deepening berths 1 to 7, dredging the entrance channel and turning basin to allow bigger vessels to dock. It will also include upgrading roads that lead to gates 4, 5 and 8, as well as installing new scanners for gates 4 and 8. A single traffic flow system and an integrated security system will also be introduced.

“The expansion will enable the port to handle bigger vessels, which will make the country competitive globally,” said Tanzania Ports Authority acting director-general Awadhi Massawe.

Phase 1 is expected to increase the Dar es Salaam port’s throughput to 18-million tons by 2017, up from the current 12-million tons, while Phase 2 will further increase throughput capacity to 28-million tons by 2020.

Modernising and expanding the Dar es Salaam port will also reduce ships’ dwell time from the current nine to ten days to just five days by 2020.

The expansion will ensure Dar es Salaam becomes the preferred gateway to the region, thus rivalling Kenya’s Port of Mombasa.

According to Mwinjaka, the East Africa nation has already signed memorandums of understanding with the governments of Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which have pledged to use the Dar es Salaam port for their imports and exports.

Apart from Burundi and the DRC, the Dar es Salaam port also serves Zambia, Uganda, Rwanda, Malawi and Zimbabwe.