Written By | Torch Media Africa
Tanzania's digital story is less about hype and more about scale — and that scale is now impossible to ignore.
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Technological Transformation
Tanzania rarely dominates headlines about African technology the way Nigeria, Kenya, or Egypt do. Yet by mid-2026 the country of roughly 65 million people has quietly assembled one of the continent's most consequential digital economies: a mobile money market approaching 100 billion dollars in annual transaction value, a government-owned fiber backbone extending toward the Democratic Republic of Congo, a homegrown fintech that has broken into global rankings, and telecom penetration figures that would have seemed fanciful a decade ago. Tanzania's digital story is less about hype and more about scale — and that scale is now impossible to ignore.
Connectivity: 111.9 Million Subscriptions and Counting
The raw connectivity numbers set the stage. According to the Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA), total telecom subscriptions reached 111.9 million in the quarter ending March 2026, up 4.6 percent from 106.9 million in December 2025, putting the telecom penetration rate at 159.8 percent as many Tanzanians maintain multiple SIMs. Internet subscriptions rose to 58.9 million over the same quarter, with penetration in the mid-80s percent range — TCRA data put it at 85.3 percent at the end of 2025. Vodacom leads the mobile market with a 32.3 percent share, followed by Yas (the rebranded Tigo) at 28.5 percent, Airtel at 21.2 percent, Halotel at 16.4 percent, and the state-owned TTCL at 1.6 percent.
Next-generation coverage is expanding quickly from a low base. 5G coverage reached 30.1 percent of the population by December 2025 and climbed to roughly 33 percent by the first quarter of 2026, while average mobile internet speeds have risen sharply as operators densify their networks. One notable absence: Starlink. The satellite operator applied for a Tanzanian license in late 2024, but the TCRA issued tightened guidelines for satellite operators in mid-2025, leaving Tanzania without the service that neighboring Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, and Zambia already enjoy — a policy choice that critics argue risks leaving remote areas underserved even as the terrestrial network grows.
The Fiber Spine: NICTBB, Cross-Border Links, and Subsea Capacity
Underneath the mobile boom lies deliberate, state-led infrastructure investment. The National ICT Broadband Backbone (NICTBB), operated by TTCL, now comprises nearly 8,000 kilometers of government-owned fiber connecting all regions of the country, key border crossings, data centers, and the submarine cable landing stations at Dar es Salaam. Tanzania is served by the Seacom and EASSy subsea systems and, since August 2023, by the massive 2Africa cable, which links the country directly to Europe, the Middle East, and Asia and has helped push down wholesale bandwidth costs.
The backbone is increasingly a regional asset. In July 2025, Kenya and Tanzania launched a 130-kilometer cross-border terrestrial fiber link between Lunga Lunga and Horohoro with transmission capacity of up to 1.6 terabits per second, giving each country redundant access to the other's submarine cable systems. An even more ambitious project is underway westward: a 186-kilometer submarine fiber cable beneath Lake Tanganyika that will extend the NICTBB into the Democratic Republic of Congo, positioning Tanzania as the natural transit corridor for one of Africa's largest and least connected markets. The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology has tabled a budget of 222.6 billion Tanzanian shillings (about 89 million dollars) for 2026/27, with an unusually high 94.1 percent earmarked for development projects, including rural towers, the DRC backbone extension, and national data centers. 
Mobile Money and the Formalization of Finance
Where connectivity meets daily life is money, and here Tanzania's 2025 figures from the Bank of Tanzania are remarkable. Active mobile money users rose 19.9 percent to 75.78 million accounts, and mobile payment value grew 28.3 percent to 255,134 billion shillings — on the order of 100 billion dollars. The composition of that activity is evolving in ways that matter for development economics: digital credit grew 32.3 percent to 5,578 billion shillings, extended increasingly through alternative credit-scoring models that reach small businesses and smallholder farmers without collateral, while digital savings nearly tripled, rising 263 percent to 3,181 billion shillings, as mobile platforms let ordinary Tanzanians store value securely for the first time.
Public infrastructure has amplified the private rails. The Tanzania Instant Payment System (TIPS), the central bank's interoperability switch, processed 454 million transactions worth 29.9 trillion shillings (11.66 billion dollars) in 2024 — more than double the 4.88 billion dollars processed the year before — by allowing customers of different banks and mobile money operators to transact instantly. The Bank of Tanzania has also leaned into regulatory experimentation: its Fintech Regulatory Sandbox opened applications for its latest cohort with a deadline of July 31, 2026, inviting banks, electronic money issuers, and startups to test products under supervision rather than in legal gray zones.
NALA and the Startup Ecosystem's Coming of Age
Tanzania's startup scene remains smaller than Kenya's or Nigeria's, but it has produced a genuine champion. NALA, founded by Tanzanian entrepreneur Benjamin Fernandes, raised a 40 million dollar Series A in 2024 — one of the largest ever for a Tanzanian company — to build out both its consumer remittance product and Rafiki, its B2B cross-border payments infrastructure. In 2025 and 2026 the company kept climbing: it was named to the Forbes Fintech 50 alongside Africa's most prominent fintechs, secured a credit facility of up to 50 million dollars from Mars Growth Capital (backed by Liquidity Group and MUFG) beginning with a 25 million dollar tranche, and is reportedly preparing a roughly 120 million dollar equity raise toward the end of 2026 that would value a 10 to 15 percent stake. For a company that began as a Dar es Salaam budgeting app, NALA's trajectory is the strongest proof yet that globally competitive fintech can be built from Tanzania.
The broader funding picture is improving from a modest base. Tanzanian startups attracted 43 million dollars in the third quarter of 2024 alone, briefly ranking the country third in Africa for venture funding that quarter, with fintech accounting for the overwhelming majority. The government, recognizing the momentum, has advanced a national Startup Policy intended to address licensing, taxation, and capital-access hurdles that founders have long cited as constraints.
What to Watch
Three questions will define the next phase of Tanzania's digital transformation. First, whether the state can finish the physical build-out — the DRC link, national data centers, and rural towers — without crowding out private investment or succumbing to the delays that afflict large public projects. Second, whether regulators can balance control with openness: the satellite licensing standoff and a historically heavy-handed approach to online content sit uneasily beside the central bank's genuinely progressive fintech sandbox. Third, whether NALA remains an outlier or becomes the first of a cohort, which depends on deepening local seed capital and digital skills. What is no longer in question is the direction of travel. With 112 million subscriptions, near-universal mobile money adoption among adults, and fiber pushing toward Central Africa, Tanzania has become digital infrastructure's quiet giant in East Africa.
