The Infrastructure Behind Tanzania’s Digital Future Needs National Protection

When we talk about critical infrastructure in Tanzania, our minds immediately go to the visible. We picture new roads, electricity lines across regions, or the pipelines delivering water to our cities. But there is an invisible grid that is just as vital to our daily survival: our telecommunications network.

This is what allows a trader in Kariakoo to pay her supplier instantly via mobile money, and a smallholder farmer in Kilombero to access a microfinance loan for fertiliser right on his handset. It is how a student in Dodoma downloads his coursework, and how families separated by hundreds of kilometres stay connected.  Our digital grid is the central nervous system of the modern economy, yet as a country, we do not recognise it as Critical Economic Infrastructure (CEI), nor do we treat it with the same urgency as our physical roads.

Formally classifying telecommunications as CEI entails protecting physical network assets from vandalism, standardising right of way fees for fibre-laying, and treating connectivity as foundational economic infrastructure. Once digital networks are recognised to underpin trade, education, financial inclusion, and public service delivery; public policy should optimise for long-term network expansion, quality of service, and resilience rather than short-term fiscal extraction. Most governments do not treat roads, electricity grids, or even water systems as a source of revenue because they recognise them as critical infrastructure supporting the growth and development of the economy. Telecommunications networks serve the same function enabling the digital economy.

The growth of this sector has been extraordinary. According to the Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA), active mobile subscriptions surged by 102 per cent, from around 52.8 million in early 2021 to over 111.9 million in the first quarter of 2026. Over the same period, mobile internet users grew from 29 million in 2021 to 58.9 million users in the first quarter of 2026, transforming how millions of citizens trade, learn, connect, and communicate.

However, this expansion hides a growing infrastructure strain. As millions of new users come online and more economic activity shifts onto digital platforms, the pressure placed on network infrastructure intensifies. Every mobile payment, streamed lesson, business transaction, or government digital service depends on physical infrastructure: towers, fibre-optic cables, spectrum, and reliable power systems. Yet, data from the TCRA reveals that Tanzania’s entire digital grid rests on  10,084 telecom towers. Stretching this infrastructure footprint to serve 29.8 million smartphone users, within a national population estimated at 72 million presents an immense structural bottleneck. The result is growing pressure on network quality and resilience, particularly in underserved and rural regions where connectivity remains inconsistent and expensive to expand.

Closing this infrastructure gap requires sustained long-term capital investment. Although operators continue to grow revenues through rising digital adoption, maintaining network quality while expanding coverage has become increasingly capital-intensive. This challenge is significantly magnified when looking at the domestic operating environment: Tanzania operates in a structurally low Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) environment compared to other regional peers, as networks expand into rural areas where consumers lean toward smaller, budget-friendly options. When this reality is combined with a heavy tax burden, the capital required to support infrastructure investments shrinks dramatically, making it increasingly difficult to sustainably fund long-term digital expansion.

Tanzania’s fiscal and regulatory framework needs to shift from treating telecommunications as a high-yield revenue source to strategic economic infrastructure, unlocking private sector investment in the process. According to PWC, the sector faces a tax burden of around 46.6 per cent when excise duties, VAT, regulatory levies, spectrum-related fees, and mandatory sector contributions are combined. Collectively, however, these charges raise the cost of maintaining and expanding the networks that underpin Tanzania’s digital economy.

The long-term policy risk here is structural, because most telecom operators in Tanzania are subsidiaries of larger multinational groups, and so local operations must actively compete against other markets in their global portfolios for capital investment allocation. In these boardroom decisions, Return on Investment (ROI) is the ultimate deciding factor. If excessive taxes and regulatory burdens consistently depress local ROI, Tanzania risks losing out as parent companies logically redirect crucial infrastructure funding to more competitive jurisdictions. Ultimately, this shortfall slows network deployment into different regions, deepens connectivity inequality, and constrains broader economic participation.

Globally, jurisdictions that successfully position telecommunications as CEI are evolving their policy approach. They are actively prioritising the removal of barriers that hinder network expansion. India, for example, introduced reforms to streamline approvals for fibre deployment and tower installation across public and private land. As a result, approval time fell from 448 days in 2019  to roughly 34 days by late 2025, with thousands of infrastructure applications processed through a more coordinated system.

The lesson for Tanzania is, of course, not that it should replicate another country’s telecom model wholesale; it is that when governments actively reduce deployment friction and protect network assets, they build a competitive ROI environment that inherently accelerates sustainable connectivity. Achieving our goal of becoming a 1 trillion US-dollar economy by 2050 requires bold policy choices that support the sustainable growth and development of critical infrastructure, enabling businesses to trade and everyday citizens to fully participate in the modern digital economy.