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Bagamoya, from fish to 20m containers

Tanzania’s port out of Africa

A small Tanzanian fishing port could be as large and busy as Rotterdam within 10 years, backed by money from China and Oman. This might industrialise a country in ever deeper debt to China.

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Last of the fishing boats: Dar es Salaam’s rapidly growing port.
Daniel Hayduk · AFP · Getty Images

Bagamoyo, a small fishing port 70km north of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, may become Africa’s biggest container port in the next 10 years. China’s largest public port operator, China Merchants Holdings, is about to start what the Ecofin Agency called ‘the most significant construction project in the last four decades of Chinese-Tanzanian relations’.

Part of the $10bn funding will come from the Sultanate of Oman’s sovereign wealth fund and China’s Exim Bank. There will be a special economic zone modelled on Shenzhen, China. The piers and docks will extend along 20km of coastline, and handle 20m containers a year, more than Rotterdam, Europe’s biggest port. Tanzanian authorities say it will create an industrial revolution in a mainly rural country where 80% still live below the poverty threshold.

Tanzania, a rare example of stability in this region, has been governed by John Magufuli since late 2015. He is the political heir of the Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM, Party of the Revolution), founded in 1977 by Julius Nyerere. According to Daudi Mukangara, a political scientist at the University of Dar es Salaam, the CCM’s original brand of socialism did not withstand ‘the neoliberal assault of the late 1980s and 90s, which denationalised the very notion of nationalism’. Tanzania has one of Africa’s strongest growth rates, 5.8% in 2018 and a forecast of 6% in 2019 according to the IMF, and has begun a massive infrastructure development programme (see Tanzania revives rail).

The Bagamoyo project will let Oman regain a foothold in Africa; the nearby island of Zanzibar was Omani territory from 1698 and a major centre of the slave trade supplying the Gulf states. China, too, is extending its influence in East Africa in Tanzania, which has been a pillar of Sino-African cooperation (see How China joined Tanzania and Zambia). Until the mid-19th century, Bagamoyo was an important transit point for copra (dried coconut), ivory and slaves. Many (...)

Full article: 1 832 words.

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Jean-Christophe Servant

Jean-Christophe Servant is a journalist.
Translated by George Miller

(1See ‘La Tanzanie entame la construction d’un port et d’une zone économique spéciale pour 10 milliards de dollars’ (Tanzania begins building a $10bn port and special economic zone), Ecofin, Paris, 19 October 2015.

(2See Nick Van Mead, ‘China in Africa: win-win development, or a new colonialism?’, The Guardian, London, 31 July 2018.

(3See Jean-Christophe Servant, ‘China’s trade safari in Africa’, Le Monde diplomatique, English edition, May 2005.

(4Christian Shepherd and Ben Blanchard, ‘China’s Xi offers another $60 billion to Africa, but says no to “vanity” projects’, Reuters, 3 September 2018.

(5Christian Shepherd and Ben Blanchard, ‘China’s Xi offers another $60 billion to Africa, but says no to “vanity” projects’, Reuters, 3 September 2018.

(6See Sébastien Le Belzic, ‘L’Afrique devient un échiquier où les États-Unis et la Chine avancent leurs pièces’ (Africa is becoming a chessboard where the US and China advance their pieces), Le Monde, Paris, 9 January 2019.

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© Le Monde diplomatique - 2019