Tanzania has just closed a chapter that I spent years watching from the inside, one policy shift at a time. Under the Foreign Exchange (Amendment) Regulations, 2026, the Bank of Tanzania has opened Treasury bills and Treasury bonds to non-resident investors of any nationality, not only those from the East African Community, the Southern African Development Community, or the Tanzanian diaspora, who previously held exclusive access to this market.
More than a decade ago, I led a benchmarking exercise on Tanzania's compliance with the EAC Treaty and the Protocol on the Establishment of the East African Common Market, with a specific focus on the free movement of capital.
What that exercise found was a capital market that did not honour its regional obligations. Tanzania then added the EAC and SADC residency requirements which gave the appearance of regional openness, while the underlying market remained, in practice, tightly held by Tanzanians and a narrow band of regional and diaspora participants.
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The compact is done and dusted; now comes the harder part
