01 — OverviewExecutive Summary
Financial health — the Welfare dimension — is the newest of NFIF3's four pillars, and the one most directly concerned with outcomes rather than access: can a household or business absorb a shock, meet its obligations, and plan for the future, not merely whether it can reach a bank agent or mobile wallet. The Bank of Tanzania's Mid-Term Evaluation reports that every single Welfare indicator technically exceeded its 2025 target. TICGL/TERI's analysis reads those results in absolute, not only relative, terms — and finds a more sobering picture underneath the "on track" headline.
The starkest number in the entire evaluation sits in this dimension: only 21.5% of adults, and only 11.8% of MSMEs, can reliably pay bills, debts, and other financial obligations on time. Resilience to a single shock is considerably stronger — 67.5% of adults and 76.0% of MSMEs can access emergency funds within 30 days — but the gap between those two figures is itself the story: Tanzanian households and businesses are more able to survive a shock than to avoid needing to. Long-term wealth-building indicators (investment ownership, pension participation) more than doubled off very low bases but remain modest in absolute terms. And institutionally, Welfare holds just 28 of NFIF3's 549 total dimensional activities — 5.1% — the smallest resource allocation of any of the framework's four dimensions, even as stakeholders themselves rated it the dimension where gains have been least "largely achieved."
- Financial stability: adults able to pay obligations on time rose from 14.0% to 21.5%; MSMEs from 3.0% to 11.8% — both technically beat target, both still describe a small minority.
- Resilience to shocks: adults with 30-day emergency-fund access rose from 55.0% to 67.5%; MSMEs from 71.0% to 76.0% — the strongest welfare indicators, but resilience is not the same as health.
- Risk mitigation: MSME insurance coverage rose from 4.4% to 11.4%; MSME contingent financing plans from 50.0% to 56.3% — meaningful growth, still low absolute coverage.
- Long-term wealth: adults with financial/real-asset investments rose from 28.0% to 36.8%; pension account ownership more than doubled from 3.6% to 8.1%.
- Who is left behind: the evaluation explicitly names rural households, smallholder farmers, youth, and persons with disabilities as facing the most constrained financial resilience.
- The resourcing gap: Welfare's 28 activities compare to 181 for Access, 162 for Usage, and 178 for Quality — a five-fold to six-fold difference in institutional attention.
About TERI — TICGL's Research Institute
This analysis was prepared by the Tanzania Economic Research Institute (TERI), TICGL's dedicated research arm covering financial-sector policy, financial inclusion, and Tanzania's broader economic development. TERI's work spans two complementary strands: collecting and analysing primary data directly from the field — through surveys, key-informant interviews, and site-level data collection, as in TICGL/TERI's own city-level and sector-specific studies — and analysing official statistics published by institutions such as the Bank of Tanzania (BOT), NBS, and the Ministry of Finance, as this page does with the NFIF3 Mid-Term Evaluation. Together, this combination of original fieldwork and rigorous analysis of official data is what allows TERI to produce research that helps policymakers, investors, and development stakeholders make better-informed decisions. This report is part of TERI's ongoing series of Tanzanian economic and financial-policy analysis.
Visit TERI — teri.ticgl.com →Read this alongside TICGL's flagship Dira 2050 policy-gaps analysis
A workforce and business base that can absorb shocks without falling back into poverty is a precondition for the sustained, compounding growth Dira 2050 depends on — financial health is what turns one bad month into a temporary setback instead of a permanent reversal. TICGL/TERI recommends reading the two pieces together.
Read: What's Next for Tanzania's Economy? The Policy Gaps Keeping $1 Trillion Out of Reach by 2050 →02 — At a GlanceEvery Welfare Dimension Indicator
| Category | Indicator | 2023 Baseline | 2025 Target | 2025 Actual | 2028 Target |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Financial stability | Adults able to pay obligations on time | 14.0% | 20% | 21.5% | 25% |
| Financial stability | MSMEs able to meet financial obligations | 3.0% | 10% | 11.8% | 15% |
| Resilience | Adults with 30-day emergency-fund access | 55.0% | 65% | 67.5% | 70% |
| Resilience | MSMEs with 30-day emergency-fund access | 71.0% | 75% | 76.0% | 80% |
| Risk mitigation | MSMEs with insurance coverage | 4.4% | 10% | 11.4% | 15% |
| Risk mitigation | MSMEs with contingent financing plans | 50.0% | 55% | 56.3% | 60% |
| Long-term wealth | Adults with financial/real-asset investments | 28.0% | 35% | 36.8% | 40% |
| Long-term wealth | Pension account ownership | 3.6% | 5% | 8.1% | 10% |
Source: BOT/NCFI, NFIF3 Mid-Term Evaluation Report, Section 5.4 (Welfare Dimension Targets).
