This report is prepared by TERI for research and strategic-information purposes only. It does not constitute investment, legal, tax or financial advice, and it does not state the position of the Government of Tanzania or TISEZA. All figures are drawn directly from TISEZA's Quarterly Investment Bulletin (April–June 2026) and have been cross-checked against the bulletin's own tables for internal consistency; where the bulletin's sector classification appears to sit uneasily against its own named project profiles, this is flagged explicitly rather than reconciled on TICGL/TERI's behalf.
01 — OverviewExecutive Summary
Tanzania's Export Processing Zones and Special Economic Zones (EPZ/SEZ) scheme had its strongest quarter on record in Q4 2025/26. Seven projects were registered, worth US$3,378.5 million in capital and US$517.8 million in projected turnover, together expected to create 30,235 jobs — up from US$115.16 million in capital, US$73.15 million in turnover, and just 1,155 jobs in the same quarter a year earlier. This is a genuine investment story, and it sits inside a broader national picture: TISEZA registered 250 new investment projects economy-wide in the quarter, bringing the cumulative total to 934 projects valued at USD 8.8 billion with the potential to create over 253,512 jobs.
Within the EPZ/SEZ scheme specifically, the boom is unusually concentrated on two axes at once. By country, China supplied US$3,143.8 million of the US$3,378.5 million in capital (93.1%) and 19,027 of the 30,235 jobs (62.9%) — Kenya and the United Arab Emirates, the next two largest sources, together contributed barely US$4 million. By sector, Agriculture and Forestry together account for six of the seven projects, US$3,328.5 million of the capital (98.5%), and 29,235 of the jobs (96.7%).
The single largest EPZ/SEZ project in the bulletin — Ruvuma, US$2,600 million in capital and 18,050 jobs, filed under Agriculture — is, according to TISEZA's own project-level narrative elsewhere in the same document, an aluminium smelter with a 2,100 MW coal-fired power plant. This is not necessarily wrong, but it is a genuine internal inconsistency in the bulletin worth surfacing: the sectoral story the aggregate charts tell and the project the bulletin's own profile describes are not obviously the same investment.
None of this makes the boom illegitimate or the capital unwelcome. It does mean the sustainability question TICGL/TERI has raised in other resource-concentration analyses applies here too: is this the start of a diversified, capital-intensive transformation of Tanzania's agriculture, forestry and industrial base — or an enclave investment, heavily concentrated in one country, one investor group, and one region, whose benefits to the wider domestic economy will depend entirely on policy choices the current bulletin does not yet address.
Read this alongside TICGL/TERI's investment climate analysis
This report on a single quarter's EPZ/SEZ data is best read together with TICGL/TERI's broader assessment of what opportunities and risks are actually shaping investment decisions in Tanzania in 2026 — concentration risk of exactly this kind is one of the themes covered there.
Read: Opportunities & Risks in Tanzania, 2026 →1. The Scale of the Boom: EPZ/SEZ Investment, Q4 2025/26
Fast, large, and concentrated in two sectors1.1 Quarter-on-quarter growth
TISEZA's own trend data (Figure 4.7) shows a scheme transformed within a single year. Capital rose from US$115.16 million to US$3,378.5 million; turnover rose from US$73.15 million to US$517.8 million; and jobs rose from 1,155 to 30,235 — a near 26-fold increase in jobs alone, across just seven registered projects.
| Indicator | Q4 2024/25 | Q4 2025/26 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| EPZ/SEZ Capital | $115.16M | $3,378.5M | +2,833% |
| EPZ/SEZ Turnover | $73.15M | $517.8M | +608% |
| Jobs Created | 1,155 | 30,235 | +2,518% |
Capital & Turnover Growth
Jobs Created
1.2 Sector concentration: Agriculture and Forestry dominate
Of the seven projects registered, four were classified under Agriculture, two under Forestry, and one under Manufacturing. Combining the FDI and DI (domestic investment) capital and job breakdowns from the bulletin's own figures (4.12 and 4.13) into a single sector table shows just how concentrated the quarter was.
| Sector | Projects | FDI Capital | DI Capital | Total Capital | Total Jobs | Turnover |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Agriculture | 4 | $2,604.0M | $180.7M | $2,784.7M | 28,258 | $490.7M |
| Forestry | 2 | $543.8M | $0.0M | $543.8M | 977 | $25.1M |
| Manufacturing | 1 | $0.0M | $50.0M | $50.0M | 1,000 | $2.0M |
| Total | 7 | $3,147.8M | $230.7M | $3,378.5M | 30,235 | $517.8M |
Agriculture and Forestry combined: 6 of 7 projects, $3,328.5M of $3,378.5M in capital (98.5%), and 29,235 of 30,235 jobs (96.7%).
