01 — OverviewExecutive Summary
Dar es Salaam is East Africa's fastest-growing large city and Tanzania's principal economic engine, generating roughly 17–20% of national GDP. How large the city actually is depends on which boundary is used: the official NBS Dar es Salaam Region — the five municipal councils of Ilala, Kinondoni, Temeke, Ubungo, and Kigamboni — held an estimated 5.86 million people in 2026, up from 5,383,728 at the 2022 census. But the city's continuously built-up urban footprint now extends well beyond that administrative boundary into neighbouring Coast (Pwani) Region — Kibaha, Bagamoyo, and Mkuranga in particular — and on the broader metropolitan-agglomeration definition used by the UN's World Urbanization Prospects, Dar es Salaam's functional population had already reached approximately 8.6 million in 2025 and an estimated 9.0 million in 2026, growing at close to 5% per year.
The physical fabric of the city, on either definition, has not kept pace with its economic and demographic weight: 70–80% of residents live in informal, unplanned settlements that lack secure tenure, adequate drainage, reliable sanitation, and planned road access. This report brings together national census figures, UN population data, World Bank and UN-Habitat assessments, Bank of Tanzania and TRA data, and TICGL's own city-economics research to quantify how informality constrains infrastructure delivery, what it costs government on a recurring basis, and how the trajectory is likely to evolve to 2030.
- Informal settlement area expanded six-fold in four decades. From roughly 52 km² in 1982 to about 379 km² in 2022 — meaning most new infrastructure must now be retrofitted into already-built, densely occupied land rather than laid out ahead of settlement.
- The fiscal cost of informality is continuous, not one-off. It shows up daily in foregone tax revenue from untaxed economic activity, in elevated operating and maintenance costs for roads and drainage built to serve unplanned densities, and in periodic but recurring flood losses that this report annualises into a daily order-of-magnitude figure.
- Without a step-change, informality could persist at or above today's levels through 2030 — even as the city's population climbs toward 7 million on the official boundary and national policy targets a much higher rate of formal employment and tax mobilisation.
- The total recurring economic cost of unplanned urban growth — spanning infrastructure retrofit, foregone tax revenue, and flood-related losses — plausibly runs to an illustrative ~TZS 6–8.5 billion per day (~US$2.3–3.3 million), with wide uncertainty bands reflecting the underlying data.
- The burden splits roughly evenly. ~TZS 2.9–3.3 billion/day falls directly on government (infrastructure retrofit and foregone tax revenue); ~TZS 3.0–3.3 billion/day is absorbed by households, businesses, and the wider city economy through flood damage and disrupted commerce.
Read this alongside TICGL's flagship Dira 2050 policy-gaps analysis
Unmanaged urban growth in Dar es Salaam is one of the structural constraints standing between Tanzania and Dira 2050's US$1 trillion, US$7,000-per-capita ambition. See TICGL/TERI's wider assessment of the financing, productivity, and institutional gaps that need closing on the road to 2050.
Read: What's Next for Tanzania's Economy? The Policy Gaps Keeping $1 Trillion Out of Reach by 2050 →02 — Key NumbersKey Numbers at a Glance
Sources: NBS Census 2022, UN World Urbanization Prospects / Macrotrends metro-area series, ACRC, UN-Habitat, World Bank, TICGL Economics of Cities in Tanzania (Feb 2026), AllAfrica/Daily News (Dec 2025).
03 — Section 1The Scale of Informal Settlement in Dar es Salaam
1.1 Two Ways to Count the City — and Why It Matters
Any discussion of population pressure in Dar es Salaam has to start by being explicit about which "Dar es Salaam" is being measured, because the two commonly cited figures differ by more than 3 million people and lead to very different intuitions about the scale of the problem.
Official administrative boundary
NBS Dar es Salaam Region: the five municipal councils of Ilala, Kinondoni, Temeke, Ubungo, and Kigamboni. This is the boundary used by the national census and by LGA budgets. It recorded 5,383,728 people at the 2022 census, 100% classified as urban, growing at roughly 2.1% per year — reaching an estimated 5.86 million by 2026.
