Tanzania - Corruption
Corruption in Tanzania represents a persistent and multifaceted challenge that permeates virtually every sector of the economy and level of government despite comprehensive legal frameworks and periodic reform campaigns. According to Transparency International's 2024 Corruption Perceptions Index, Tanzania scored 41 out of 100, ranking 82nd among 180 countries globally, placing it above the sub-Saharan African average of 33 but still indicating substantial corruption challenges.
Transparency International (TI), which ranks perception of corruption in public sector, gave Tanzania a score of 38 points out of 100 for 2022 and 39 points for 2021. The Afrobarometer report estimates that between 2015 and 2019 the corruption increase in the previous 12 months was only 10 percent in Tanzania, the lowest in Africa. While for the same period, 23 percent of the respondents voted that Tanzania is doing a bad job of fighting corruption, again the lowest in Africa. Thirty-two percent of the respondents also noted that business executives are corrupt, up from 31 percent in 2015.
This score represents improvement from 2015 when Tanzania ranked 117th, reflecting anti-corruption campaigns initiated under President John Magufuli and continued under President Samia Suluhu Hassan, yet the persistence of corrupt practices across public procurement, land administration, taxation, customs, police services, and the judiciary reveals that corruption remains deeply embedded in the country's institutional fabric. Understanding corruption in Tanzania requires examining not merely the frequency of bribes or the magnitude of stolen funds but the systemic patterns, structural incentives, sectoral variations, historical trajectories, and political economy dynamics that sustain corrupt practices despite reform efforts.
Transparency International ranked Tanzania 81st out of 85 countries with a score of 1.9 on its corruption perception index in 1998, the first year Tanzania was included in its survey. In 2004 Tanzania was ranked 94th out of 146 countries, with a score of 2.4, on a scale in which less than 3.0 indicates "rampant corruption."
Jakaya Kikwete was elected president in 2005 based largely on an anti-corruption campaign message. The law provides criminal penalties for corruption by officials; however, the government did not implement the law effectively, and officials often engaged in corrupt practices with impunity. The World Bank’s Governance Indicators reflected that corruption was a serious problem.
Corruption is pervasive throughout Tanzanian society and is a serious problem across all sectors of the economy. The most affected sectors are government procurement, land administration, taxation and customs. Petty corruption in dealings with traffic, customs and immigration officers deters investment. Corruption is criminalized under the Prevention and Combating of Corruption Act (PCCA), which covers attempted corruption, extortion, passive and active bribery, money laundering and bribery of a foreign official. A range of legislations cover other corruption offences, but anti-corruption laws are applied inconsistently and are poorly enforced. Gift-giving and the use of facilitation payments for the purpose of inducing corrupt behavior are illegal under the PCCA.
The constitution provides for the freedom of opinion and expression of ideas. Individuals have the right to seek, receive, or disseminate information regardless of national boundaries. Additionally, the constitution provides for the freedom to communicate with protection from interference. The National Security Act of 1970 prohibits the disclosure of classified information, and any person who communicates any classified matter or causes the leakage of such classified information to any unauthorized person is liable on conviction to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 20 years.
Government ministers and MPs, as well as other public servants, are required to disclose their assets upon assuming office, annually at year’s end, and upon leaving office; however, there was no enforcement mechanism or means to determine the accuracy of such disclosures. The Ethics Secretariat distributes forms each October for collection in December. In January Judge Salome Kaganda, commissioner general of the secretariat, reported that more than 2,197 public leaders did not submit their wealth declaration forms by December 31, 2012, as required by the law.
In 2012 the secretariat distributed 9,194 forms to politicians and civil servants, and by January, 3,738 politicians and 3,259 civil servants met the deadline for disclosure. Secretariat officials stated the 2,197 individuals who failed to meet the deadline were asked to show cause for the delay. Any declaration forms submitted or filed after the deadline must explain the failure to observe the law. Failure to do so is a violation of the law. Asset disclosures are not public. Although penalties exist for noncompliance, there is no enforcement mechanism, and the disclosure requirements do not cover spouses or children. Periodic reporting is not required as assets change.
The government continued to use specialized agencies to fight corruption, but their effectiveness was limited. A three-person unit within the president’s office, headed by the minister of state for good governance, was charged with coordinating anticorruption efforts and collecting information from all the ministries for publication in quarterly reports.
On 11 April 2013, the Office of the Controller and Auditor General reported to parliament that corruption and theft of public funds remained widespread across most public institutions and district councils, despite a range of government initiatives put in place to fight corruption.
