COUNTRY REPORT

UNITED REPUBLIC OF TANZANIA

General Implementation of Information Technology on Power Electronics and
Drives System Technology

General Introduction
The United Republic of Tanzania is located in Eastern Africa between longitude 29o
and 41o East, Latitude 1o and 12o South [1]. It occupies total area of 948,350 km2
which include land, water, forest and woodlands. Tanzania is the biggest (land
area) among the East African countries (i.e. Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and
Tanzania). By 2005 the population of Tanzania was estimated to be over 33.5
million and the latest projections estimate that now the population is 43,171,105 in
2009 [1].
Tanzania is bordered by Kenya on the North East, Uganda on the North, Rwanda,
Burundi and the Republic of Congo (D.R.C) on the North West, Zambia on the West,
Malawi and Mozambique on the South, and on the East the border is in the Indian
Ocean where the Zanzibar Islands are located. With its position on the Indian
Ocean, Tanzania uses her Dar es Salaam and Tanga ports to cater for the needs of
its neighbours. Its capital city is called Dar es Salaam, meaning the “port of
peace.”
Tanzania has a spectacular landscape of mainly three physiographic regions namely
the Islands and the coastal plains to the east; the inland saucer-shaped plateau;
and the highlands. The Great Rift Valley that runs from north east of Africa through
central Tanzania is another landmark that adds to the scenic view of the country.
The country has the largest concentration of wild animals. It also has pristine
sandy beaches and Africa’s highest and snow-capped mountain, Mt. Kilimanjaro.
Tanzania is home to the world famous National Parks and Game Reserves of:
Ngorongoro Crater, Selous Game Reserve, Gombe Stream, Tarangire, Lake Manyara,
Mikumi, Ruaha, Saadani, Udzungwa Mountains, and Mkomazi Game Reserve. Other
Game Reserves include: Amani, Kigosi, Lukwika-Lumesule, Maswa, Monduli
Mountains, Msangesi and Ugala. In addition, Tanzania is home to world famous
Zanzibar Spice Islands on the Indian Ocean. These islands serve as tourist attraction
since they hold a large piece of East African history with its narrow streets, oldest
Sultan houses and the Slave market.
Its main exports comprise of coffee, cotton, cow meat, and tilapia. Currently there
is an ongoing campaign of reviving the agricultural sector through the motto
“Kilimo Kwanza”, which means agriculture first. To achieve this, the country has
sought aid from Indonesia in terms of tractors and expertise. Another key player in
the campaign is South Korea who is providing the same assistance as Indonesia.
The following is a map of the United Republic of Tanzania which highlights some of
the above mentioned facts.

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Figure 1: The map of Tanzania showing some facts [2].

Tanzania and Indonesia have been friends for some time through which Indonesia
has helped in terms of technical expertise and consultations in agriculture and
industry. This vibrant relationship continues until today. Recently the Tanzanian
Prime Minister Mr. Mizengo Pinda visited Indonesia in the month of September, and
the picture below in Figure 2 show him shaking hands with President Susilo
Bambang Yudhoyono.

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Figure 2: Tanzania’s Prime Minister on the left is seen greeting the President of
Indonesia on the right [3].

General Description of IT Field

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) services, such as telephones,
e-mail, Internet etc., are concentrated in urban areas. The Tanzanian National
vision 2025 is looking forward to facilitate the ICT services in all possible sectors [4-
5].
ICT sectors have been identified as the key factor for social and economic
development in parts of the world. However in Tanzania, the ICT has limited
infrastructure and cost of implementation is very high. This has resulted in low
usage and penetration of ICT services in rural areas. Establishing and operating
rural ICT service centres is perceived to be more costly based on the infrastructure
in the sparsely populated areas with low income per capita. This indirectly, has
caused the ICT centres in rural areas to be risky and costly compared to the urban
areas. This situation is worsened by the lack of reliable electricity as the prevailing
power rationing [6]. The current access of rural population to electricity is less
than 2% [7] and the national statistics show that only 12% had access to electricity
by 2007 [8]; and availability is not guaranteed with long time power rationing or
load shedding [6, 7, 8].
Nevertheless, ICT sector is growing though expensive at the moment. Use of
computers in universities and colleges has been achieved for some time now. Most
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of those higher learning institutions utilise local area network (LAN), wide area
network (WAN), and internet. Slowly but steadily this trend is trickling downward
where now the curricula of primary and secondary schools include an ICT subject.
Some statistics of ICT and computer usage in Tanzania are set out below as key
indicators benchmarked at Tanzania’s Independence in 1961, at the start of the
major reform process, in 1993 and 2002. The progression has been remarkable
since 1993 and the increasing trend is big.

