Tanzania Investment Act, 2022 (Act No. 10 of 2022) — overhauls FDI framework, repeals 1997 Act

Mechanism

The Tanzania Investment Act, 2022 (Act No. 10 of 2022) is the umbrella statute governing FDI into the United Republic of Tanzania, replacing the 1997 Act that had governed the regime under successive administrations since the Mkapa-era liberalisation. Parliament passed the Act on 2 December 2022, and the Minister for Investment, Industries and Trade issued Government Notice No. 94 of 17 February 2023 to operationalise it (with subsequent GN 395B/2023 issuing the consolidated text).

Key structural changes:

• Tanzania Investment Centre (TIC) as One-Stop Facilitation Centre.

The Act mandates TIC to establish an "integrated electronic system for investment promotion and facilitation" coordinating licence, permit, and approval processes across regulatory authorities. This consolidates what was previously a multi-agency clearance process.

• Strategic and Major Investment Certificates. New tier of incentives

requires (i) minimum invested capital of USD 50 million for foreign / joint-venture investors and USD 20 million for Tanzanian investors, (ii) creation of ≥ 1,000 local jobs, (iii) ≥ 50% increase in exports, (iv) introduction of new technology, and (v) production tied to national priorities. Strategic Investor Certificates are issued by the National Investment Steering Committee (NISC), chaired by the Prime Minister.

• Threshold reduction for ordinary local investors. Minimum capital

for a Tanzanian-investor Certificate of Incentives reduced from USD 100,000 to USD 50,000; foreign-investor threshold unchanged at USD 500,000.

• Dispute resolution. Foreign investors retain access to (i) local

arbitration under Tanzanian law, (ii) ICSID, and (iii) frameworks under applicable bilateral/multilateral investment protection treaties — a codification of the existing practice that resists the regional drift toward ICSID withdrawal seen in some peer states.

• Sectoral focus. The Act explicitly orients incentives toward

mining (downstream/value-add), manufacturing, agro-processing, pharmaceuticals, infrastructure, and ICT, dovetailing with the Mining-Act amendments already filed (2024-11, 2025-06, 2025-09) which govern the upstream resource side.

Severity is set at 2 because (a) the Act is a foundational FDI-framework overhaul rather than a discrete tariff/export-control instrument, (b) the immediate quantitative trade-flow impact is diffuse — it changes the incentive regime rather than imposing measurable cost/price changes, and (c) the substantive incentive parameters were partially walked back in practice (see UNCTAD's "(2/2) — reduces incentives" companion note), limiting near-term FDI-elasticity. Severity could re-rate upward if TIC's One-Stop Centre meaningfully changes Tanzania's FDI inflow trend or if Strategic Investor Certificates trigger a step-change in mining or agro-processing announcements.

Downstream implications

• First TZ foundational FDI-statute filing in the IPTM register — until

now, TZ coverage was three Mining-Act amendments (vertical mining instruments). This action fills the umbrella under which subsequent TZ sectoral incentive announcements should be responds_to-linked.

• Aligns TZ with the broader EM industrial-policy stack pattern

(cf. Kenya MTP IV / BETA filed 2024-03, Bangladesh Export Policy 2024-2027, Malaysia NIMP 2030) — sub-Saharan Africa is becoming a thicker IPTM coverage area in 2026.

• TIC's electronic-system mandate is comparable to Indonesia's OSS

reforms and Vietnam's NSCERD-coordinated FDI facilitation — watch for whether implementation actually delivers a measurable approval-time reduction.

• Strategic Investor Certificate criteria (1,000 jobs + 50% export uplift)

effectively gate the top-incentive tier toward mining and large-scale manufacturing — relevant for downstream-processing announcements under the 2024-2025 Mining-Act amendment cluster.

Open questions

• Has TIC published a list of issued Strategic Investor Certificates

since GN 94/2023? Tracking issuance would let us measure the Act's bite vs. its paper architecture.

• What is the interaction between this Act and the Special Economic

Zones Authority (EPZA/SEZA) framework? Strategic Investor Certificates may overlap with SEZ incentives.

• How does the Act's incentive walk-back (UNCTAD measure 4563) compare

to the headline facilitation gains? Net FDI-elasticity is the open empirical question.