Metropolitan / urban agglomeration
UN World Urbanization Prospects definition: the continuously built-up urban area, which now sprawls well past the official regional boundary into neighbouring Coast (Pwani) Region — notably Kibaha, Bagamoyo, and Mkuranga. On this broader, functional definition, population reached approximately 8.16 million in 2024, 8.56 million in 2025, and an estimated 9.0 million in 2026 — growing at ~5% per year, nearly double the official regional rate.
The gap between these two figures is not a data error; it reflects where the fastest, least-controlled growth is actually happening. A substantial and rapidly growing share of Dar es Salaam's real, physically contiguous urban population — heavily concentrated in new, unplanned peri-urban settlement along the Bagamoyo, Morogoro, and Kilwa road corridors — falls outside the boundary that generates official population statistics, LGA revenue projections, and, in many cases, planning jurisdiction. This report uses the official regional figure wherever the analysis is tied to census, budget, or LGA-level data, and the wider metropolitan figure wherever the concern is the lived, physical scale of population pressure on land, roads, and services.
Dar es Salaam Population, 2002–2030: Official Region vs. Metropolitan Area
On either boundary, absolute growth remains large even as percentage growth rates have moderated. Dar es Salaam — on the metropolitan definition — is adding roughly 400,000 people a year at present; TICGL's research estimates that 150,000 or more of the region's own new residents each year settle without a formal land claim, a figure that would be materially higher again if the Coast Region fringe were included.
Applied to the larger metropolitan population base, a 70–80% informal share implies that somewhere between 6.3 and 7.2 million people across greater Dar es Salaam were living in informal settlements in 2026 — a materially larger number than the 4.1–4.7 million implied by the official regional population alone, and a more accurate reflection of the true scale of the infrastructure and service challenge.
1.2 Spatial Expansion of Unplanned Areas
Remote-sensing studies place the built extent of informal settlement in Dar es Salaam at approximately 52 km² in 1982, expanding to roughly 379 km² by 2022 — an increase of about 630% in four decades, far outpacing the roughly six-fold growth in population over a similar period. This expansion has been simultaneously a densification process near the city centre and a sprawl process at the periphery, with urban development now extending 40–50 km from the Central Business District along the main transport corridors.
Informal Settlement Area in Dar es Salaam, 1982 → 2026
1.3 Housing and Tenure
Roughly 30% of Dar es Salaam residents live in formal housing with secure tenure; the remainder occupy informal plots where perceived security of occupation is common but legal title is rare. Mass land formalisation has made measurable but insufficient progress: over 675,000 land documents were issued nationally between 2020 and 2024, a pace TICGL's research describes as too slow relative to the roughly 150,000+ new informal residents Dar es Salaam absorbs annually. The national annual housing deficit stands at approximately 200,000 units, with the gap projected to exceed 3 million units by 2035 in the absence of a step-change in formal housing delivery.
| Year | Informal Settlement Area | Region Population (official) | Metro Population (agglomeration) | Informal Share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1982 | ~52 km² | n/a (pre-boom) | n/a | ~60–70% (est.) |
| 2002 | growing | ~2.5–3.0 million | ~3.4 million | ~68% |
| 2012 | expanding | ~4.4 million | ~5.1 million | ~70% |
| 2022 | ~379 km² | 5,383,728 (census) | ~7.4 million | 70–80%+ |
| 2026 | ~400 km²+ (est.) | ~5.86 million (est.) | ~9.0 million (est.) | ~70–75% (est.) |
Sources: NBS Census 1978–2022, UN World Urbanization Prospects / Macrotrends metro-area series, remote-sensing studies of built-up informal area, ACRC (2024), UN-Habitat, TICGL estimates. Pre-2022 population and area figures for intervening years are directional estimates interpolated between census points, not official data points.
04 — Section 2Why Informality Makes Infrastructure Delivery Harder
Unplanned settlement is not merely a housing or welfare issue — it is a direct, structural constraint on how efficiently government can build and maintain infrastructure. The mechanisms are well documented and largely explain why the same kilometre of paved road, drainage channel, or water main costs substantially more, and takes substantially longer, to deliver in an informal Dar es Salaam neighbourhood than on a planned greenfield site.
