Tanzania’s pursuit of a diverse range of international partnerships is already delivering choice and resilience in trade and finance, and offering opportunities for Tanzania to participate in multilateral leadership on global issues.
Since taking office, President Samia has been the figurehead of Tanzania’s international re-emergence. Compared to Magufuli’s eight excursions in six years, she made 47 foreign trips between 2021 and 2023, of which 23 were outside of East and southern Africa. In an unprecedented move, Samia’s government has integrated its more open foreign policy goals into Tanzania’s national development strategy. The five-year plan for 2021/22 to 2025/26 includes ambitious targets to increase the number of foreign investors five-fold and to open 10 new embassies abroad.
The speed of this turnaround reflects a private consensus among President Samia’s close circle that Magufuli’s isolationism harmed Tanzania’s economic interests and contradicted its core foreign policy values. Yet obstacles remain on implementation. Magufuli’s populist rhetoric of anti-imperialism retains an enduring appeal for many citizens and offers political expediencies for his remaining allies in CCM.
Considering the party’s longstanding symbiotic relationship with the state, the influence of internal CCM party dynamics on foreign policy cannot be understated. As ties between the party and Tanzania’s private sector intensified with economic liberalization from the 1990s, the interests and financing links this relationship created have given rise to factional CCM networks. Subsequent frustration with reported corruption and infighting created the conditions for Magufuli’s rise as a relative outsider, but his centralization of power initially closed off ties to major party financiers. President Samia’s return to a more open economic diplomacy therefore brings with it the challenge of managing resurgent networks with their own financial interests, as well as elements of the party – both traditional and newer Magufuli-era figures – inclined to see this approach as a contradiction of Nyerere-era ideological purity.
Tanzania is also re-emerging in a significantly different global context than the one it left, and trust with international partners will take longer to build than it did to dismantle. In calling for the foreign policy review, President Samia stated that it ‘should address [global shifts] as we are currently experiencing the re-emergence of wrenching politics between superpower countries’. The new strategy, and President Samia’s approach to implementation, therefore must maintain a delicate balance between Tanzania’s core non-alignment principles and its drive to secure major investment and trade commitments, while also managing a politically sensitive transition from the Magufuli era.
Economic diplomacy and private investment
Tanzania’s foreign policy revival also comes at a pivotal moment for the country’s economy. Though poverty levels remain stubbornly high, strong economic growth during the last decade enabled Tanzania to reach lower middle-income class in 2020. The government now targets upper middle-income status by 2050. Infrastructure megaprojects pursued by successive Tanzanian governments are seen to embody this long-term vision: in addition to the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR), EACOP and gas projects, the country’s current major projects also include the Julius Nyerere Dam (JND), a $3 billion hydroelectric project under construction from 2019–24; and port developments (see Box 2).
In contrast to former president Magufuli’s focus, President Samia’s administration now recognizes that the viability of capital-intensive projects depends on attracting and sustaining foreign investment. In this sense, Tanzania’s domestic business environment is a significant factor underpinning the success of the country’s economic diplomacy. Yet interviewees for this paper spoke of an entrenched reluctance and suspicion among many government officials towards foreign investors, and a fear of infringement on sovereignty. This fear results in a slow-moving approach and a hesitation that has delayed – or even derailed – investment projects with clear financial benefits to the country. Such attitudes are often dismissed as an inevitable legacy of Tanzania’s socialist past, but such an essentialist reading is not productive. Other addressable factors also contribute to Tanzania’s sluggish approach, including corruption, a lack of transparency and factionalism within both the government and CCM.
Greater coordination between economic diplomacy and business reforms is critical to Tanzania’s foreign policy effectiveness.
