Short answer: Tanzanian public buyers awarded at least 172 street lighting, solar lighting and high-mast contracts between January 2025 and February 2026, worth about TZS 46 billion. More than half mention solar. TANROADS awards the largest contracts by value, while councils and TARURA regional offices award many smaller ones. The median contract is about TZS 85 million, and 119 different contractors won awards.
We extracted every contract award whose title refers to street lights, floodlights, high masts or solar lighting from the open contracting data published by Tanzania’s Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA), and analysed them by buyer, value and type.
Key numbers
- 172 lighting contract awards, January 2025 to February 2026, about TZS 46 billion in total.
- 56 % mention solar; 17 % mention high masts or floodlights; 17 % are maintenance or repair contracts.
- TANROADS regional offices awarded about TZS 24.6 billion, more than half of the value, across 36 contracts.
- Median contract about TZS 85 million; 119 contractors won awards.
1. Who buys
| Buyer | Contracts | Value (TZS billion) | Typical work |
|---|---|---|---|
| TANROADS regional offices | 36 | 24.6 | Solar street lights on trunk and regional roads, often with traffic and crossing lights |
| TARURA regional and district offices | 31 | 8.7 | Street lights on urban and district roads |
| City, municipal and district councils | 48 | 8.3 | Town centres, markets, bus stands |
| Other public bodies | 57 | 4.5 | Institutions, ports, campuses, utilities |
Regionally, the most active road agency offices in the data were Lindi, Dar es Salaam, Morogoro, Mtwara, Tabora and Kigoma. Demand is spread across the country, not concentrated in Dar es Salaam.
2. Contract sizes
| Contract value (TZS) | Contracts |
|---|---|
| Under 50 million | 70 |
| 50–200 million | 42 |
| 200–500 million | 36 |
| Over 500 million | 24 |
Tanzanian contracts are larger on average than Kenya’s county awards: the middle half range from about TZS 18 million to TZS 360 million. Large road agency packages sit alongside small council orders for a market or a bus stand.
3. A fragmented contractor base
119 different companies won the 172 awards; 18 won more than once, and the five most frequent winners together hold about a fifth of awards. Electrical contractors, civil works firms and solar specialists all appear. Most are local firms, as Tanzania’s 2023 Public Procurement Act reserves smaller contracts for local companies.
4. What it means for contractors and suppliers
- Solar is the default for new roads. Over half of awards mention solar, especially on road agency contracts.
- Size for the April rains on the coast and for the long rains inland; see our autonomy simulation, where Dar es Salaam was one of the hardest sites.
- Maintenance is a market too. About one contract in six is for repairing existing lights, so spare parts and compatible replacements matter.
- Plan the TBS certificate early. Regulated goods without a certificate of conformity face a 15 % CIF penalty; see our Tanzania tender guide.
Method and limits
We used the PPRA open contracting dataset for 2025 and 2026 as published on the Open Contracting Partnership’s data registry, selected awards whose tender titles refer to street lighting, floodlights, high masts or solar lights, and grouped them by buyer, value and supplier. Some titles combine lighting with other works, values are award totals in Tanzanian shillings as published, and not every award may be in the dataset. Treat the figures as a lower bound.
FAQ
Who buys street lights in Tanzania?
Mainly TANROADS regional offices (largest by value), TARURA regional and district offices, and city, municipal and district councils.
How big are Tanzanian public lighting contracts?
The median award is about TZS 85 million; about a third exceed TZS 200 million.
How much of Tanzania’s public lighting is solar?
About 56 % of 2025–2026 lighting awards mention solar.
Where is this data from?
Tanzania PPRA open contracting data (OCDS), retrieved from data.open-contracting.org and analysed by Solmast in October 2026.
How we help
We supply solar street lights, poles and LED heads to Tanzanian contractors, with lighting calculations, energy balances sized for local rains, samples and the documents for the TBS certificate. See also our high-mast lighting.
Sources: Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA) Tanzania, open contracting data 2025–2026, via the OCP Data Registry, retrieved October 2026; analysis by Solmast. Related: Kenya lighting contracts analysed, Zambia street lighting contracts analysed.