EPZ/SEZ Capital by Sector
1.3 Ownership and regional concentration
Ownership in the quarter comprised four foreign-owned projects, two locally owned projects, and one joint venture. Geographically, Iringa and Njombe led on project count with two each, but capital and jobs were overwhelmingly concentrated in a single region: Ruvuma.
| Region | Projects | Jobs | Capital | Turnover |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ruvuma | 1 | 18,050 | $2,600.0M | $265.5M |
| Iringa | 2 | 375 | $543.1M | $21.2M |
| Lindi | 1 | 10,000 | $180.0M | $220.0M |
| Njombe | 2 | 810 | $5.4M | $9.1M |
| Dar es Salaam | 1 | 1,000 | $50.0M | $2.0M |
| Total | 7 | 30,235 | $3,378.5M | $517.8M |
Ruvuma's single registered project accounts for US$2,600 million of the US$3,378.5 million in total EPZ/SEZ capital — 77.0% — and 18,050 of the 30,235 jobs, 59.7%. Almost the entire national EPZ/SEZ story this quarter is the performance of one investment in one district.
02 — Source of CapitalChina's Dominance of the FDI Story
TISEZA's own country breakdown (Figure 4.14) leaves little ambiguity: China was, by a wide margin, the dominant source of foreign direct investment into the EPZ/SEZ scheme this quarter.
| Country | FDI Capital | Jobs | Turnover | Share of Total FDI Capital |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| China | $3,143.8M | 19,027 | $290.6M | 99.9% |
| Kenya | $3.1M | 150 | $1.2M | 0.1% |
| United Arab Emirates | $0.9M | 50 | $1.1M | <0.1% |
| Total FDI | $3,147.8M | 19,227 | $292.9M | 100% |
China's share of total EPZ/SEZ capital (FDI + DI combined, $3,378.5M) is 93.1%; its share of total FDI capital alone ($3,147.8M) is effectively 99.9% — Kenya and the UAE are, in practical terms, rounding errors against China within the foreign-investment component.
FDI Capital by Source Country
FDI-Linked Jobs by Source Country
2.1 Foreign vs. domestic investment
The quarter also shows a widening gap between foreign and domestic capital inside the scheme. FDI reached US$3,147.8 million against DI of US$230.7 million — both far above the prior year's US$97.62 million (FDI) and US$38.04 million (DI), but the ratio between them has shifted sharply toward foreign capital.
FDI vs. Domestic Investment (DI)
TISEZA's own commentary reads this as a positive signal on two fronts at once — FDI remains the key driver of scheme investment, while the emergence of a meaningfully larger DI figure suggests improving local investor engagement. Both are true. What the bulletin's framing does not address is the scale gap between them: domestic capital that grew six-fold still amounts to 6.8% of what a single foreign source group contributed.
3. What Is Actually Being Built?
The sector label and the project profile tell different storiesTISEZA's Section 7 profiles individual EPZ/SEZ projects by name. Two of them, both branded HWTZ, appear to be the same corporate group operating at a combined scale of roughly US$6 billion across two of Tanzania's four strategic Special Economic Zones — and neither is describable, on its own terms, as an agriculture or forestry project.
HWTZ Holding Limited
An industrial cluster centred on an aluminium production plant with a capacity of 1,000,000 tonnes per year, alongside a coal-fired power plant with a capacity of 2,100 MW. Land clearing and road construction are underway; a Circulating Fluidized Bed (CFB) Boiler Steel Base (first lot) was delivered through the Port of Mtwara, with further equipment expected from July 2026.
HWTZ SEZ Limited
A comprehensive industrial park with an expected investment exceeding US$3 billion, intended to host over 150 industrial investments. The investor will directly operate three core industries: assembly of vehicles, boats and motorcycles, and production of construction materials. Roads, water and solar-power infrastructure are under construction.
TISEZA's sector-level charts (Figures 4.8, 4.12 and 4.13) place the leading share of EPZ/SEZ capital and jobs under "Agriculture" and "Forestry." Yet the only project TISEZA's own bulletin names for Ruvuma SEZ — the region that alone accounts for 77% of quarterly capital and 60% of jobs — is an aluminium smelter and coal-fired power plant, an industrial and energy project by any conventional sector definition. TICGL/TERI is not asserting that the two do not relate — HWTZ Holding's site may include agricultural or forestry components not detailed in this bulletin — only that the bulletin, as published, does not reconcile its own aggregate sector data with its own named project profile. This is precisely the kind of measurement and classification gap TICGL/TERI has flagged in other TISEZA and Ministry data — most notably the divergence between CAG and Ministry of Minerals local-content figures in the mining sector.