2.1 Retrofitting Versus Building Ahead of Settlement
In planned development, roads, drainage, water, and power corridors are surveyed and reserved before people build. In Dar es Salaam's informal settlements, the reverse has happened: dense, haphazard construction came first, and infrastructure must now be threaded through existing plots — requiring compensation, negotiated demolition, or complex re-engineering that can stall or derail a project outright if community negotiations break down, as happened with earlier attempts to clear the lower Msimbazi Valley.
2.2 Service Deficits That Compound Over Time
- Formal sewerage reaches a small minority of the city — often cited at 10% or less — with most households relying on pit latrines that overflow in heavy rain.
- Solid waste collection is incomplete because vehicles cannot navigate narrow, unplanned access routes; uncollected waste further blocks drainage and worsens flooding.
- Water access is partial and often informal, with unlicensed private boreholes contributing to aquifer depletion.
2.3 Flood-Prone Occupation of Hazardous Land
A large share of informal settlement has occurred on floodplains and river valleys — most visibly the Msimbazi Basin, home to an estimated 1.6 million people basin-wide and roughly 330,000 in the lower, most flood-exposed reaches. Major flood events have struck in seven of the last ten years, repeatedly disrupting the Bus Rapid Transit corridor at Jangwani Bridge. Earlier attempts to demarcate the valley as non-developable, including two demolition campaigns, were halted due to social opposition.
2.4 The "Build Fast, Open Fast" Problem
Population additions — still averaging well over 100,000 people per year — mean new roads are placed under heavy use almost immediately after opening, compressing the window for design and construction quality control. The effect is faster wear, more frequent resurfacing, and a compounding maintenance backlog, particularly on roads serving dense informal areas with poor drainage.
This dynamic is visible in government's own recent project list for Dar es Salaam: the Kigogo Bridge (TZS 17.7 billion), Jangwani Bridge (TZS 67 billion), and Mkwajuni Bridge (TZS 11 billion) were all commissioned specifically because flood-driven road closures on routes linking outlying districts to the city centre had become an economically unacceptable, recurring disruption.
05 — Section 3Development and Economic Planning Constraints
Beyond the physical engineering challenge, informality undermines the planning and fiscal instruments government needs to manage urban growth coherently.
3.1 Coordinated Land-Use Planning
Sporadic, self-built growth makes it difficult to sequence infrastructure investment against population distribution, since settlement patterns form organically rather than in response to planned service provision. Densification in informal areas often outpaces the space available for schools, clinics, markets, and drainage reserves, locking in service deficits that are expensive to correct later.
3.2 A Narrow Formal Tax Base
Dar es Salaam contributes an estimated 17–20% of Tanzania's GDP, yet converting that weight into public revenue is constrained by informality. A 2019 survey valued the city's informal economic activity at roughly TZS 6.2 trillion (~22.5% of city GDP then); more recent estimates for 2025 put informality at roughly 30% of the city's economy, even as the national informal economy is estimated at 45–46% of GDP and 76% of the workforce.
3.3 Fragmented Metropolitan Governance
Dar es Salaam is administered as three separate Local Government Authorities — Kinondoni, Ilala, and Temeke — each with its own licensing regime, planning department, development levies, and political leadership. This fragmentation is widely identified — including by the EIU and TICGL's own research — as the single highest-leverage governance reform available, with potential to add 0.5–1.0 percentage points to annual GDP growth if resolved.
3.4 The National Growth Trade-Off
Each percentage-point increase in Tanzania's urbanisation rate is associated with roughly 0.58 additional percentage points of GDP growth — urbanisation itself is a net positive. The risk is unmanaged urban growth: Tanzania's tax-to-GDP ratio improved from 11.8% (2020) to ~13.5–14% (2025/26), still below the government's own 16% target for 2027 and the Sub-Saharan Africa average of 16–17%.
Far below benchmarks such as Nairobi County's 50%+, because informal businesses routinely avoid formal registration to escape taxes, fees, and paperwork they perceive as offering limited benefit in return.
06 — Section 4Government Infrastructure and Resilience Spending: A 2018–2026 Snapshot
It is useful to see, side by side, the discrete sums government and its development partners have actually committed to counteracting the effects of informal, unplanned settlement in Dar es Salaam. These figures are not additive in a simple sense — they overlap in scope and timeframe — but together they show a consistent order of magnitude: infrastructure retrofit and flood-resilience spending has run into the hundreds of millions of US dollars, and low trillions of Tanzanian shillings, over the past decade, with no sign of tapering.