Greater coordination between economic diplomacy and business reforms is therefore critical to Tanzania’s foreign policy effectiveness. Recent public appointments reflect positive signs in this respect: in September 2023, the head of Tanzania’s leading private enterprise body, the Tanzania Private Sector Foundation, was appointed to ambassador status in the MFA, and given the responsibility of designing a new internal implementation strategy on economic diplomacy. Meanwhile, a TIC director appointed in February 2023 is driving greater MFA-TIC coordination, including for the training of newly appointed diplomats. Tanzania also agreed to settlements on at least two sizeable international arbitration claims raised against it for Magufuli-era breaches of bilateral investment treaties in 2023, and the country has repealed a 2018 law on public–private partnerships that prevented investors from recourse to arbitration outside of Tanzania.
Nonetheless, further action is still needed to widen and consolidate the legal basis of existing reforms. Legislation from 2017 concerning natural resources remains largely intact – a major factor behind many foreign investors maintaining a ‘wait-and-see’ approach. Political pressures must also be managed. Any temptation to fall back into short-term populist hostility to outside investors ahead of the 2025 elections would significantly undermine the foundations for effective economic diplomacy.
Tanzania’s evolving bilateral partnerships
A limited number of high-level engagements took place in the early years of Magufuli’s presidency, but these lacked the geopolitical balance of the Kikwete era and dried up amid Magufuli’s unwillingness to reciprocate. Visitors to Tanzania in this period included Indian prime minister Narendra Modi (2016), Vietnamese president Trương Tấn Sang (2016), Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (2017), and Egyptian president Abdel Fattah El-Sisi (2017). In contrast, President Samia’s revival has showcased far greater diversity in Tanzania’s partnerships. It is possible to speak of three distinct trends in Tanzania’s renewal of bilateral engagement.
Broadening engagement
The first of these trends concerns the active expansion of external ties to include partners with which Tanzania has either dormant or limited existing engagement. Previous years saw only sporadic initiatives in this respect – Tanzania opened its first embassy in South Korea in 2018, and Poland reopened its embassy in Tanzania in the same year.
But the pace of expansion has increased under President Samia’s administration. In 2023, Tanzania opened its first embassy in Vienna, Austria – a move designed primarily to boost engagement with the international organizations hosted there. In June 2023, a new Tanzanian embassy opened in Indonesia, with Indonesian president Joko Widodo visiting Tanzania in August 2023 – a visit reciprocated by Samia in January 2024. Indonesia is a strategic partner for Tanzania in the natural gas sector: Indonesian company Medco Energi has a minority interest in the potential major project in Lindi – and Indonesia is also relevant to mineral development, considering its status as one of the world’s leading nickel producers and the existence of significant deposits in Tanzania.
Proposals are being considered to open embassies in both Iran and Pakistan, with Samia meeting with Iranian president Seyyed Ebrahim Raisi on the margins of the BRICS summit in South Africa in August 2023. Ties with Vietnam were already developing under Kikwete following a state visit to Hanoi in 2014, with Vietnam’s state-owned telecommunications company investing an initial $736 million in Tanzania in 2015 as Halotel Tanzania. Samia’s influential CCM vice-chair, Abdulrahman Kinana, made a working visit to Vietnam in May 2023 and met the Vietnamese president.
Nonetheless, reasons for caution over the trend of expanding partnerships remain. Kinana’s visit as a senior CCM official to Vietnam may help to leverage historical socialist connections, but risks blurring the lines between party and state. These newer partnerships will also demand continued engagement and resources to be sustained. Ties with Brazil, for example, have declined since rapid initial growth under the Kikwete presidency, while relations with countries in Central and Eastern Europe such as Poland have fluctuated since the end of the Soviet era.
Other recent examples of diversification present a dilemma. Breaking with Tanzania’s history of frosty relations with Israel, President Magufuli opened an embassy in Tel Aviv in 2017 – a move that has gone without reciprocation to date. Similarly, despite historical support and recognition of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), Tanzania’s ties with Morocco grew under Magufuli, with a state visit by King Mohammed VI in 2016. In both cases, economic gain has incentivized closer ties – whether access to Israeli solar and agricultural technologies or Moroccan investments in stadium infrastructure and a fertilizer plant. Simultaneously, Tanzania has continued to stress its support for the SADR, even describing it as ‘the last colony in Africa’ in a 2021 statement.
