NDC courts Chinese investor in strategic industrial and infrastructure collaboration

Dar es Salaam. The National Development Corporation (NDC) on July 28, 2025, held investment discussions with Liaoning Zizhu Group, a Chinese industrial conglomerate, as part of its ongoing efforts to attract investors to Tanzania’s key development projects in manufacturing and infrastructure.

“The talks were aimed at showcasing Tanzania’s wide array of investment opportunities under the stewardship of the NDC,” a brief statement posted on the NDC’s social media platforms said.

Officials from Liaoning Zizhu Group, for their part, sought to understand the country’s business environment and regulatory framework.

Liaoning Zizhu Group, established in 2008, is a prominent and comprehensive Chinese enterprise with a broad portfolio of interests, including steel smelting, steel rolling production, deep processing, and high-end equipment manufacturing.

While the NDC did not explicitly state whether the extraction of iron ore deposits was on the agenda, it is widely understood that the corporation is actively seeking investors for its pivotal projects, most notably the Liganga iron ore project.

NDC’s meeting with Liaoning Zizhu signals Tanzania’s growing appetite for capital-intensive industrial investment and its readiness to forge partnerships with reputable foreign enterprises.

The engagement with Liaoning Zizhu Group comes at a time when Tanzania is intensifying its search for investors in the integrated Mchuchuma–Liganga industrial mining corridor.

In his May 2025 budget speech to Parliament, the Minister for Industry and Trade, Dr Selemani Said Jafo, informed lawmakers that discussions with China’s Shudao Investment Group Company Limited (SDIG) were progressing well and were nearing conclusion.

The first round of negotiations with Shudao was held in January 2025, followed by the second in February, and the third in April.

Key issues agreed upon so far include consensus on critical contractual elements such as an appropriate shareholding structure and investment model (financing structure); the required level of investment capital; the governance and operational framework of the project; the duration of the Investment Agreement; the updating of the project's feasibility study; and the development of a joint financial model.

Dr Jafo said the government has already paid Sh15.4 billion in compensation to 1,142 residents who vacated land earmarked for the Liganga and Mchuchuma integrated project.

Shudao Investment Group is not the first foreign firm to show interest in the Liganga project.

NDC had earlier contracted another Chinese firm, Sichuan Hongda Group, to develop the Liganga project, but the deal fell through.

The company had been awarded the tender in 2010, but in 2018 its officials claimed in a paid newspaper advert that they were being held back by the failure to secure the incentives negotiated with the government in 2015.

Mchuchuma is reported to have 428 million tonnes of coal, while Liganga has 128 million tonnes of iron ore. The Chinese company has drawn up an integrated mining and exploitation plan that includes the generation of 600MW of electricity.

The firms will additionally process all the minerals locally to separate titanium and vanadium from iron ore.

The Liganga–Mchuchuma project has for many years been listed as a strategic national development investment.