Infrastructure & Flood-Resilience Spending, Selected Programmes (US$ millions)
| Programme / Event | Value | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Retrofitting unplanned settlements | ~US$250 million/year | If spread over a 30-year horizon (World Bank) |
| Citywide Action Plan (upgrading target) | ~TZS 1.58 trillion (~US$1.2bn) | Multi-year target covering land, basic services, housing, capacity |
| Msimbazi Basin Development Project | US$200–260 million | 2022–2028, World Bank IDA + Spain + Netherlands co-financing |
| DMDP — Lower Msimbazi phase | US$120 million | World Bank (US$100m) + FCDO (US$20m) |
| December 2025 government infrastructure injection | TZS 900 billion | Dar es Salaam roads and bridges, incl. flood-driven bridge works |
| April 2018 flood event — direct losses | US$101–216 million | Single event; 2–4% of city GDP that year |
| April 2018 flood event — total losses (incl. indirect) | US$107–228 million | Single event, including indirect economic disruption |
| Recurring flood-related GDP drag | up to ~2% of city GDP/year | When major flood years are averaged across the cycle |
Sources: World Bank Msimbazi Basin Development Project appraisal and GFDRR documentation; World Bank DMDP project documents; AllAfrica/Daily News (31 Dec 2025) on the TZS 900bn Dar es Salaam infrastructure allocation; IPS News (24 Jul 2025); Africa Cities Research Consortium; UN-Habitat.
4.1 What This Buys — and What It Doesn't
The Msimbazi Basin Development Project alone is expected to reduce flood exposure for more than 300,000 people and relocate roughly 2,500 households from the highest-risk flood zones by its 2028 completion, while unlocking an estimated US$900 million in real estate investment in the areas made viable by flood protection, according to World Bank-affiliated (GFDRR) analysis.
These are targeted interventions in a single basin; the great majority of Dar es Salaam's 379 km² of informal settlement lies outside the Msimbazi catchment and remains largely unaddressed by any comparable programme, meaning the pattern of retrofit-driven cost overruns and periodic flood losses documented here is likely to persist across most of the city through 2030 even as flagship projects like Msimbazi and the BRT network expansion proceed.
07 — Section 5The Daily Economic Cost of Unplanned Urban Growth
How much does unplanned settlement and informal economic activity cost Dar es Salaam on a day-to-day basis? There is no single official published answer — Tanzania, like most developing-country governments, does not track a daily cost of informality as a discrete line item. What follows is a transparent, bottom-up estimate built by annualising the recurring cost categories identified in Sections 3 and 4 into a daily figure, so the scale of the burden can be compared against familiar reference points. Each component is presented separately, with its own basis and uncertainty, before being combined into the headline figure below.
Daily Cost by Component (TZS billions/day, midpoint estimate)
5.4 The Headline Number: Total Economic Cost, Split by Who Bears It
Reading Components A–C together, and being careful not to double-count, the recurring cost of unplanned urban growth in Dar es Salaam splits cleanly into two groups: costs that fall directly on government (infrastructure retrofit and foregone tax revenue), and costs that are absorbed by households, businesses, and the wider city economy (flood-related losses).
Who Bears the Daily Cost?
| Who Bears the Cost | Daily Order of Magnitude | Components |
|---|---|---|
| Direct cost to Government | ~TZS 2.9–3.3 billion | Component A + Component C |
| Cost absorbed by households, businesses & city economy | ~TZS 3.0–3.3 billion | Component B |
| TOTAL — Daily Economic Cost | ~TZS 6–8.5 billion (~US$2.3–3.3M) | Sum of both groups; wide uncertainty band |
Sources: TICGL calculations based on World Bank, Africa Cities Research Consortium, TRA, and TICGL Economics of Cities in Tanzania (2026) data. All daily figures are annualised averages derived from annual or multi-year data points; none reflect an officially published daily cost, and all carry a materially wide margin of error.