But this same separation between economic and political ties has not always been consistent. In 2016, Tanzania actively intervened to soften criticism of Israel in a UNESCO resolution, while Tanzania’s official statements at the outset of the Hamas–Israel conflict in October 2023 were less committal than those regarding the SADR. Maintaining ties with Israel and Morocco may be justified on the grounds of economic diplomacy, but greater consistency is needed to compartmentalize their economic and political dimensions effectively. Otherwise, Tanzania risks losing credibility in referring to its historically principled stance.
Consolidating strategic relationships
A second trend concerns the strengthening of relationships with significant emerging strategic interest for Tanzania. Egypt is one such partner. Relations between the two countries strengthened under the Magufuli presidency, culminating in the contracting in 2018 of the JND project to an Egyptian firm, Arab Contractors. President Samia made a three-day state visit to Egypt in 2021, where she met with President El-Sisi. Maintaining ties with Egypt is an important component of the dam’s delivery, with El-Sisi including it ‘within the framework of distinguished relations between Egypt and Tanzania’. Nonetheless, Tanzania needs to carefully manage this relationship with consideration of its regional standing, as there is a risk of the dam being exploited to fit separate Egyptian narratives amid continuing tensions with other Nile Basin countries over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.
Türkiye provides a similar case. Stronger relations began to surface under Kikwete, with reciprocal state visits in 2009–10. But again, the relationship is now dominated by Tanzania’s infrastructure development goals, given the award of major SGR project tenders to Turkish firm Yapi Merkezi. In the context of financing issues for the SGR, with Yapi Merkezi facing strikes by workers in Tanzania and seeking to restructure up to $1 billion of loans from state-owned Turkish lenders following cash-flow issues in 2023, it had become increasingly notable that President Samia was yet to meet with her Turkish counterpart in the first three years of her international outreach. However, her official visit to Türkiye in April 2024 at the invitation of Erdoğan provides a signal of commitment to the partnership.
This strategic trend is not limited to emerging economies. France also provides a key example. Kikwete visited Paris in 2013, and Samia was hosted by French president Emmanuel Macron for a state visit in early 2022. Increasing investment commitments by French companies have intensified mutual interests, notably including Total’s role in the EACOP. A French–Tanzanian Chamber of Commerce was set up in 2020. France is also one of Tanzania’s largest bilateral creditors, holding an estimated debt stock of $204 million by 2022, according to the IMF. A reciprocal visit to Tanzania by Macron, the first by any French president since independence, is also anticipated in the medium term.
There are significant historical links between Tanzania and Oman given the latter’s colonial history in Zanzibar, and long-term cultural and business connections have encouraged engagement with other Gulf states.
The Gulf Arab states are also at the forefront of this trend. Trade volumes with Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) countries have significantly increased in recent years (see Figures 3 and 4), dominated by Tanzanian mining exports and fuel imports. President Samia has made several visits to the Gulf region, including a state visit to Oman in 2022, and trade expos and international summits in both Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). There are significant historical links between Tanzania and Oman given the latter’s colonial history in Zanzibar, and long-term cultural and business connections have encouraged presidential-level engagement with other Gulf states. Nonetheless, concerns remain around Omani and Emirati involvement in Tanzanian infrastructure projects, as discussed in Box 2 with reference to the ports sector. Other areas of controversy have surfaced around Emirati business interests in trophy hunting in Tanzanian conservation areas. President Magufuli had previously revoked the hunting licence for those interests in 2017, reportedly in response to reports of corruption and close personal ties to the UAE among high-ranking political figures in Tanzania. This tension points to a need to stabilize and formalize relationships with the Gulf states outside of personalized ties, which increase the risk exposure of Tanzania’s foreign policy to corruption or internal CCM factionalism, and towards more institutional linkages through the MFA.
