China’s Bagamoyo Port Project: Geo-economic and Geo-political Imperatives for India

Tanzania is a strategically located country on the eastern coast of Africa. It is an important node of China’s Maritime Silk Road project and constitutes a significant part of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Under the BRI, China had envisaged that Bagamoyo would be the largest port in all of Africa, supplemented by a Special Economic Zone (SEZ), and a trans-continental railway line, making Tanzania a hub of commerce in East Africa. Bagamoyo itself is a tiny town located about 45 miles north of the former capital city Dar es Salaam.2 The port was expected to handle 20 million Twenty-foot Equivalent Units (TEU) by 2045, which is 25 times the amount of cargo the Dar es Salaam port handles.