The politics of the temporary: Tanzanian local content in the East African crude oil pipeline

Abstract

This paper examines the spatio-temporalities of the implementation of local content policies on the East African Crude Oil Pipeline by the Tanzanian Government. Costing $3.5 billion and spanning Uganda and Tanzania, the pipeline is one of the largest cross-border infrastructure projects in the history of East Africa and has presented both countries an opportunity to enhance local content policies in the hydrocarbon sector. It has also presented a unique project to study the temporalities of local content. With the majority of investment expected to occur in the construction phase that is estimated to be completed in two to three years, there appears to be a short term ‘window of opportunity’ for companies and labour alike to participate. Focusing solely on the Tanzanian portion of the pipeline and using fieldwork in Dar es Salaam and Tanga from June 2017 to August 2018, before the suspension of the project, this paper argues that the temporary nature of EACOP resulted in the construction of urgencies to establish a comprehensive local content sector. The result of this is one of multiple paces, and a division on what local content entails based on geography.