TPA delegation tours Zambia to market Tanzanian ports

Members of the Tanzania Ports Authority delegation pose for a photo during a conference for marketing services offered by the authority in Lusaka recently. PHOTO | COURTESY

By The Citizen Reporter

More by this Author

Lusaka. The Tanzania Ports Authority (TPA) dispatched a powerful delegation to Zambia in strategic efforts of promote the services it offers in all its ports.

Led by Tanzania’s envoy to Zambia, Hassan Simba - who represents the permanent secretary in the Ministry of Works and Transport -the delegation is expected to highlight successes and new developments recorded by TPA in the past few months.

The delegation is also in Zambia to attend a special conference opened by Zambia’s Transport and Logistics minister, Frank Tayali.

The event brings together transport stakeholders who handle cargo from Zambia to other parts of the globe.

During the conference, Ambassador Simba assured participants that the government of President Samia Suluhu Hassan has made major strides in improving TPA’s port services, including major investments in modern equipment and machinery. All this has increased the quality of the services.

He said that improvement in services at all major ports in the country is meant to benefit Tanzania and neighbouring land-locked countries which depend on the country’s ports, including Zambia.

Zambia is one of the transit markets served by the Port of Dar es Salaam. The market is served by the Dar es Salaam corridor which is a multi-model corridor with road and Tazara railway, the corridor stretches out from the Port of Dar es Salaam to Tunduma/Nakonde border.

For her part, the TPA Marketing manager, Lydia Mallya, said that the port of Dar es Salaam was the main cargo gateway not only to Tanzanian hinterland and great lakes region, but also for neighbours in east and central Africa, including Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Malawi, Rwanda, Uganda and Zambia, and which has registered a performance of 17.8 million tonnes in 2021.

She told delegates at the conference that with the capacity of handling 600,000 vehicles annually, the new 320-metre berth at the Dar es Salaam Port recently broke both its own handling capacity record and that of all other Eastern and Southern African ports (excluding South Africa) by welcoming the cargo ship MOL Tranquil Ace to discharge 3,743 cars on the new roll-on-roll-off berth.

“Given the rise in maritime trade and the ever increasing market demands, TPA is set to cope with this fast growing trend through creation of capacity ahead of demand through projects geared towards improving capacity and efficiency at the port,” she said.

She noted that one of the projects - the Dar es Salaam Marine Gateway Project (DMGP) - is valued at Sh336.4 billion, and is the first large-scale modernisation of the port in its history.

She said the project is well under way, with initial works now virtually complete under the supervision and management of the Tanzania Port Authority which, upon completion, Dar port will have the capacity of handling 28 million tons per annum.

She concluded that Tanzanian ports will continue to play an important role in linking the regional expansive hinterland to the international markets, with initiatives to improve cargo handling at the Dar Port and other TPA ports which will fast-track Tanzania’s quest for industrialization, and support the regional quest to attain fast socioeconomic development.