On 20 August 2013, the chairman of the parliamentary Local Authority Accounts Committee, Mohamed Mbarouk, reported that approximately 70 district executive directors were implicated in theft of public funds. These individuals were transferred from their positions instead of facing prosecution. According to Mbarouk, nearly 33 percent of annual budget allocations to local councils were embezzled. Chief Secretary Ombeni Sefue reported in August 2013 that an investigation into the allegation of Permanent Secretary David Jairo’s involvement in the attempted bribing of MPs was still underway.
The PCCB is responsible for investigating suspected corruption cases, prosecuting offenders in coordination with the DPP, and educating the public about corruption. The PCCB had 24 regional offices and an office in every district on the mainland. As of 31 October 2013, the PCCB had received 5,340 allegations of corruption. During the year there were cases 2,618 pending in court and 661 prosecuted cases from which there were 76 convictions. The PCCB’s number of convictions has been approximately 1 percent of allegations through the last seven years.
The PCCB received a significant budget for staff and office resources, but the public and the media often complained that it failed to address major corruption cases adequately. The head of the PCCB also raised concerns about anticorruption efforts and suggested that the government introduce special courts to hear corruption cases.
According to the PCCB, most corruption investigations concerned government involvement in mining, land matters, energy, and investments. NGOs reported that allegations of corruption involved the Tanzania Revenue Authority, local government officials, police, licensing authorities, hospital workers, and the media.
The PCCB’s mandate does not extend to Zanzibar. During the year Zanzibar launched its own Anti-Corruption and Economic Crimes Authority after passing a law in late 2012 to create an independent, anticorruption agency. There were no investigations, since the authority received no complaints during the year.
The Public Accounts Committee of Tanzania’s parliament called November 30, 2014 for a thorough investigation after accusing senior government officials and a banking institution of corruption and money laundering. The government officials were accused of misappropriating $122 million of public funds. Deo Filikunjombe, vice chairman of the Public Accounts Committee and a leading member of the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM), said the administration had no choice but to implement his committee’s recommendations because the constitution empowers the lawmaking body to supervise the government.
“For the government, we have categorically stated that the president [should] remove the Minister of Energy and Minerals, the Attorney General, the Permanent Secretary at of the Ministry of Energy and Minerals and the Minister of Lands, Professor [Anna] Tibaijuka, who confessed [to] having received $1 million as proceeds of the money,” said Filikunjombe.
Tanzania's corruption landscape emerged from specific historical conditions rooted in the post-independence developmental state model. Under Julius Nyerere's leadership from 1961 to 1985, Tanzania pursued African socialism through the Ujamaa policy of collectivized agriculture and state-led development. This created an expansive public sector controlling most economic activity, generating opportunities for rent extraction through administrative discretion over resource allocation. The single-party system under TANU and later CCM concentrated political power without accountability mechanisms, allowing party-state elites to accumulate wealth through control of parastatals, licensing systems, and procurement. When economic crisis in the 1980s forced structural adjustment and liberalization, the state retained regulatory power even as it withdrew from direct production, creating new corruption opportunities at the interface between public regulation and private enterprise. The rapid transition to multiparty democracy in 1992 occurred without dismantling the institutional structures that facilitated corruption, meaning democratic reforms coexisted with patronage networks and rent-seeking behavior inherited from the socialist era.
Public procurement stands as perhaps the most corruption-prone sector in Tanzania, representing the intersection of large financial flows, administrative discretion, and political influence. Tanzanian public procurement involves massive government spending on infrastructure, services, and goods across all levels of government, with the World Bank estimating global public procurement at approximately 9.5 trillion dollars annually, accounting for 15 to 22 percent of GDP. In Tanzania, procurement corruption manifests through several mechanisms including bid rigging where officials favor well-connected companies, inflated contract prices that allow kickbacks to officials, phantom procurement where goods are never delivered despite payment, substandard quality resulting from collusion between contractors and inspectors, and emergency procurement that bypasses competitive bidding. The 2017/2018 audit report revealed goods worth over 1.1 billion Tanzanian shillings were procured and utilized without proper inspection in violation of procurement regulations, creating vulnerabilities for acquiring substandard products through collusion and fraud. Almost seven in every ten companies surveyed expected to offer gifts to obtain public contracts, indicating how normalized corruption has become in procurement processes.