All eight Welfare indicators are reported as exceeding their 2025 Mid-Term targets. TICGL/TERI's analysis throughout this page reads these results primarily against their absolute level, not only their target, because several of these targets were themselves set low precisely because 2023 baselines were so weak (3.0% of MSMEs able to pay obligations on time, for instance). Beating a modest target and achieving adequate financial health are different claims.
03 — The Central FindingFinancial Stability: Still a Minority Position
The ability to pay bills, debts, and other obligations on time is arguably the single most basic test of financial health there is. On this measure, Tanzania's improvement is real but the destination is still a minority outcome.
Ability to Pay Financial Obligations on Time, 2023 vs. 2025
Even after nearly doubling off its baseline, the adult obligation-payment rate means just over one in five Tanzanian adults can reliably meet their financial commitments on time — leaving nearly four in five who cannot. For MSMEs, the picture is starker still: roughly seven out of eight businesses cannot reliably meet their obligations on time, even after a near-quadrupling of the 2023 baseline. This single indicator, more than any access or usage statistic, captures the gap between being financially included and being financially secure.
04 — Shock AbsorptionResilience: The Strongest Welfare Result — With a Catch
Emergency-fund access is where the Welfare dimension shows its most encouraging numbers — and its most important nuance.
30-Day Emergency-Fund Access, 2023 vs. 2025
Two-thirds of adults and three-quarters of MSMEs can now access emergency funds within 30 days — both figures close to their 2028 end targets already. This is real evidence of "enhanced capacity to absorb financial shocks," in the evaluation's own words, and reflects the broader access and usage gains documented elsewhere in NFIF3.
Compare this section's numbers to Section 03: 67.5% of adults can access emergency funds, but only 21.5% can reliably pay obligations on time. TICGL/TERI reads this gap as evidence that "access to an emergency fund" for many households means the ability to borrow, sell an asset, or draw on social networks when a shock hits — not the underlying cash-flow stability that would reduce how often they need to. Resilience (surviving a shock) and financial health (not needing rescuing as often) are related but distinct outcomes, and Tanzania's current data shows meaningfully stronger performance on the former than the latter.
05 — PreparednessRisk Mitigation: MSME Insurance and Contingency Planning
Beyond emergency funds, the Welfare dimension tracks whether MSMEs are actively preparing for risk, rather than only reacting to it after the fact.
MSME Risk-Mitigation Indicators, 2023 vs. 2025
MSME insurance coverage nearly tripled off its baseline (4.4% to 11.4%), the fastest relative growth of any Welfare indicator in this analysis — but it is also the lowest in absolute terms alongside the obligation-payment indicators. Contingent financing plans, at 56.3%, show that just over half of MSMEs have some form of pre-arranged financial backstop for disruptions, a meaningfully stronger starting position than insurance coverage suggests, and consistent with the credit-guarantee-scheme activity documented elsewhere in TICGL/TERI's NFIF3 coverage.
06 — Long HorizonLong-Term Wealth Accumulation: Pensions Doubling, Still Small
The final pair of Welfare indicators looks beyond the next shock to longer-horizon financial security — investment ownership and retirement preparedness.
Long-Term Wealth Indicators: 2023 → 2025 → 2028 Target
Pension account ownership more than doubled — the single largest relative gain of any Welfare indicator — but even at 8.1%, fewer than one in twelve Tanzanian adults holds a pension account. This aligns closely with the informal-sector social security findings TICGL/TERI documented separately: growth is real and often driven by specific, well-targeted reforms (see Section 09), but the base each of these reforms is building from remains very small.
07 — Distributional GapWho Is Left Behind: Rural Households, Smallholder Farmers, Youth, PWDs
The Mid-Term Evaluation's own summary assessment is explicit that national-level Welfare gains have not reached all groups evenly: "financial resilience remains constrained, particularly among rural households, smallholder farmers, youth, and persons with disabilities." This is a direct, named finding from the evaluation, not an inference — and it matters because none of the eight indicators in Table 1 are disaggregated by these groups in the published report.
TICGL/TERI flags this as consequential: the evaluation can state that rural households, smallholder farmers, youth, and PWDs have weaker resilience, but the absence of group-disaggregated Welfare indicators in the published Mid-Term Evaluation means policymakers cannot yet see by how much, or track whether targeted interventions are closing that gap over the second half of NFIF3. This mirrors a broader data-disaggregation limitation the evaluation acknowledges elsewhere in its own methodology notes.