Traffic congestion and unreliable logistics arising from an underdeveloped, unplanned road network are not included in the headline figure. The World Bank has described Dar es Salaam's congestion as costing billions of shillings in lost productivity daily, and TICGL/EIU analysis suggests resolving Dar es Salaam's fragmented metropolitan governance alone could add 0.5–1.0 percentage points to annual GDP growth — but no robust, city-specific daily congestion-cost figure has been published to date, so it is flagged here as an upside risk to the total rather than included in it.
Even allowing for a wide error margin, the exercise is useful directionally: TRA's 2025/26 target is TZS 36.066 trillion for the full fiscal year, or roughly TZS 99 billion per day on average. On that comparison, the ~TZS 6–8.5 billion/day estimated here would represent roughly 6–9% of average daily national tax collection — a material, continuous drag on the economy rather than an occasional shock, falling on government and on ordinary households and businesses in roughly equal measure.
This is a planning-level, order-of-magnitude estimate assembled from the best publicly available data as of August 2026, intended to give decision-makers a sense of scale rather than a precise accounting figure. It should not be cited as an official government cost estimate. A dedicated primary data-collection exercise — ideally led jointly by PO-RALG, TRA, and the Dar es Salaam City Council — would be required to produce a defensible, audited daily or annual figure.
08 — Section 6Forecast to 2030
Two scenarios bound the plausible range for Dar es Salaam through 2030, consistent with TICGL's broader national urban-economics modelling (see TICGL, Economics of Cities in Tanzania, February 2026).
Informality drifts at or above today's range
- Metropolitan governance reform, land tenure formalisation, and drainage investment continue at their current, incremental pace.
- Informal settlement share remains at or drifts above today's 70–80% range; informal area continues expanding faster than formal plot supply.
- Annualised cost components grow roughly in line with city GDP: the estimated daily cost of informality could rise from ~TZS 6–8.5 billion in 2026 toward the TZS 9–12 billion per day range by 2030 in nominal terms.
- The national urban informal-settlement rate trends toward the 50% level TICGL flags as a risk by 2050, with Dar es Salaam trending toward the higher end of its historical 70–80% range.
Reforms already identified are implemented on schedule
- A unified Dar es Salaam Metropolitan Authority, accelerated land titling building on the 675,000 documents issued 2020–2024, and the IDRAS digital tax platform widening the formal tax net.
- Completion of the Msimbazi Basin Development Project and BRT Lines 2 and 3 by around 2028.
- Informal settlement share stabilises or begins a gradual decline by 2030; formal employment climbs toward the government's 38% target; LGA own-source revenue widens materially from today's sub-20% level.
- Even here, the housing deficit and population growth mean the absolute number of people in informal settlements is unlikely to fall before 2030 — the realistic near-term goal is a slower rate of informal expansion, not an outright reversal.
Indicative Trajectory to 2030: City GDP and Informal Settlement Share
6.3 Indicative Trajectory Table
Population figures below use the official Dar es Salaam Region boundary, for consistency with GDP and revenue data reported at that level. On the wider metropolitan/agglomeration definition, which grows faster, the equivalent trajectory would run from ~9.0 million (2026) to approximately ~10.8–11.2 million by 2030.
| Year | Region Population | Informal Share | City GDP | Est. Daily Cost (illustrative) | Key Development |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | ~5.86M | ~70–75% | ~TZS 38T | ~US$0.35–0.4B | Baseline |
| 2027 | ~6.0M | ~72–76% | ~TZS 43T | ~US$0.4–0.45B | Reform measures begin (IDRAS rollout, metropolitan authority discussions) |
| 2028 | ~6.2M | ~73–77% | ~TZS 48T | ~US$0.45–0.5B | Msimbazi Basin Project completion; BRT Lines 2 & 3 progress |
| 2029 | ~6.4M | ~73–78% | ~TZS 54T | ~US$0.5–0.55B | Continued land formalisation; housing deficit still growing |
| 2030 | ~6.6–7.0M | ~70–80% (scenario-dependent) | ~TZS 60T+ | ~US$0.55–0.65B | Divergence point: Reform Path vs. Business-as-Usual |
Sources: TICGL projections, consistent with TICGL Economics of Cities in Tanzania (Feb 2026), UN World Urbanization Prospects 2025, and World Bank/IMF growth projections. Figures for 2027–2030 are TICGL scenario projections, not official government forecasts. Note: values in the "Est. Daily Cost" column are reproduced as presented in the source report and reflect the wide-range planning nature of this exercise.