The structural factors enabling procurement corruption include the discretionary power officials exercise in tender evaluation, weak oversight mechanisms that fail to detect irregularities until after funds are spent, inadequate penalties that make corruption a rational risk given potential gains, political interference in procurement decisions to direct contracts toward party supporters or financiers, and capacity constraints in procurement entities lacking trained personnel to implement proper procedures. The Public Procurement Regulatory Authority has attempted reforms including barring firms engaged in corrupt practices from competing for government contracts, with 19 firms banned in 2014, and developing the National e-Procurement System to increase transparency and reduce face-to-face interactions that facilitate bribery. However, implementation challenges persist including resistance from officials benefiting from opaque systems, technical capacity gaps in smaller procuring entities, and limited civil society capacity to monitor procurement despite transparency initiatives. The Construction Sector Transparency Initiative, which Tanzania joined to enhance accountability in infrastructure projects, illustrates reform efforts, yet actual improvements remain constrained by enforcement gaps.
Land administration constitutes another critical corruption hotspot reflecting Tanzania's complex land tenure system and rapid urbanization pressures. All land in Tanzania is owned by the state with the President serving as trustee, but citizens acquire occupancy rights through various mechanisms including customary tenure in rural areas, granted rights of occupancy in urban areas, and leasehold arrangements for commercial purposes. This system concentrates enormous discretionary power in land officials who allocate plots, approve surveys, issue titles, and resolve disputes, creating multiple corruption opportunities. Land corruption manifests through illegal land allocations where officials grant plots to politically connected individuals or businesses without following proper procedures, double allocation of the same plot to multiple parties generating conflicts and requiring bribes to resolve, fraudulent title creation through corrupt surveyors and registry officials, extortion of bribes for routine land services that should be provided free or at nominal cost, and land grabbing where officials collude with investors to dispossess communities of customary land without fair compensation.
The Prevention and Combating of Corruption Bureau's research into land service delivery revealed compliance with the Client Service Charter for land administration stood below 50 percent, with challenges including severe staff shortages preventing timely service delivery, non-integrated IT systems allowing manipulation and duplication, weak supervision of local government land offices enabling corruption, and poor public education on land ownership procedures creating information asymmetries officials exploit. The 2024 PCCB report noted that land service regulations were reviewed particularly in areas such as land planning, surveying, titling, and permit issuance, recommending reforms in staffing, IT systems integration, and public education campaigns. However, land corruption proves especially difficult to address because it involves complex legal frameworks, multiple agencies with overlapping jurisdictions, high financial stakes given rising land values in urban areas, and political sensitivity since ruling party elites often benefit from corrupt land deals. The forced eviction of Indigenous Maasai communities from Ngorongoro involved land administration corruption where government officials facilitated investor access to ancestral lands through opaque processes without genuine community consent.
Taxation represents another major corruption sector directly affecting government revenue and business operations. The Tanzania Revenue Authority faces persistent corruption challenges despite reform efforts and digitalization initiatives. Tax corruption occurs through bribery to reduce assessed tax obligations, collusion between taxpayers and tax officials to underreport income or overstate deductions, extortion where officials demand bribes to process legitimate tax matters, facilitation payments to expedite routine services, and selective enforcement where politically connected businesses receive favorable treatment. Companies consistently rank irregular payments and bribes in annual tax payments as a significant deterrent to investment, with Tanzania performing among the worst globally in this category. The tax administration's complexity provides opportunities for corruption, requiring 49 payments and taking 179 hours annually on average, creating both inefficiency and corruption opportunities.
The structural factors enabling tax corruption include low salaries for tax officials making them susceptible to bribes, discretion in interpreting complex tax laws allowing officials to threaten high assessments unless bribes are paid, inadequate internal controls and audit capacity permitting corrupt officials to operate without detection, political pressure to meet revenue targets incentivizing aggressive and sometimes illegal collection tactics, and limited taxpayer knowledge of correct procedures making businesses vulnerable to exploitation. The Tanzania Revenue Authority has stepped up anti-corruption efforts through strict controls to improve revenue collection and service delivery, including digitalization through the Integrated Customs Management System and electronic filing systems. However, the massive informal sector estimated at 48.1 percent of GDP operates largely outside the formal tax system, reflecting both the difficulty of doing business legally and the prevalence of corruption that makes formal sector operations costly. The 2024 PCCB report identified that 52 local councils failed to remit withholding taxes in full, resulting in additional 2.15 billion shillings in taxes collected after investigations, illustrating how corruption extends beyond individual tax officials to systematic institutional failures.