This matters beyond bookkeeping. If Tanzania's public investment data records a coal-and-aluminium mega-project as an agriculture and forestry investment, then any future policy built on the "the boom is diversifying into agriculture and forestry" narrative would be building on a number that does not fully hold up against the same document's own project detail — with consequences for how targeted incentives, environmental oversight and local-content rules are designed and applied.
03 — AnalysisIs This Boom Sustainable?
Capital of this scale and speed is a genuine opportunity: it is capital-intensive, structurally significant, and consistent with Dira 2050's agenda of moving Tanzania toward value addition and industrialisation. Whether it is sustainable depends on how five specific risks are managed — none of which the current bulletin addresses.
- Capital-intensive investment of this scale can drive real structural change — from smallholder-dominated agriculture toward large-scale, industrial-grade production and processing.
- It aligns with Dira 2050 and the national value-addition agenda, and it is arriving alongside genuine infrastructure gains (the SGR, port modernisation, the Julius Nyerere Hydropower Project) that improve the investment environment more broadly.
- It can bring technology, energy infrastructure (2,100 MW is equivalent to a meaningful share of national generation capacity), and — if managed well — export-market access, including to China itself.
4.1 Land governance and free, prior and informed consent
Projects at this scale require thousands of hectares. TISEZA's bulletin confirms SEZ land allocations exceeding 900 hectares across Bagamoyo, Ruvuma, Kwala and Nala combined since August 2025, and describes HWTZ's Ruvuma cluster as already undertaking land clearing. Tanzania has prior experience — in Pwani, Morogoro and parts of the south — of large land-based projects generating disputes where free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) and fair compensation are not transparently documented. This bulletin does not publish FPIC or compensation process details for any SEZ project.
4.2 Local content and technology transfer
The bulletin gives no local-equity, local-supplier, or skills-transfer data for any named EPZ/SEZ project. Chinese-led industrial projects internationally have a documented tendency to bring their own workforce, machinery and supply chains; without published local-content requirements or verification — the same gap TICGL/TERI has flagged in mining local-content reporting — spillover effects for Tanzanian SMEs and workers cannot currently be assessed from public data.
4.3 Environmental and social risk
The risk profile here is specifically industrial rather than agricultural: a 2,100 MW coal-fired power plant carries direct implications for emissions and Tanzania's energy-mix trajectory, and a 1,000,000-tonne/year aluminium smelter is highly energy- and water-intensive. Separately, if the "Agriculture" and "Forestry" sector totals do include genuine large-scale monoculture or forestry operations, biodiversity, water-use and community-land impacts are the relevant risks there. Either reading requires environmental impact assessment (EIA) disclosure that this bulletin does not provide at project level.
4.4 Dependency and concentration risk
Dependence sits on two overlapping axes: 93.1% of quarterly EPZ/SEZ capital from a single country, and — on the evidence of the two named HWTZ-branded projects — a meaningful share of that capital tracing to what appears to be a single investor group operating in two separate SEZs simultaneously. A shift in Chinese outbound-investment policy, in the group's own financing, or in bilateral relations would expose Tanzania's EPZ/SEZ investment pipeline to a concentrated shock, not a diversified one.
4.5 The fiscal cost of the incentive package
TISEZA's own incentive schedule for projects targeting international markets includes free project land, a 10-year corporate income tax exemption, and VAT/duty exemptions on capital goods, raw materials, utilities and services. These are standard instruments to attract capital-intensive FDI, and may be entirely justified here — but they also mean the fiscal benefit to Tanzania from this boom, in the near term, is likely to be concentrated in jobs, forex earnings and turnover rather than direct tax revenue, a pattern consistent with TICGL/TERI's broader concern about Tanzania's narrow and unpredictable tax base.
If land governance, local content, environmental oversight and source-diversification are not actively managed, this boom risks becoming what TICGL/TERI has called an "enclave investment" elsewhere: capital arrives, headline figures rise, but the benefits that reach the wider Tanzanian economy — beyond direct jobs and the eventual tax base — remain limited relative to the scale of the capital involved.
04 — TransparencyWhat the Bulletin Does Not Show
A quarterly investment bulletin cannot be expected to carry every disclosure a full impact assessment would. But for a reader trying to judge sustainability rather than just scale, four specific gaps stand out in this edition.
- No local-content data — no supplier counts, local-equity shares, or skills-transfer figures for any EPZ/SEZ project, foreign or domestic.