09 — Section 7Policy Implications
The data points toward a consistent set of priorities, several of which are already reflected in national policy discussions but require acceleration to meaningfully change Dar es Salaam's cost trajectory before 2030.
Prioritise retrofit-efficient infrastructure sequencing
- Concentrate drainage and road-upgrading investment in the highest-density, highest-flood-risk informal wards first, where retrofit cost per resident protected is lowest and avoided flood-loss value is highest.
- Where new roads must be opened to traffic quickly, budget explicitly for accelerated early-life maintenance rather than treating early deterioration as an unplanned cost overrun.
Widen the formal land and tax base together
- Pair land titling drives (building on the 675,000 documents issued 2020–2024) directly with LGA property-tax registration, so formalisation converts into revenue rather than remaining a standalone welfare intervention.
- Accelerate IDRAS and LGRCIS rollout specifically in high-informality wards, where the revenue upside identified in Section 5.3 is concentrated.
Resolve metropolitan governance fragmentation
- Progress the proposed unified Dar es Salaam Metropolitan Authority, replacing the current three-LGA structure, to reduce the transaction-cost drag on both infrastructure delivery and private investment.
Treat flood resilience as core infrastructure
- Extend the Msimbazi Basin model — preventative resettlement paired with infrastructure and livelihood restoration — to the city's other flood-exposed informal catchments, which together hold the majority of the city's 379 km² of informal settlement.
Commission a joint PO-RALG/TRA/Dar es Salaam City Council study to produce an audited, recurring estimate of the fiscal cost of informality, replacing the order-of-magnitude modelling in Section 5 with a defensible official figure that can be tracked year over year.
10 — Section 8Data Sources and Methodology Note
This report synthesises data from the following primary categories of source. Where figures conflict across sources — as they frequently do for informal-settlement share and population estimates — this report generally presents the range rather than a single point estimate, and flags TICGL's own modelled figures explicitly as estimates.
Primary Sources
- National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) — 2022 Population and Housing Census; historical census series 1967–2022
- World Bank — Msimbazi Basin Development Project appraisal and implementation documents (P169425); Dar es Salaam Metropolitan Development Project (DMDP) documents; Tanzania Country Climate and Development Report (2024)
- UN-Habitat — Informal Settlements and Finance in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
- African Cities Research Consortium (ACRC) — Dar es Salaam city profile and housing analysis
- Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) — Msimbazi Basin feature reporting
- Bank of Tanzania, Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA), and IMF World Economic Outlook — macroeconomic, fiscal, and tax-to-GDP data
- TICGL — Economics of Cities in Tanzania (Final Integrated Edition, February 2026); TICGL Economic Research 2024–2026
Methodology Note on the Daily Cost Estimate
The daily cost figures in Section 5 are derived by taking published annual or multi-year cost estimates (infrastructure retrofit budgets, flood-loss assessments, informal-economy size estimates) and dividing by 365 to produce a comparable daily order of magnitude. This is a standard annualisation technique for planning purposes, but it necessarily assumes costs are evenly distributed across the year, which they are not — flood losses in particular are concentrated in the rainy season (typically March–May and, to a lesser extent, October–December). The figures should therefore be read as average daily equivalents over a full year, not as literal day-to-day cash costs to government.
This report was prepared by TICGL / Tanzania Economic Research Institute for research and advisory purposes. Figures marked as TICGL estimates or projections are the firm's own modelling and should be distinguished from officially published government statistics. © 2026 Tanzania Investment and Consultant Group Ltd (TICGL).
11 — Quick AnswersFrequently Asked Questions
How much does unplanned urban growth cost Dar es Salaam each day?
TICGL/TERI estimates the total recurring economic cost at roughly TZS 6–8.5 billion per day (about US$2.3–3.3 million), combining infrastructure retrofit costs, foregone tax revenue, and annualised flood-related losses. This is an order-of-magnitude planning estimate, not an official government figure.
What share of Dar es Salaam's population lives in informal settlements?
