Tanzania’s CNG Push Gains a Homegrown Champion in Energo

Tanzania · Energy

As Tanzania pushes drivers to swap petrol for cheaper natural gas, a local firm is betting that bank financing — not subsidies — will get the country there.

Tanzania wants its drivers off petrol and onto natural gas, and the maths is on the country’s side: it sits on enormous gas reserves, and compressed natural gas (CNG) costs about half what petrol does. The obstacle has always been the upfront cost of converting a car. A Dar es Salaam firm, Energo Tanzania, thinks it has found the missing piece — bank loans — and has signed financing deals with two of the country’s largest lenders to prove it.

A homegrown bet on gas

Energo Tanzania, registered in 2023, runs a CNG station at Mwenge in Dar es Salaam and converts petrol vehicles to run on gas. Its newest move is the important one: partnerships with Equity Bank and CRDB Bank to finance those conversions. That tackles the single biggest barrier to adoption — the lump-sum cost — by letting drivers spread it over a loan and repay it out of their fuel savings.

It is a notably market-based approach. Rather than waiting for the state to subsidise conversions, Energo is trying to make the switch bankable, which — if it works — is a far more scalable model for a country of tight household budgets.

Why drivers are switching

The appeal is simple economics. CNG costs roughly half the price of petrol in Tanzania, and a conversion — at roughly 2.6 million Tanzanian shillings (about US$1,000) — typically pays for itself in about 12 to 18 months of driving. After that, the savings are the driver’s to keep.

The trend is accelerating. About 15,000 vehicles had been converted nationwide by February 2026; a BBC report just over a year earlier, in January 2025, put the figure near 5,000. That is roughly a tripling in little more than a year — fast growth, even if the base is small against Tanzania’s total vehicle fleet, and still constrained by the number of filling stations.

The bigger gas picture

Tanzania’s CNG drive rests on a much larger resource. The country holds an estimated 57.54 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and the state gas utility and private operators are rolling out more filling stations to match rising demand. The prize beyond transport is exports: a long-stalled US$42 billion liquefied natural gas (LNG) project, involving majors such as Shell and Equinor, is targeting a host-government agreement in 2026 that could finally move it forward.

For a country that spends heavily importing refined fuel, converting domestic drivers to domestic gas is a double win — cheaper transport for households and fewer dollars spent on petrol imports. Energo is a small player in that story, but its financing model may be the kind of practical fix that turns a national ambition into everyday reality.

Sources

• The Citizen
• Daily News
• IPP Media
• Energy Capital & Power

This article was produced by The Rio Times’ automated newsroom system. How we use AI · Report an error

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