Tanzania's Zanzibar to get into land reclamation to spur investments

ARUSHA, Tanzania, March 16 (Xinhua) -- Ali Mohamed Shein, President of Tanzania's semi-autonomous archipelago of Zanzibar, on Saturday said that his government plans to venture into land reclamation projects to increase land for socio-economic development.

Shein unveiled the plans when speaking at the official opening of a one-day seminar on natural resources management, which involved different leaders from across the Indian Ocean archipelago.

With an area of 2,461 square kilometers, Zanzibar is made up of two main Islands of Unguja and Pemba, located about 30 kilometers off the coast of mainland Tanzania in the Indian Ocean.

Without divulging the amount of money that would be spent in the proposed land reclamation projects, the Zanzibar leader said that his government's move is in line with the increasing pressure of land shortage due to increasing population, which currently stands at 1.3 million people as per 2012 population census.

He said that there are a number of countries, which have benefited from land reclamation, citing Singapore as one example which had successfully deployed land reclamation, a process of creating new land from oceans.

"We want to follow suit, so that we also benefit from that by increasing the size of land for our own socio-economic development," he said, describing land reclamation as one of the options towards increasing size of the land.

The Zanzibar leader further said that there are private enterprises which have tried to expand the land size and they have managed to put up socio-economic investments.

"That's why we see land reclamation is possible in Zanzibar," he said, adding that the projects will be implemented by the government and through public-private partnership.