Tanzania: Accelerating Solar Water Pumping via Innovative Financing

This project is designed to help about 165 villages in rural Tanzania to gain access to a sustainable water supply through improved solar pumping systems. The project supports the Government of Tanzania in moving from dated and inefficient diesel-powered pumps to clean and climate-friendly solar pumping systems. These new systems will help decarbonize off-grid water pumping and significantly reduce the cost of water extraction for at least 500,000 beneficiaries.

Despite the challenges due to COVID-19, all of the 110 targeted sites have completed the solar installation, including all civil and electrical works. During FY21, the project experienced extensive delays due to COVID-19, prolonged tax exemption processes, port clearing delays, technical challenges and most recently, impeding rains -- causing the project to receive a six-month extension.

Since then, however, implementation has been on track to fully achieve its development objectives. To overcome the pandemic-induced challenges, the World Bank introduced remote monitoring enabled provisional verification of project sites (Output Verification 2) made possible by detailed picture collection of each site coupled with remote monitoring dashboards confirming site data.

The success of the GPRBA-funded pilot has led to other donors' support of this innovative RBF scheme. Example: a $6 million grant from the Danish Government through the Energy Sector Management Assistance Program (ESMAP) will scale up the next phase of this long-term endeavor, which is currently being designed.