Table 1: Indicators and Benchmarks of ICT in Tanzania [9]

Indicators 1961 1993 2002 2009

Population (in millions) 12.3 26.7 33.6 Projected

at 43.2

Data communications operators 16 More

Internet service providers 1 23 More

Internet subscribers (Dialup
accounts and Wireless) 10 14,000 More

Internet capacity (total 64 44,000 More

bandwidths in Kilobytes)

Data for 2009 that could not be found in the table is written as “more” to show
that there are increments than last reported. The progress in the increased usage
of ICT is also influenced by the millenium development goals (MDGs) which
necessitated writing of the ICT policy [4, 9].
Some universities and colleges offer distance learning courses using ICT such as the
University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM) [10] and the Open University of Tanzania (OUT)
[11].

Advances in Power Electronics and Drives System Technology in Tanzania

Recently the UDSM has embarked on massive restructuring [12]. This has resulted
into having 3 Campus Colleges, 5 Schools, 4 Institutes and 1 Faculty. In this report
emphasis will base on one Campus College as both authors work within it. It is
called the College of Engineering and Technology (CoET). Discussion interests will
concentrate on the Department of Electrical and Computer Systems Engineering
(ECSE).
Department of ECSE has the following sections: Electrical Power Engineering (EPE),
Telecommunications Engineering (TE) and Computer Systems Engineering (CSE). For
a student to graduate with a B.Sc. Engineering degree has to study for four years.
One year is made up of two semesters at a total of 119 days.

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During the course of study at end of each year excluding final year; students get a
chance to attend Practical Training in industry. There they usually learn day to day
activities of the companies and try to merge theory with practise.
The EPE section offers courses in Electrical Engineering. But the output of
electrical engineers (EE) is not big as fewer students (especially females) choose to
study EE; for example last academic year (2008/2009) there was 30 finalist
students doing EE among them only one female. Further more there was no female
student admitted to join the EPE section in academic year 2009/2010 because none
had applied for it.
In addition, there is a deficit of qualified lecturers in Power Electronics and Drives
Technology (PEDS). There is one lecturer with research interests in PEDS and one
with research interests in Electrical Machines (EM). Others with research interests
in PEDS and EM are junior staff employed beginning 2008. To exacerbate the
problem of training in PEDS is the deficit and availability of defunct training
modules and machines in the laboratories. Nevertheless, the bright side is the
commitment of the students to learn, whereby they become skilled in the use of
ICT and design of circuits, simulation and implementation. For example, out of
those 30 EE finalist students, 12 designed and implemented circuits for their final
year projects. They built prototypes of power electronics for various applications in
solar electricity and pulse width modulators. Such students when they go to work in
industry they are easy to train and grasp new trends of PEDS technology.

Other Institutes Training or Having Plans to Train Electrical Engineering

Profession
Apart from EPE of UDSM producing EE engineers, there are other Institutes
producing EE engineers such as Dar es Salaam Institute of Technology (DIT) and St.
Joseph’s College of Engineering and Technology. There are plans to train engineers
at the new University of Dodoma (UDOM), Mbeya Institute of Technology (MIST),
Nelson Mandela Arusha Institute of Science and Technology (NM AIST) and St.
Augustine University of Tanzania (SAUT). However, this is not enough for the
population of over 40 million; efforts are needed to increase more technical
universities.
The future expectation is high quality engineering education with better results to
local industrial PEDS implementation.

