Tanzania seeks investors for standard gauge projects

Tanzania is seeking private partners to construct and operate two more standard gauge freight railways, and is also looking for additional rolling stock, according to Tanzania Railway Corp senior representative Eric Kibona and Benjamin Mbimbi, Assistant Director for Railways at the Ministry of Transport. Speaking to Railway Gazette International at InnoTrans 2026 in Berlin, Kibona confirmed that TRC was seeking private partners to construct and operate two 1 000 km freight railway corridors serving the north and south of the country. To be developed under some form of public private partnership, these would augment the Y-shaped electrified standard gauge line now taking shape through the central belt.

‘We completed initial feasibility studies, but these need to be updated’, Mbimbi added. ‘We are now seeking to partner with private companies who are willing to undertake the investment and carry out construction and operation.’

The 1 000 km standard gauge corridor in the south would connect the port of Mtwara on the Indian Ocean to Mbamba Bay on Lake Malawi. As well as carrying agricultural traffic, the line would also have branches serving the Mchuchuma coalfield and the Ludewa iron ore deposits.

TRC signed a memorandum of understanding with Egyptian construction group Arab Contractors on October 16 to reassess the earlier proposals for this corridor. The project was first announced in 2011, and a framework agreement had been signed in 2015 for its development by a Chinese consortium.

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