Customs administration presents similar corruption challenges at the intersection of international trade and government revenue. Foreign companies consistently identify petty corruption among customs and immigration officers as a major obstacle to investment. Customs corruption manifests through bribery to reduce duty assessments or expedite clearance, undervaluation of imports to reduce customs payments through collusion with officials, smuggling facilitated by corrupt officials who allow goods to bypass proper inspection, extortion where officials demand payments for routine clearance procedures, and selective enforcement targeting businesses without political connections. The complexity of customs regulations, involvement of multiple agencies, high volume of transactions, and time pressures facing importers all create opportunities and incentives for corruption. Tanzania has attempted to address customs corruption through the Tanzania Customs Integrated System for online processing of customs documents and infrastructure upgrades at Dar es Salaam port, making trading across borders easier by reducing clearance time and face-to-face interactions.
However, customs corruption persists because structural incentives remain largely unchanged. Customs officials possess discretionary power in classifying goods and determining valuations, their salaries remain insufficient to resist corruption temptations, enforcement of disciplinary measures against corrupt officials proves inconsistent, and political connections protect some corrupt officials from prosecution. The recent seizure of 15.78 kilograms of smuggled gold worth approximately 3.4 billion Tanzanian shillings at Dar es Salaam port illustrates how high-value commodities particularly in the extractive sector face significant smuggling risks involving corrupt officials. The challenge of addressing customs corruption extends beyond individual officer integrity to broader questions of trade policy, regulatory simplification, salary structures, and institutional accountability that require systemic rather than merely technical reforms.
Police corruption represents a particularly corrosive form of malfeasance because it undermines law enforcement and access to justice while creating pervasive insecurity for ordinary citizens and businesses. Half of surveyed households believe the police force is corrupt, with multiple reports of police corruption and impunity. Police corruption manifests through bribery to avoid prosecution for actual offenses, extortion through false accusations resolved by payments, bribery for routine services like obtaining police reports or expediting investigations, protection rackets where businesses pay police for security or to avoid harassment, and involvement in criminal activities including theft and violence. Among Tanzanians who had contact with police in the past year, 35 percent reported paying bribes to avoid problems while 30 percent paid bribes to obtain assistance, indicating corruption in both enforcement and service delivery functions.
The structural factors enabling police corruption include inadequate salaries forcing officers to seek supplementary income through bribes, weak internal discipline mechanisms that rarely punish corrupt officers effectively, political interference protecting well-connected officers from accountability, inadequate training creating unprofessionalism and poor service orientation, and lack of resources forcing officers to extract money from the public for basic operational needs. Foreign companies identify petty corruption among traffic police as particularly problematic for business operations, with arbitrary stops, false accusations, and demands for on-the-spot fines creating unpredictable costs and delays. Legal mechanisms exist to prosecute police corruption but authorities fail to implement them effectively, with corrupt officers rarely facing serious consequences. The fact that mainland police act as prosecutors in lower courts in nine of Tanzania's 30 regions creates additional conflicts of interest and opportunities for corruption, allowing police to both investigate crimes and prosecute cases without adequate oversight.
Judicial corruption undermines the rule of law and business confidence by making legal outcomes unpredictable and dependent on payments rather than merits. The judiciary was ranked the third most corrupt institution after police and the Tanzania Revenue Authority in Transparency International's 2015 Global Corruption Barometer. Judicial corruption manifests through bribes to court clerks to open or misdirect cases, bribes to magistrates and judges to influence decisions, deliberately slow processing of cases to pressure litigants into settlement or bribes, selective enforcement of orders depending on political connections, and corruption in the appointment and promotion process itself. Companies report that irregular payments are often exchanged for favorable court decisions, making the degree to which the judiciary can provide expeditious and fair trials questionable. More than a third of firms perceive courts as a major constraint to doing business, undermining investment and economic development.
The structural factors enabling judicial corruption include chronic underfunding leaving courts without adequate resources, salaries, or infrastructure, insufficient independence with judges appointed by the President and subject to executive influence, political interference in high-profile or politically sensitive cases, inadequate training and capacity particularly in lower courts, lack of transparency in appointments with unknown criteria for selecting judges, and weak disciplinary mechanisms that rarely sanction corrupt judicial officers. The judiciary has demonstrated some autonomy through occasional prosecutions of government officials for corruption, yet these remain exceptions rather than the norm. Lower courts prove especially vulnerable to corruption due to lower salaries, less oversight, higher case volumes, and judges with less training and professional standing. The ability to challenge government regulations and settle commercial disputes fairly proves limited, with businesses viewing the legal framework as inefficient for dispute resolution. Tanzania's membership in the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes and signatory status to the New York Convention on Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards provides alternative dispute resolution mechanisms, yet domestic court corruption continues deterring investment.