Demands and Implementation of PEDS on Industrial Sector

The Tanzanian job market is out there looking for people with skills in PEDS and
programmable logic controllers (PLC). Such demands come from industries in the
areas of cigarette making, breweries, soft drinks, electric power plants, e.t.c. This
need keeps on growing each year as demand for those industrial products and
services increase. Most of these industries use PLC and microcontroller
technologies for control of the processes. These microcontrollers control the power
output to the desired plants by actuating the desired action to the power
electronics devices (PE).
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As such there is need for design and implementation of speed drives and control.
But then engineers by themselves can’t perform all the work without the help of
Technicians. Until recently these technicians were obtained from Technical Schools
after obtaining Full Technician Certificate. But now they come from Vocational
Training Centres in short VTCs and some polytechnic institutions.

Vocational Training and Polytechnic Colleges

VTCs are under the Vocational Training Education Authority (VETA). Through this
technicians in several professions are produced yearly. They offer Trade Test
Certificate (TTC) courses and Diploma courses ranging as mechanical, electrical,
electronics, tourism, decorations, computer etc. Normally TTC has 3 levels which
are: TTC level 3, TTC level 2 and TTC level 1 or a diploma and each is studied not
less than 6 months. For students from Primary schools they start at level 3, but
those who have done secondary schools start at level 1 or diploma.
VTCs and polytechnics are located throughout the country to cater for the rising
demand from Tanzanian children graduating each year from primary and secondary
schools. For instance, statistics of students transiting from primary to secondary
schools are shown in Figure 3 [13].

Chart 1: Transition from Primary Education to Secondary Education, 1961 - 2007

(Selected Years)

80.0

70.0

60.0

50.0
Percent

40.0

30.0

20.0

10.0

0.0
1961

1963

1965

1967

1969

1971

1973

1975

1977

1978

1979

1981

1983

1985

1987

1989

1991

1993

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

Year

Figure 3: Statistics of students from primary education transiting to secondary

education for selected years.
These chart shows increasing percentage of students transiting to secondary
education for the past 8 years, which indicates that if more secondary schools are
needed, likewise for VTCs because of the high output.
But, these important stages and parts of building the nations’ workforce are
distraught with lots of problems. There is few qualified technical teachers [13],
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infrastructure, teaching materials, ICT services, practical tools and financial. This
is due to the fact that at the moment the Tanzania government is minimally
subsidising the income of these institutions. In addition, with the current economic
hardships the income of most parents of these students is not enough to afford to
pay the school fees and associated costs [13]. These result into students not
utilising their full potentials, and have to wait till they get industrial employments
to get a chance to practice their professions. The worst case is when the students
drop out of school because of missing training needs [13].
The millennium development goals (MDGs) and the vision 2025 give the government
direction to plan to increase the quality of education by finding feasible ways of
funding these institutions.
For both higher learning institutions and vocational training centres it is possible to
rescue this situation by engaging international cooperation.

International Cooperation for Development of IT and Industrial Electronics

International cooperation will help in importing new technology, knowledge and
expertise. Such cooperation is needed to boost up our national technological
advances.
Higher learning institutions have implemented ICT teaching via various e-learning
platforms, for example the UDSM has TEIL, iLab and online courses [10, 14]. In
addition the UDSM has subscribed to international libraries and journals. Via such
platforms ICT cooperation is implemented on international level. For example the
UDSM has access to Michigan Institute of Technology Open Course Ware (MITOCW)
[14]. With such access it is possible to access selected lectures, practical, tutorials,
projects and past exams from the MIT library. Other higher learning institutions are
doing international cooperation with other institutions both within and outside
Africa.
Table 1 shows trend of ICT usage growing. Also, the usage of microcontrollers, PLC
and PE can be found in several telecommunication industries. These companies rely
heavily on PLCs, microcontrollers and PEDS for their functioning of providing
telecommunication services to customers. This is due to fact that
telecommunication services rely heavily on constant power supply and proper
functioning of systems which utilizes ICT, PLCs and PEDS. Besides of wireless phone
calls, they offer internet and data services via hand phones.
Companies involved in mining activities utilize a lot of PLCs and different drives to
control the mining processes. Others are industries in the areas of brewery,
agricultural products processing, cement making, banks, power plants, textile
industries, hospitals etc.
Those mentioned industrial sectors needs qualified people in ICT, PLCs,
microcontrollers and PEDS. International cooperation will aid in terms of providing
required education, technical training, technology and expertise. That means that
at this time still there are many sectors which have not utilised PEDS fully.