This finding is also consistent with the priority-segment implementation data TICGL/TERI has documented separately: smallholder farmers and fisheries recorded the weakest activity-completion rate of any NFIF3 priority segment (22.2%), and persons with disabilities the second-weakest (45.5%) — the same two groups the evaluation names here as having the most constrained financial resilience.
08 — Why Progress Is SlowWelfare Is the Least-Resourced Dimension in NFIF3
Behind the indicator-level results sits a structural explanation the evaluation itself provides: Welfare has consistently received the smallest institutional resourcing of NFIF3's four dimensions.
NFIF3 Activities by Dimension: Total Planned (2023–2028)
In the evaluation's own stakeholder perception survey, 73.5% of respondents said Access had been "largely achieved" — the strongest score of any dimension. Financial health (Welfare) scored lowest: only 35.3% said it was "largely achieved," with 44.1% rating it only "moderately achieved." The evaluation's own conclusion is direct: "gains in access to and usage of financial services are yet to fully translate into broad-based improvements in financial well-being."
TICGL/TERI's reading connects these two facts directly: Welfare activities are implemented at a comparable rate to the other dimensions (52.9%, in the middle of the pack) — the shortfall is not one of execution, but of an activity list that was simply five to six times smaller to begin with. A dimension with 28 planned activities against 181 for Access was always going to move more slowly in absolute national impact, whatever its completion percentage.
09 — What Progress Looks LikeA Household Story Behind the Numbers
The Mid-Term Evaluation includes first-hand accounts of NFIF3's impact. One describes a market trader in her late fifties who, after a 2023 community outreach programme introduced her to an informal-sector social security scheme, began setting aside small voluntary contributions for the first time — later adding a supplementary savings layer through her local traders' association. She was part of a wave of informal-sector enrolment that grew dramatically over the evaluation period. When a health issue sidelined her for a month, her participation in these schemes let her access care without depleting her business's working capital — resilience, in practice, working as intended. The account also highlights a gender dimension: she is one of roughly 40% of women now represented in informal pension accounts, and describes actively encouraging younger women in her market to start their own savings journeys earlier than she did.
TICGL/TERI includes this account not as statistical evidence but as an illustration of what the resilience indicators in Section 04 look like at the household level — and of the gap this page documents throughout: her story is one of resilience to a single shock, built through voluntary, informal-sector social security participation, of exactly the kind that NFIF3's Welfare dimension is designed to scale, but currently under-resources relative to Access and Usage.
10 — TICGL RecommendationsTurning Access Into Resilience
Rebalance NFIF3's second half toward Welfare
- Welfare holds 5.1% of dimensional activities against 33% for Access — a ratio worth revisiting directly for the 2026–2028 remainder of NFIF3.
- Track affordability and satisfaction (Quality dimension) alongside Welfare indicators — both fell over the review period even as access expanded, a related warning sign.
Close the obligation-payment gap directly
- Design targeted cash-flow and financial-discipline interventions for MSMEs specifically — their 11.8% obligation-payment rate is the weakest indicator in this entire analysis.
- Distinguish resilience-building (emergency funds) from health-building (obligation payment, insurance) in programme design — they responded to different interventions.
Disaggregate Welfare indicators by priority segment
- Publish rural/urban, smallholder-farmer, youth, and PWD breakdowns of the eight Welfare indicators so the evaluation's own qualitative finding can be tracked quantitatively.
- Prioritise smallholder farmers and PWDs specifically — the same two groups already identified as the weakest-performing NFIF3 priority segments overall.
Scale what is already working
- Informal-sector social security schemes (Section 09) are a proven resilience mechanism — expand their reach and voluntary supplementary-savings layers.
- Pair credit-guarantee-scheme expansion (documented in TICGL/TERI's MSME-focused analysis) with contingent-financing-plan take-up, since both indicators move together.
"Tanzania has built the on-ramps to the financial system faster than it has built the shock absorbers. Two-thirds of adults can access emergency funds when something goes wrong — but barely one in five can avoid needing to. Closing that gap, not widening the on-ramps further, should be the defining test of NFIF3's second half."
— TICGL / Tanzania Economic Research Institute (TERI)
11 — SourcesReferences and Data Sources
Bank of Tanzania / National Council for Financial Inclusion, The National Financial Inclusion Framework 2023–2028 (NFIF3): Mid-Term Evaluation Report (2023–2025), June 2026. Every figure in this analysis is drawn from that report's Welfare dimension section (5.4), Table 2 (Implementation of Activities by Dimension), the stakeholder perception survey (Section 6), and the illustrative success story in Annex 3, unless otherwise stated.