The extractive industries including mining and natural gas represent critical corruption concerns given the sector's contribution to GDP which grew from 7.3 percent in 2021 to 9.0 percent in 2023, creating substantial revenue flows vulnerable to misappropriation. Corruption in extractive industries manifests through opaque licensing processes where officials award exploration and extraction rights to favored companies without competitive bidding, undervaluation of resources and tax avoidance through transfer pricing where multinational mining companies shift profits to low-tax jurisdictions, smuggling of minerals particularly gold and tanzanite facilitated by corrupt officials, environmental violations enabled by officials accepting bribes to ignore pollution or improper waste disposal, and failure to collect revenues due from companies through tax evasion or favorable renegotiation of contracts. Illicit financial flows from the extractive sector cost Tanzania an estimated 3.5 billion dollars annually according to Global Financial Integrity, representing massive revenue losses that could fund development programs.
Tanzania joined the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative in 2009 and achieved compliant status in 2012 to promote transparency and accountability in natural resource extraction. The Tanzania Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative produces annual reports reconciling payments by companies with revenues received by government, providing data on local content requirements, artisanal mining contributions, beneficial ownership, and contract disclosure. These transparency initiatives have improved information availability, with Tanzania granting full access to information about public contracts and mining concessions, exceeding regional and income-group peers. However, transparency alone proves insufficient to prevent corruption without enforcement mechanisms, with compliance on beneficial ownership disclosure remaining low and many service-providing companies refusing to submit required information. The National Environment Management Council's failure to collect mandatory payments from extractive companies illustrates how non-compliance leads to revenue losses and corruption opportunities.
The structural challenges in extractive sector governance include technical complexity making oversight difficult for regulators lacking specialized expertise, remote locations of many mining operations limiting supervision, high profit margins creating strong incentives for bribery to reduce costs or avoid regulations, international dimensions involving multinational corporations with sophisticated tax avoidance strategies, and political connections of major investors providing protection from enforcement. The mining sector reforms introduced under Magufuli included stricter local content requirements, renegotiation of contracts perceived as unfavorable to Tanzania, and increased government equity participation in mining projects. These reforms aimed to increase Tanzania's share of mineral wealth but also created new corruption opportunities through discretionary enforcement, arbitrary changes to contracts, and political pressure on companies. The artisanal and small-scale mining sector employing thousands faces particular corruption challenges with miners dependent on sponsorships from more powerful actors, limiting their ability to benefit from transparent market structures despite new mineral markets aimed at ensuring tax collection.
The relationship between corruption and political power structures proves fundamental to understanding why corruption persists despite reform efforts. Tanzania's political system concentrates power in the ruling CCM party which has governed continuously since independence in 1961. This creates patronage networks where party loyalty and political connections determine access to government contracts, licenses, land allocations, and appointments, incentivizing corruption as a means of both financing politics and rewarding supporters. Grand corruption cases implicate the highest levels of government including senior politicians, permanent secretaries, and party officials in schemes involving massive misappropriation of public funds. The 2014 scandal involving alleged illegal payment of 122 million dollars by state officials to businessmen under the guise of energy contracts led to twelve donors suspending aid and the resignation of numerous senior ruling party figures including the Minister of Energy and Minerals, the Attorney General, and the Minister of Lands. Such cases reveal corruption as not merely individual malfeasance but systematic extraction embedded in political financing and elite accumulation.
The political economy of grand corruption involves complex relationships between the ruling party, domestic business elites particularly the Tanzanian-Asian business community, and multinational corporations seeking government contracts. Domestic private sector actors provide political financing to the ruling party in exchange for favorable treatment in procurement, regulatory enforcement, and access to opportunities. The BAE Systems radar deal scandal illustrates these dynamics, with British defense contractor BAE Systems paying considerable kickbacks to Tanzanian businessman Sailesh Vithlani who used proceeds to bribe senior government officials including the Attorney General and former Bank of Tanzania Governor to secure the contract. While such high-profile cases occasionally result in prosecutions, the Prevention and Combating of Corruption Bureau faces political obstacles in pursuing cases against senior figures with party protection. The Richmond energy scandal and Independent Power Tanzania scandals in the energy sector reveal similar patterns of contention within the ruling party over who benefits from corrupt deals and how proceeds are distributed.