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Areas Where PEDS has not Been Used
Tanzania is still in the early stages of development such that it has not extensively
used PEDS technology in railway transportation, agriculture sector, renewable
energies (solar, wind, wave and tidal), etc.
International investors and collaborators will find that there are a lot of
opportunities to expand in sectors to do with ICT and PEDS. This is due to the fact
that Tanzania has not developed much industrially. Also, it is imperative that now
high rise buildings and other systems will need more PEDS technology than before.
Another area promising is the telecommunication and power industry. Up to now
there is less telecommunication and power accessibility to the rural areas. If
investments of such nature are made in such areas it is bound to return the capital,
thereby this report encourages prospective Investors to come to Tanzania and
invest.

References
1. Tanzania Government Website (2009),
http://www.tanzania.go.tz/profile1f.html accessed on Friday, 16th October,
2009.
2. www.tanzaniaodyssey.com/.../map-of-tanzania.htm
3. 3.bp.blogspot.com/.../s400/IMG_1356.JPG
4. Haule, D. D (2009), “Feasibility Study on the Role of Information and
Communication Technologies (ICTs) for Sustainable Development of Rural
Communities in Tanzania via Telecentrers”, Draft Report for Sida/SAREC Core
Support: Report on Telecentres by 2005 in Tanzania.
5. Tanzania Government Website (2009), “Tanzania Development Vision 2025”,
http://www.tanzania.go.tz/vision.htm accessed on Sunday, 25th October
2009.
6. This Day Newspaper (2009), “MPs to Investigate Fresh TANESCO Power
Rationing”, http://www.thisday.co.tz/News/6378.html accessed on Sunday,
25th October 2009.
7. Sidas kommunikationsavdelning (2009), “Greener electricity for rural
Tanzania”, http://www.sida.se/English/Countries-and-
regions/Africa/Tanzania/Programmes-and-Projects/Greener-electricity-for-
rural-Tanzania/ accessed on Sunday, 25th October 2009.
8. Proceedings of the 4th Open Forum on Tanzania Power Sector, Held On
Tuesday, 27th May 2008, Golden Tulip Hotel,
http://www.cti.co.tz/cti/newsdetails.php?newsid=14 accessed on Sunday,
25th October 2009.
9. The United Republic of Tanzania-Ministry of Communications and Transport
(2003), “National Information and Communications Technologies Policy”,

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 http://www.tanzania.go.tz/pdf/ictpolicy.pdf retrieved on Friday, 16th
October, 2009.
10. University of Dar es Salaam Website (2009), “Learning Management System”,
http://lms.udsm.ac.tz/ accessed on Friday, 16th October, 2009.
11. Open University of Tanzania-Institute of Educational Technology (2009),
“Guideliness for Students”,
http://www.out.ac.tz/current/policy/page_php.htm.
12. Vice Chancellor of UDSM (2009), “Operationalization of the New UDSM
Organisational Structure”, Communication to all UDSM members.
13. Ministry of Education Website (2009), “Basic Statistics in Education –
National”, http://www.moe.go.tz/statistics.html# accessed on Sunday, 25th
October, 2009.
14. University of Dar es Salaam Website (2009), http://www.udsm.ac.tz

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