TANZANIA —The United Republic of Tanzania has finalized a 1.2 billion US dollar commercial debt facility to finance the construction of the 411-kilometer electrified Tabora-Kigoma section, designated as Lot 6 of the country's regional Standard Gauge Railway project. The African Development Bank (AfDB) served as the Initial Mandated Lead Arranger, deploying an 800 million US dollar Partial Credit Guarantee to anchor the financing framework. Deutsche Bank and Société Générale co-arranged a nine-bank international lending syndicate comprising HSBC, Commerzbank, Nedbank, Stanbic Bank Tanzania, First Abu Dhabi Bank, FirstBank UK, and Bank of Africa United Kingdom.
The African Development Bank (AfDB) is a regional multilateral development finance institution established to promote sustainable economic growth and social progress across African member states. The United Republic of Tanzania is an East African nation advancing major national infrastructure programs to enhance transit connectivity along the Central Corridor.
The commercial transaction comprises 720 million US dollars in credit-guaranteed debt alongside 480 million US dollars in unhedged sovereign lending. This facility represents one component of a broader 2.3 billion US dollar financing structure, which includes export credit agency tranches and secondary guarantor participation. To manage institutional risk exposure, insurance broker Texel arranged 405.5 million US dollars in private credit insurance underwritten by international insurers and Lloyd's syndicates, backstopping the multilateral guarantee framework.
This blended finance structure demonstrates a scalable model for mobilizing private commercial capital into large-scale African infrastructure projects. For freight operators, mining corporations, and agricultural exporters, completing the Tabora-Kigoma line establishes a high-capacity logistics channel connecting regional production hubs to the Port of Dar es Salaam and neighboring markets in Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
