Tanzania Restores Power after Nationwide Outage

Tanzania’s power utility said recently it had started to restore electricity to parts of the country after the East African nation was hit by a countrywide blackout.

“Efforts are ongoing to make sure that power supply is restored to all parts of the country,” the state-run Tanzania Electric Supply Company (TANESCO) said in a statement.

TANESCO apologised for the power outage, but did not explain what caused a “technical glitch” in the national power grid that left the region’s number three economy in a blackout that lasted more than 12 hours.

Partial blackouts occur regularly in Tanzania, which relies on hydro, natural gas and heavy fuel oil to generate electricity. Many businesses use power generators as backups, pushing up their operating costs.

Tanzania’s energy infrastructure has suffered from decades of underinvestment, neglect and corruption allegations, and investors have long complained the lack of reliable power hurts business there.