President Magufuli's anti-corruption campaign from 2015 to 2021 represented the most sustained high-level effort to combat corruption in recent Tanzanian history. His approach included surprise inspections of government offices, dismissals of corrupt officials including heads of the Tanzania Revenue Authority, port authority, and anti-corruption bureau itself, stricter enforcement of procurement regulations, establishment of specialized anti-corruption courts, and public campaigns stigmatizing corruption. These efforts contributed to Tanzania's improvement in Transparency International rankings from 117th in 2015 to 94th by 2020 and 82nd by 2024. Digitalization of government services reduced opportunities for face-to-face bribery, with electronic tax filing, online customs processing, and digital land registries making transactions more transparent and traceable. The strengthening of the Prevention and Combating of Corruption Bureau provided greater investigative capacity and legal authority to pursue corruption cases.
However, the limitations of Magufuli's anti-corruption campaign reveal deeper structural obstacles to reform. Critics argued the campaign selectively targeted political opponents and lower-level officials while protecting well-connected party elites, using anti-corruption rhetoric to consolidate political control rather than genuinely dismantling corrupt systems. The PCCB faced accusations of focusing on low-level corruption while doing little to address grand corruption by senior officials who continued appearing in high-profile scandals. Political interference limited the bureau's independence, with prosecutorial decisions subject to political considerations about who could be investigated and charged. The campaign also created economic uncertainties through aggressive revenue collection tactics that some businesses labeled arbitrary and without merit, potentially deterring investment even as it increased collections. When Magufuli died in 2021, observers feared anti-corruption efforts might diminish under his successor, though President Hassan has publicly committed to continuing the campaign including launching legal reform projects to prevent officials from exploiting legal loopholes.
Public perceptions of corruption reveal important dynamics about how ordinary Tanzanians experience and understand corruption in their daily lives. Afrobarometer surveys show that the share of citizens believing corruption is increasing dropped from 39 percent in 2022 to 33 percent in 2024, while those feeling corruption is decreasing declined from 35 to 30 percent, suggesting mixed perceptions about trends. More than half of respondents, 58 percent, approve of the government's handling of corruption, indicating some confidence in official anti-corruption efforts. However, significant numbers of citizens report paying bribes for basic services including 35 percent paying police bribes to avoid problems, 30 percent paying police for assistance, 16 percent paying for medical care, and 14 percent paying for identity documents. Most strikingly, 75 percent of Tanzanians believe reporting corruption is dangerous while only 20 percent feel safe to report without fear of retaliation, revealing how fear constrains accountability even when citizens witness corruption.
This fear of reporting corruption reflects the risks whistleblowers and corruption investigators face including harassment, arbitrary arrest, job loss, and physical violence. Civil society activists monitoring corruption have faced abductions, threats, and restrictions on their organizations' operations. Journalists investigating corruption scandals experience pressure, censorship, and sometimes arrest on charges like sedition or incitement. The lawyer who led legal objections to the controversial DP World port deal was arrested and charged with incitement to violence and treason, though released after several days, sending a chilling message about the costs of challenging potentially corrupt deals. This climate of fear means much corruption goes unreported and unpunished because citizens rationally calculate that the risks of reporting outweigh potential benefits, allowing corrupt officials to operate with relative impunity despite legal frameworks criminalizing their behavior.
The public service sector broadly carries high corruption risks due to structural factors affecting government employment and bureaucratic functioning. Public officials receive inadequate salaries making them susceptible to corruption as supplementary income, with pay scales failing to keep pace with living costs particularly in urban areas. Bureaucratic procedures for licenses, permits, and services remain burdensome and time-consuming, creating opportunities for officials to demand bribes for expedited processing or favorable outcomes. Public administrations suffer from chronic lack of resources and weak institutional capacities, with poorly trained staff, outdated systems, and inadequate supervision enabling corruption. Political interference in bureaucratic operations means merit-based systems for hiring, promotion, and discipline often give way to patronage and political loyalty, reducing professional standards and accountability. Indeed, gifts and bribes are perceived as widespread when applying for public utilities, permits, and routine government services, normalized to the point where citizens and businesses budget for these informal payments.
