Rosatom, Tanzania Sign Deal for $1.2 Billion Uranium Processing Project

Aug. 9—Russia’s state-owned nuclear energy company, Rosatom, signed a contract to build and operate a pilot uranium processing plant in Tanzania, a project worth some $1.2 billion. Construction of the pilot processor will begin in the first quarter of 2026 and will test uranium processing technologies for the design of the main processing complex, which will have a production capacity of up to 3,000 tons of uranium per year. It is planned that as much as 300,000 tons of uranium could be processed over a 20-year period. Tanzania has an estimated 150 million tons of Uranium ore. The project would create 4,000 direct jobs and 100,000 indirect jobs.

“This is a landmark achievement for our country. For the first time, Tanzania is stepping onto the global uranium map with the capacity to supply a strategic mineral that is essential for safe and sustainable energy generation worldwide,” Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan said at the launching ceremony on July 31, according to World Nuclear News.

According to a statement from Tanzania’s Ministry of Minerals, the government holds a 20% stake “projected to earn USD40 million annually in dividends, channeled into national development projects,” and hundreds of direct and indirect jobs would be created.

Alexey Likhachev, Rosatom director general, said the corporation was helping to develop Tanzania’s “unique geological potential … as with all our partners, we intend to build cooperation with the Republic on the basis of equality and mutual understanding…We will be happy to help Tanzania take an important step towards integration into the global nuclear energy industry.”

The project will be built by Mantra Tanzania, which is a subsidiary of Rosatom subsidiary Uranium One Group. The latter is an international mining group of companies that also has assets in Kazakhstan and Namibia.