Tanesco, Indian firm ink $30 million efficiency deal

Dodoma. Tanzania Electric Supply Company (Tanesco) yesterday signed a $30 million deal with Indian technology firm Tech Mahindra to improve efficiency in the power utility company that is undergoing transformation.

The contract for Cooperate Management System (CMS) seeks to automate systems of the state-run Tanesco whose management team was recently overhauled.

The contract was signed yesterday in Dodoma, the company said in a statement.

Tanesco is engaged in the entire value chain of generation, transmission and distribution of electricity across Tanzania and is currently transforming itself into a digital enterprise, deploying the full spectrum of technology.

Tanesco managing director Maharage Chande said the signing of the contract was necessary to achieve efficiencies, which is among the company’s seven themes. Others include people, customers, strategic projects, resource mobilisation, communication and stakeholders’ engagement and risk and governance. “Implementation of this system is necessary for us to do our job and deliver efficiently and effectively, not only to our customers but also to our staff. This includes modernising our core operations, our internal applications to accelerate innovation as we march forward to provision of best services to our customers,” he said.

“In the next 30 months, we will be automating our services to the system. This will help us have the visibility, allocate effectively and deliver value and quality to our customers,” added Mr Chande.

Tech Mahindra’s Africa operations head Prasad Kotikela said: “Our aim is to significantly boost Tanesco’s digital readiness to best serve the citizens of Tanzania and simultaneously reduce their cost of ownership by automating aspects of their application and network infrastructure, using technologies based on world class IT Infrastructure,” he said.

“This is a step forward towards elevating Tech Mahindra’s utility offering across the continent to help make Tanesco the vision of digital ready utility,” he added.

Tanesco is financially troubled despite the monopoly in power transmission and distribution.

The recent reforms which saw the change in top management and board was necessitated by the performance of the state entity which is marred by power outage complaints, political interference and debts close to Sh1 trillion. The new top management and board members include members with vast experience from the private sector, signaling a move to embrace business culture in the company which enjoys monopoly of the power distribution.