- No land compensation or FPIC documentation — land allocation hectarage is reported; the consent and compensation process behind it is not.
- No project-level environmental disclosure — TISEZA confirms it houses an Environmental Impact Assessment function institutionally, but no EIA outcome specific to the Ruvuma or Bagamoyo projects appears in this edition.
- An unreconciled sector classification — the aggregate "Agriculture" and "Forestry" totals and the named Ruvuma project profile (aluminium and coal power) do not evidently describe the same activity, and the bulletin does not explain the gap.
05 — RecommendationsPolicy Recommendations
None of this argues against the investment. It argues for the governance layer that determines whether capital of this scale compounds into broad-based growth or sits as a concentrated, hard-to-reverse dependency.
1Reconcile EPZ/SEZ sector classification and publish it project-by-project
- Publish a project-level register showing each SEZ investment's actual activity alongside its reported sector code.
- Have TISEZA or an independent body audit and correct classification going forward, the same way local-content figures need reconciling in mining.
2Mandate and verify local content for SEZ mega-projects
- Set binding local-procurement, local-employment and skills-transfer targets for projects above a defined capital threshold.
- Publish independently audited local-content figures annually, project by project, not only in aggregate.
3Publish land governance and FPIC documentation
- Require and publish evidence of free, prior and informed consent and fair compensation for every SEZ land allocation above a set hectarage.
- Establish an accessible grievance-redress mechanism for affected communities in Songea, Bagamoyo, Kwala and Nala.
4Diversify the FDI source base deliberately
- Set an explicit target range for country-of-origin concentration within the EPZ/SEZ pipeline, and actively court capital from a wider set of source markets.
- Track and publish investor-group-level concentration, not just country-level, given the apparent role of a single group across two SEZs.
Publish project-level environmental impact assessment outcomes for the Ruvuma and Bagamoyo mega-projects, given the scale of the coal-power and smelting components, and disclose the expected fiscal-revenue timeline associated with the 10-year corporate tax exemption and duty/VAT relief already committed to these projects.
"Ninety-three percent of a boom this size, from one country, largely traceable to one investor group, filed under a sector label its own named project does not obviously match — none of that makes the capital unwelcome. It makes the governance choices Tanzania makes next the entire story. Scale is not the same as sustainability. Policy — on land, on local content, on environmental oversight, on source diversification — will decide which one this becomes."
— TICGL / Tanzania Economic Research Institute (TERI)
06 — SourcesMethod & Source Note
This report is built directly from TISEZA's Quarterly Investment Bulletin, April–June 2026 (Q4 2025/26): the Director General's foreword, Section 4.6 (EPZ/SEZ Schemes, Figures 4.7–4.14), and Section 7 (Opportunities in Tanzania — SEZ project profiles for Bagamoyo, Kwala, Nala, Buzwagi and Ruvuma). All monetary and job figures were cross-checked for internal consistency across the bulletin's own FDI/DI, sector and regional tables before use in this analysis.
Request a Full Briefing
This page summarises TICGL/TERI's reading of TISEZA's Q4 2025/26 Quarterly Investment Bulletin. Institutions, investors, government agencies and development partners may request a fuller briefing — including sector-by-sector detail and policy design options — directly from TERI.
✉️ Request via economist@ticgl.com →07 — Quick AnswersFrequently Asked Questions
How much of Tanzania's EPZ/SEZ investment came from China in Q4 2025/26?
China supplied US$3,143.8 million of the US$3,378.5 million in total EPZ/SEZ capital registered in Q4 2025/26 — approximately 93.1%. China also accounted for 19,027 of the 30,235 jobs created, roughly 62.9%. Kenya and the UAE were the next largest FDI sources, at US$3.1 million and US$0.9 million respectively.
Which sectors did the Chinese-led EPZ/SEZ capital go into?
Agriculture and Forestry together accounted for six of the seven EPZ/SEZ projects registered, US$3,328.5 million of the capital (98.5%), and 29,235 of the 30,235 jobs (96.7%). Agriculture alone drew US$2,784.7 million and 28,258 jobs; Forestry drew US$543.8 million and 977 jobs.
What is actually being built with the Ruvuma capital?
TISEZA's bulletin records a single project in Ruvuma SEZ worth US$2,600 million and 18,050 jobs. The only Ruvuma project TISEZA's own bulletin names is HWTZ Holding Limited — an approximately US$3 billion aluminium smelter (1,000,000 tonnes/year capacity) and 2,100 MW coal-fired power plant in Songea, described elsewhere in the bulletin as an industrial and energy project.
Is this level of dependence on a single country and investor group sustainable?