The healthcare sector illustrates how corruption affects service delivery in critical public services. Sixteen percent of Tanzanians report paying bribes for medical care, indicating corruption permeates even health services meant to be free or low-cost. Healthcare corruption manifests through demands for unofficial payments to receive treatment, theft of medicines and supplies for private sale, absenteeism by medical personnel who maintain private practices instead of working public shifts, favoritism in treatment allocation based on payments, and procurement corruption in medical supplies and equipment. The 2024 PCCB report noted monitoring of health sector projects among its priorities, recognizing corruption risks in health infrastructure construction and medical supply procurement. Healthcare corruption proves particularly harmful because it denies vulnerable populations access to essential services, contributing to poor health outcomes and perpetuating poverty.
Education represents another critical sector affected by corruption with implications for human capital development and intergenerational poverty. Corruption in education includes bribery for admission to better schools, payment for grades or examination results, ghost teachers who collect salaries without working, procurement corruption in school construction and supplies, and embezzlement of school funds by officials and headmasters. The government's provision of free education from basic level through Form Six aims to increase access and reduce corruption opportunities in school fees, with enrollment, transition rates, and exam results reportedly improving. However, informal payments continue in various forms, with parents sometimes pressured to contribute to school development or pay for materials that should be provided freely. Corruption in education affects the quality of schooling children receive, undermining efforts to develop the skilled workforce Tanzania needs for economic transformation.
The massive informal sector operating outside formal regulations and tax systems both reflects and perpetuates corruption dynamics. Estimated at 48.1 percent of GDP, Tanzania's informal economy encompasses vast numbers of small businesses and workers who conduct economic activity without licenses, tax registration, or compliance with regulations. The cumbersome business registration process, heavy tax burden, complex regulatory requirements, and prevalence of corruption in dealing with officials incentivize businesses to remain informal where they avoid official scrutiny but also lack legal protections and access to formal financing. Informal businesses must navigate corrupt officials through occasional bribes to avoid harassment while lacking recourse when victimized by more powerful actors. The informality perpetuates corruption because it keeps economic activity opaque and ungoverned, while also depriving government of revenue that could fund better services and higher official salaries that might reduce corruption incentives.
Tanzania's international context and donor relationships have influenced anti-corruption efforts and reform trajectories in complex ways. During the 1990s and 2000s, Western donors maintained significant leverage through development assistance, periodically conditioning aid on governance improvements including anti-corruption measures. The 1996 Warioba report assessing corruption's state led to establishment of the Prevention of Corruption Bureau, Good Governance Coordination Unit, and Ethics Inspectorate Department partly in response to donor pressure. Major corruption scandals triggering donor responses including aid suspensions created political pressure for reforms, though these typically targeted symptoms rather than structural causes. The 2014 energy sector scandal that led twelve donors to suspend aid illustrated donor willingness to use financial leverage, yet such interventions proved episodic and often resumed aid before meaningful reforms occurred.
By the 2020s, Tanzania's international context had shifted dramatically with China emerging as its largest infrastructure investor and lender, providing development finance explicitly decoupled from governance conditionality. This reduced Western donor leverage as Tanzania could access alternative financing without anti-corruption reforms. Chinese projects including railways, ports, and industrial zones operate through bilateral government agreements with limited transparency or oversight mechanisms, creating new corruption opportunities while reducing accountability pressure. The controversial DP World deal giving Dubai's state-owned port operator partial control of Dar es Salaam port for 30 years, approved despite widespread corruption allegations and opposition protests, illustrated how foreign investment deals increasingly proceed without meaningful public scrutiny or donor intervention. The Financial Action Task Force's grey-listing of Tanzania in October 2022 for ineffective systems detecting and sanctioning money laundering and terrorist financing indicates international concern about financial governance gaps facilitating corruption.
The relationship between corruption and democratic governance reveals how authoritarian tendencies undermine anti-corruption efforts despite official rhetoric. Genuine anti-corruption requires independent institutions including an impartial judiciary, free press able to investigate and report corruption without censorship or retaliation, autonomous anti-corruption agencies with prosecutorial independence, active civil society monitoring government performance, and democratic accountability through competitive elections allowing citizens to punish corrupt politicians. Tanzania's democratic regression under Hassan's government with opposition leaders imprisoned, media censored, civil society restricted, and elections manipulated creates conditions where corruption flourishes because accountability mechanisms are neutralized. When political competition is suppressed and opposition effectively banned from elections, the ruling party faces minimal political costs for corruption, removing incentives for reform.
