The Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA) reports that internet subscribers used an average of just 1.6GB per month in December 2025, roughly 55MB per day.
This figure raises a serious question: can Tanzania realistically achieve the Digital Transformation goals set out in its Development Vision 2050 when data consumption remains this low? Vision 2050 itself acknowledges high internet costs as a key obstacle. That is the focus of this discussion.
To put the figure in perspective, TCRA data from January 2024 to December 2025 shows that the highest monthly average ever recorded was 4.7GB per subscriber, reached in September 2024, equivalent to about 160MB per day.
Even that peak falls far short of what meaningful digital participation requires. The 1.6GB monthly average of December 2025 is not just low; it signals that millions of Tanzanians with internet-capable devices are barely using them.
Defining affordability
Affordability is an aspiration in both Vision 2050 and Tanzania’s ICT Policy, yet neither document defines it precisely. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) offers a practical benchmark: Internet costs should be measured relative to consumers’ average income.
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According to Tanzania’s National Bureau of Statistics, the average monthly income is Sh477,241, though this varies significantly between urban and rural residents, and between men and women.
Consider a person using 20GB per month, a modest target for a digitally active user. At the standard out-of-bundle rate of Sh9.35 per MB (unchanged throughout 2025), that amounts to approximately 40.1 per cent of the average income.
For a woman in a rural area, the figure rises to 63.6 per cent of her income. Spending more than half of one’s income on data is, plainly, unsustainable for most households.
Fortunately, most Tanzanians subscribe to data bundles, which are relatively cheaper. In 2025, bundle prices ranged from Sh2.06 to Sh2.17 per MB, bringing the cost of 20GB down to between 8.8 per cent and 9.3 per cent of the average income and between 14 per cent and 14.8 per cent for rural women.
These figures are more manageable, but they remain a stretch for low-income households, and they assume a level of data usage far above what people are consuming.
Device-connectivity gap
These are just calculations, but the 1.6GB that is used every month reveals a great gap for those who have digital devices. In real terms, it means some people with digital devices do not exploit the digital opportunities available to them.
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It is now possible for a person to acquire a smartphone through lending schemes, but the device often functions less as a gateway to opportunity and more as an expensive entertainment item.
Visit rural communities, and you will find people using their smartphones primarily to play music or videos obtained from local media vendors, entirely offline. This is the real cost of unaffordable internet: not just economic exclusion, but the squandering of potential.
Vision 2050’s digital transformation goals will remain out of reach unless Tanzanians are not only buying devices, but regularly and meaningfully connecting online.
A reasonable minimum target would be 30GB per subscriber per month—approximately 1GB per day. The urgency becomes clearer when viewed regionally. Whilst Tanzanian subscribers averaged 1.6GB in December 2025, Kenyan subscribers averaged 14.6GB in the same month, nearly ten times as much.
This gap has direct consequences for Tanzania’s competitiveness in the digital economy across East Africa and the continent.
The World Bank estimated in 2021 that at least 6GB per month is the minimum needed to support a typical internet user. Tanzania is not even at half that level. This is not a matter of preference or lifestyle choice; it is a structural barrier to digital participation.
Priority
Reducing the cost of internet access must become a clear policy priority. As more people come online and use data more freely, the digital economy grows, creating more consumers, more innovators, and more opportunities.
Taxing internet services more heavily may appear attractive in the short term, but the long-term effect is counterproductive. The Laffer Curve applies here: beyond a certain point, higher taxes shrink the very base they are meant to capture.
The broader goal should be creating an environment genuinely conducive to digital participation. Content creators and innovators cannot build sustainable businesses if their potential audience is priced out of staying online.
Tanzania’s Vision 2050 is ambitious and forward-looking, but ambition without affordable internet access remains just an aspiration.
Francis Nyonzo is a Fulbright Alumnus, an economist and theorist whose research interests span the digital economy, development economics, social justice, and human rights. He is available at francisnyonzo@gmail.com. These are the writer’s own opinions and do not necessarily reflect the viewpoints of The Chanzo. Do you want to publish in this space? Contact our editors at editor@thechanzo.com for further clarification.