Framing devices such as the "resilience vs. financial health" distinction (Section 04) and the connection drawn between resourcing levels and outcome data (Section 08) are TICGL/TERI's own interpretation of the source data, clearly marked as such throughout. This is an independent analysis of a Bank of Tanzania publication and is not itself a Bank of Tanzania or NCFI publication.
12 — Quick AnswersFrequently Asked Questions
What share of Tanzanians can pay their bills and debts on time?
Only 21.5% of adults as of December 2025, up from 14.0% in 2023. Among MSMEs, the figure was 11.8%, up from 3.0%.
Can Tanzanian households cope with a financial emergency?
67.5% of adults and 76.0% of MSMEs could access emergency funds within 30 days without difficulty by December 2025 — a stronger result than the obligation-payment indicators.
Why is financial health the weakest dimension in the framework?
Welfare holds only 28 of 549 total dimensional activities (5.1%), versus 181 for Access alone — the smallest resourcing of NFIF3's four dimensions — and stakeholders rated it the least "largely achieved" dimension in the Mid-Term self-assessment.
Which groups have the weakest financial resilience?
The evaluation explicitly names rural households, smallholder farmers, youth, and persons with disabilities as the groups whose financial resilience remains most constrained.
Muhtasari kwa Kiswahili
Je, Watanzania Wanaweza Kulipa Madeni Yao kwa Wakati? — Uchambuzi wa TICGL wa Ustawi wa Kifedha na Resilience ya Kaya — Uchambuzi huu unaangazia kipimo cha "Ustawi wa Kifedha" (Welfare/Financial Health) katika Ripoti ya Tathmini ya Katikati ya NFIF3 iliyotolewa na Benki Kuu ya Tanzania (BOT) na Baraza la Taifa la Ujumuishaji wa Kifedha (NCFI), Juni 2026.
Matokeo makuu: Ni asilimia 21.5 tu ya watu wazima na asilimia 11.8 tu ya MSMEs wanaoweza kulipa madeni na majukumu ya kifedha kwa wakati. Wakati huo huo, asilimia 67.5 ya watu wazima na asilimia 76.0 ya MSMEs wanaweza kupata fedha za dharura ndani ya siku 30 — ikionyesha kuwa Watanzania wana uwezo mkubwa zaidi wa kuhimili mshtuko wa kifedha kuliko uwezo wa kuepuka kuuhitaji mshtuko huo. Umiliki wa akaunti za pensheni uliongezeka zaidi ya mara mbili (kutoka asilimia 3.6 hadi 8.1), lakini bado ni chini sana.
Kipimo cha Ustawi wa Kifedha ndicho kilichopewa rasilimali ndogo zaidi kati ya vipimo vinne vya NFIF3 — shughuli 28 tu kati ya 549 (asilimia 5.1) zililenga moja kwa moja Ustawi, ikilinganishwa na shughuli 181 kwa Upatikanaji. Wadau wenyewe walikadiria Ustawi wa Kifedha kuwa kipimo kilichofanikiwa kidogo zaidi kulinganisha na vipimo vingine. Ripoti inataja wazi kuwa kaya za vijijini, wakulima wadogo, vijana, na watu wenye ulemavu ndio wenye uwezo mdogo zaidi wa kuhimili misukosuko ya kifedha — ingawa takwimu za kina za makundi haya bado hazijachapishwa.
- Uwezo wa kulipa madeni kwa wakati: watu wazima asilimia 21.5; MSMEs asilimia 11.8
- Upatikanaji wa fedha za dharura ndani ya siku 30: watu wazima asilimia 67.5; MSMEs asilimia 76.0
- Umiliki wa akaunti za pensheni: asilimia 8.1 (kutoka 3.6%)
- Shughuli za Ustawi wa Kifedha: 28 tu kati ya 549 (asilimia 5.1) za NFIF3 nzima
- Makundi yenye resilience dhaifu zaidi: kaya za vijijini, wakulima wadogo, vijana, watu wenye ulemavu
Chanzo: Benki Kuu ya Tanzania (BOT) / Baraza la Taifa la Ujumuishaji wa Kifedha (NCFI), Ripoti ya Tathmini ya Katikati ya NFIF3, Juni 2026. Uchambuzi umeandaliwa na Idara ya Utafiti ya TICGL / Tanzania Economic Research Institute (TERI).