Independent sources including UN-Habitat and ACRC consistently place 70–80%, and in some assessments over 80%, of Dar es Salaam residents in informal, unplanned settlements lacking secure tenure, adequate drainage, reliable sanitation, or planned road access.
How fast has informal settlement area grown in Dar es Salaam?
Remote-sensing studies show informal settlement area expanding from approximately 52 km² in 1982 to about 379 km² in 2022 — roughly 630% growth in four decades — with an estimated 400+ km² by 2026.
Who bears the daily cost of unplanned urban growth?
The cost splits roughly evenly: ~TZS 2.9–3.3 billion/day falls directly on government through infrastructure retrofit spending and foregone tax revenue; ~TZS 3.0–3.3 billion/day is absorbed by households, businesses, and the wider city economy through flood-related property damage and disrupted commerce.
What is Dar es Salaam's population in 2026?
On the official NBS Region boundary, approximately 5.86 million in 2026, up from 5,383,728 at the 2022 census. On the wider UN metropolitan-agglomeration definition, the functional population reached an estimated 9.0 million in 2026.
Muhtasari kwa Kiswahili
Gharama ya Kila Siku ya Ukuaji wa Miji Usiopangwa Jijini Dar es Salaam — Utafiti mpya wa TICGL/TERI unaonyesha kuwa asilimia 70 hadi 80 ya wakazi wa Dar es Salaam wanaishi katika makazi holela yasiyo na hati miliki salama, mifereji ya maji ya kutosha, huduma za usafi wa mazingira, wala barabara zilizopangwa. Eneo la makazi holela limeongezeka kutoka takriban kilomita za mraba 52 mwaka 1982 hadi kilomita za mraba 379 mwaka 2022 — ongezeko la takriban asilimia 630 katika miongo minne.
Gharama ya siku moja: TICGL inakadiria kuwa gharama ya jumla ya kiuchumi ya ukuaji wa miji usiopangwa jijini Dar es Salaam ni takriban TZS bilioni 6 hadi 8.5 kwa siku (sawa na Dola za Marekani milioni 2.3 hadi 3.3), ikijumuisha gharama za kurekebisha miundombinu, mapato ya kodi yaliyokosekana kutokana na shughuli za kiuchumi zisizo rasmi, na hasara za mafuriko zilizowekwa kwa mwaka mzima.
Gharama hii inagawanyika karibu sawasawa: takriban TZS bilioni 2.9–3.3 kwa siku zinabebwa moja kwa moja na Serikali (kupitia urekebishaji wa miundombinu na mapato ya kodi yaliyokosekana), na takriban TZS bilioni 3.0–3.3 kwa siku zinabebwa na kaya, wafanyabiashara, na uchumi mpana wa jiji kupitia uharibifu wa mali unaosababishwa na mafuriko na usumbufu wa biashara.
TICGL inasisitiza kuwa bila hatua za haraka za kurasimisha ardhi, kuboresha uongozi wa jiji (metropolitan authority), na kuongeza uwekezaji kwenye mifereji ya maji, kiwango cha makazi holela kinaweza kuendelea kubaki juu au hata kuongezeka hadi kufikia mwaka 2030, hata huku idadi ya watu ikizidi kuongezeka.
- Wakazi wa makazi holela: asilimia 70–80 ya wakazi wa Dar es Salaam
- Ukuaji wa eneo la makazi holela: kilomita za mraba 52 (1982) hadi 379 (2022) — ongezeko la asilimia 630
- Gharama ya kila siku: TZS bilioni 6–8.5 (~Dola milioni 2.3–3.3)
- Idadi ya watu Dar es Salaam (mkoa rasmi), 2026: takriban milioni 5.86; eneo pana la jiji (metropolitan): takriban milioni 9.0
Vyanzo: Sensa ya NBS 2022, Benki ya Dunia, UN-Habitat, African Cities Research Consortium (ACRC), GFDRR, Benki Kuu ya Tanzania (BOT), Mamlaka ya Mapato Tanzania (TRA), IMF, na utafiti wa TICGL/TERI. Uchambuzi umeandaliwa na Idara ya Utafiti ya TICGL / Tanzania Economic Research Institute (TERI), Agosti 2026.