It is a genuine opportunity with real concentration risk: 93% of EPZ/SEZ capital from one country, and Tanzania's two largest Chinese-linked project profiles in this bulletin (Bagamoyo and Ruvuma, both branded HWTZ, together worth roughly US$6 billion) appear to trace to the same investor group. Sustainability depends on land governance, local content, environmental oversight, and diversification of the FDI source base.
Does the bulletin disclose local content, land compensation, or environmental safeguard details?
No. TISEZA's Q4 2025/26 bulletin does not report local-content shares, land compensation or FPIC processes, or project-level environmental impact assessment findings for the EPZ/SEZ projects it profiles.
Muhtasari kwa Kiswahili
Boom ya Mtaji wa China kwenye Kilimo na Misitu ya Kanda Maalum za Kiuchumi — Je, Ni Sustainable? — Kati ya Dola za Marekani milioni 3,378.5 za mtaji wa EPZ/SEZ uliosajiliwa Robo ya Nne 2025/26, China peke yake inachukua Dola milioni 3,143.8 (asilimia 93.1%). Ajira zinazotokana na China ni 19,027 kati ya 30,235 zote (asilimia 62.9%). Sekta kuu ni Kilimo (Dola milioni 2,604+ FDI, hasa Ruvuma) na Misitu.
Vipengele vyema: Hii ni mtaji unaohitaji uwekezaji mkubwa (capital-intensive) — unaoweza kuleta mabadiliko makubwa ya structural (kutoka smallholder farming kwenda large-scale agro-industrial). Inalingana na Dira 2050 na agenda ya value addition, na inaweza kuleta teknolojia, mifumo ya umeme, viwanda vya usindikaji, na masoko ya nje (hasa China yenyewe).
Hatari za ardhi: Miradi mikubwa kama hii inahitaji maelfu ya hekta. Kama hakuna free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) au fidia yenye haki, inaweza kuleta migogoro ya ardhi — kama ilivyowahi kutokea Pwani, Morogoro, na sehemu za Kusini. Taarifa hii ya TISEZA haioneshi taratibu za FPIC au fidia kwa mradi wowote wa SEZ.
Local content na uhamishaji teknolojia: Taarifa haioneshi details za local equity, skills transfer, au local suppliers. Miradi ya Kichina mara nyingi huwa na tendency ya kuleta wafanyakazi wao, mashine zao, na supply chain yao — jambo linaloweza kupunguza spillover effects kwa SMEs za Tanzania.
Hatari za kimazingira na utegemezi: Mradi pekee wa Ruvuma unaotajwa na TISEZA (HWTZ Holding Limited) ni kiwanda cha aluminium (tani milioni 1 kwa mwaka) pamoja na mtambo wa umeme wa makaa ya mawe wa MW 2,100 — si shughuli ya kilimo. Kutegemea nchi moja kwa asilimia 93 ya mtaji wa EPZ/SEZ, na kampuni moja (HWTZ) kwenye SEZ mbili tofauti (Ruvuma na Bagamoyo, zenye thamani ya jumla ya karibu Dola bilioni 6), ni hatari kubwa endapo sera au mahusiano ya kimataifa yatabadilika.
Mapendekezo ya TICGL: Kusawazisha uainishaji wa sekta za EPZ/SEZ na kuchapisha kwa kila mradi; kuweka na kuthibitisha malengo ya local content kwa miradi mikubwa; kuchapisha taratibu za FPIC na fidia ya ardhi; kutafuta mtaji kutoka nchi mbalimbali ili kupunguza utegemezi wa nchi moja; na kuchapisha matokeo ya Tathmini ya Athari za Kimazingira (EIA) kwa miradi ya Ruvuma na Bagamoyo.
Hitimisho: Boom hii ni fursa kubwa, lakini sustainability yake itategemea jinsi TISEZA na serikali zitakavyosimamia local content, land governance, na technology transfer. Kama haitasimamiwa vizuri, inaweza kuwa "enclave investment" — mtaji unakuja, lakini manufaa yanabaki madogo kwa uchumi wa ndani.
- Mtaji wa EPZ/SEZ Q4 2025/26: $3,378.5M (juu kutoka $115.16M)
- Hisa ya China: 93.1% ya mtaji, 62.9% ya ajira
- Kilimo na Misitu: 98.5% ya mtaji, 96.7% ya ajira
- Ruvuma pekee: $2,600M na ajira 18,050 (mradi mmoja)
Chanzo: TICGL/TERI, ikisoma Taarifa ya Robo ya Uwekezaji ya TISEZA, Aprili–Juni 2026. Kwa maelezo zaidi wasiliana na: economist@ticgl.com.