The selective use of anti-corruption campaigns for political purposes represents a particular danger where prosecutions target opposition figures and critics while protecting ruling party allies. When anti-corruption rhetoric serves primarily as a tool for consolidating power rather than genuinely addressing corruption, public cynicism increases and institutional credibility erodes. The charging of opposition leader Tundu Lissu with treason for advocating electoral reforms and the banning of the main opposition party CHADEMA from elections under various pretexts including failure to sign ethics codes illustrates how anti-corruption mechanisms can be weaponized against political opponents. This undermines genuine anti-corruption work by conflating legitimate enforcement with political persecution, making citizens skeptical about government commitment to fighting corruption versus using anti-corruption rhetoric strategically.
The Prevention and Combating of Corruption Bureau's 2024 performance report showing monitoring of over 1,700 development projects valued at 11.48 trillion shillings demonstrates significant anti-corruption activity. The reduction in investigated projects from 171 worth 143.35 billion shillings in 2022/2023 to 92 worth 65.16 billion shillings in 2023/2024 suggests preventive measures may be having positive effects, though alternative explanations include reduced scrutiny, political interference limiting investigations, or actual reduction in corruption. The bureau's work identifying irregularities in construction contracts, non-compliance with material quality standards, and delays in contractor payments reveals ongoing corruption challenges even in monitored projects. Research into tax systems revealing 52 local councils failing to remit withholding taxes and improvements in land administration regulations indicate areas of progress, yet implementation gaps between policy reforms and actual enforcement remain substantial.
Looking forward, addressing Tanzania's corruption challenges requires confronting structural and institutional factors that sustain corrupt practices rather than merely prosecuting individual cases. Meaningful reform would necessitate comprehensive civil service reform including adequate salaries, merit-based hiring and promotion, professional training, and protection from political interference to reduce corruption incentives and build capable institutions. Judicial independence must be strengthened through transparent appointment processes, security of tenure, adequate resources, and insulation from executive pressure to provide impartial venues for corruption cases and disputes. Electoral reforms creating genuine political competition would increase accountability by allowing citizens to punish corrupt politicians through democratic processes rather than facing unaccountable single-party rule. Media freedom and civil society space must be protected to enable watchdog functions monitoring government performance and exposing corruption without fear of retaliation.
Anti-corruption institutions including the PCCB require genuine autonomy with leadership appointed through independent processes, secure budgets preventing political defunding, prosecutorial discretion free from executive interference, and protection for investigators and prosecutors pursuing sensitive cases. Procurement reforms beyond mere digitalization need to address political interference, strengthen oversight by independent bodies, increase public access to contract information, impose meaningful penalties on corrupt officials and companies, and simplify procedures reducing discretion and complexity. Land administration reforms must integrate IT systems, increase staffing, clarify procedures, provide public education, and resolve overlapping jurisdictions while addressing political sensitivity of land allocation. Tax administration improvements should continue digitalization while addressing salary issues, reducing complexity through tax policy simplification, and building audit capacity to detect sophisticated evasion.
International cooperation remains important for addressing corruption's transnational dimensions including illicit financial flows, money laundering, and multinational corporate tax avoidance. Tanzania's participation in the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, Anti-Money Laundering frameworks, and tax information exchange agreements provides mechanisms for international coordination, yet implementation requires political will and institutional capacity often lacking. The domestic political economy fundamentally shapes corruption outcomes, with ruling party interests, elite accumulation patterns, and patronage networks creating powerful stakeholders benefiting from corrupt systems who resist reforms threatening their positions. Until these political economy dynamics shift through either internal party evolution or genuine democratic competition creating alternative power centers, technical anti-corruption measures will achieve limited impact regardless of their design quality.
The paradox of Tanzania's corruption situation is that improvements in perception indexes and some anti-corruption indicators coexist with continued corruption across all sectors and levels of government. This reflects both genuine progress in areas like transparency, digitalization, and high-profile prosecutions, alongside persistent structural problems in salaries, institutional capacity, political interference, and elite interests. Citizens approve of government anti-corruption rhetoric and some visible actions while simultaneously experiencing routine corruption in accessing services and fearing retaliation for reporting corrupt officials. The gap between formal anti-corruption architecture including laws, institutions, and policies versus actual practices where corruption remains endemic reveals how legal frameworks alone cannot address problems rooted in political economy structures and institutional weaknesses. Moving beyond this paradox requires political leadership genuinely committed to reform even when it threatens party interests, sustained civil society pressure despite restrictions, international support for accountability mechanisms, and broader democratic governance enabling citizens to hold leaders accountable through electoral competition and institutional checks on power.
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