Dar es Salaam– At the junction between Toure Road and Kajificheni Close, a few metres from the Chinese Embassy in Tanzania, about 56 people are sitting around. Some have brought foldable mattresses and are sleeping, a few women are chatting to pass the time, and others are eating a late dinner.

It is 9:30 pm on Sunday, July 26, 2026, and these people have come early so that they can be first in line to submit their documents for visa processing when the embassy opens in the morning.

“Your number is 49, we don’t take names, but just know it is 49,” one of the people overseeing the informal number-holding system in the line, ahead of the official embassy line, told our reporters at 9:30 pm. “Just remember it and don’t leave,” he added.

I ask around, and some of the people there say they have come to the embassy every day for the whole week without being able to submit their documents. They have now decided to arrive as early as possible, some come as early as 6:00 pm, to secure their place in line for the following morning.

But other people were not traveling themselves and were there solely to get numbers for travellers and sell them. The price ranges from around 50,000 to 100,000, depending on the number of applicants.

For a few months now, this has become common practice for travellers seeking to go to China. Unlike with many other destinations, China’s supply chain is embedded in the day-to-day activities and commercial enterprises of hundreds of thousands of Tanzanians, and this has turned the situation into a crisis discussed among traders and travel agents, and complained about on social media.

“The situation started to change when Tanzania announced businesses activities that are not allowed to be undertaken by non-Tanzanians. So from August 2025 going forward the situation started to deteriorate,” one of the traders at Kariakoo market, who is also a committee member of the Kariakoo Business Association, told The Chanzo about the situation.

“When you apply online before you used to get number, but it changed. The number of people received also reduced, and there were other issue that emerged including non travellers who go there just to get numbers [in an informal line] and resell,” he continued.

Many traders who spoke with The Chanzo have two theories regarding the visa crisis. First, they believe it is in response to Tanzania’s Business Licensing (Prohibition of Business Activities for Non-Citizens) Order, 2025, which banned 15 businesses that are not allowed to be conducted by non-Tanzanians.

The order came after complaints from Tanzanian businessmen about the increasing involvement of non-Tanzanians in small businesses that are supposed to be protected; most of those complaints were about traders from China.

Traders also view the visa challenges as a business strategy to squeeze out Tanzanian traders who have been acting as middlemen between suppliers in China and end consumers. This comes at a time when Chinese traders are establishing large-scale malls and wholesale markets that target end consumers directly in Tanzania.

For example, the recent launch of the Yiwu Market at the East Africa Commercial and Logistics Center in Ubungo has attracted negative comments from many Tanzanian traders, who see it as evidence that they are being pushed out of the supply chain.

“We’re raising an alarm right now about the Yiwu market, this is a challenge for traders and self-employed people like us. The businesses that will survive are only agricultural ones, because 70 percent of the goods we use come from China,” said retailer and local importer, Rahabu Mwambene.

“All Tanzanians who are engaged in business need to understand the Chinese way of thinking. How do we regulate the Chinese when they come to make money in our country through their market? This is what being dominated looks like. Eventually, you will no longer be able to do business because they will be the ones doing all the business,” she continued.

She added: “The consequences will be enormous, beyond description. If you hear that Tanzanians are poor, it will be because of this, we will have been economically dominated by the Chinese operating here. Once they sell those products, they do not leave the money here; they take the money back to their own country.”

Regarding the visa issue, traders said through their association that they had written to the Chinese Embassy about the matter but did not receive any response. On August 3, 2026, during a meeting between the Tanzanian government and the private sector on the signing of a pact for the implementation of Vision 2050, the Chairperson of the Tanzania Traders Association, Khamisi Abdallah Livembe, raised the issue in his submission.

“There is a growing challenge with obtaining visas for businesspeople. I would like to appeal to the government to find a way to help traders obtain these visas more quickly,” Livembe said.

In response to the appeal, Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu said there is an ongoing dialogue on the issue to ensure it is resolved.

“Another issue I think concerns visas, and we have begun discussions regarding those areas that have been raising concerns. I believe you will soon see the results,” President Samia said. “We have spoken with them and they have promised us that they will increase staff for visa processing, or set up special windows for traders.”

The issue comes at a time of increasing linkage between China’s supply chain and the daily lives of the majority of Tanzanians. Aside from fuel, most of which is imported from the Middle East, everyday goods in Tanzania are mainly imported from China.

Since 2013, imports from China have increased their share of total imported goods from 12 percent to 28 percent in 2025, with the import bill rising from USD 1.4 billion in 2013 to USD 5.7 billion in 2025, denoting a dominant position, according to Tanzania’s economic survey documents. Part of the increased attractiveness is China’s pricing strategy, which suits the market, the diversity of products, as well as the convenience it offers traders accessing the Tanzanian market.

Analysts have noted the risk of concentrating the supply chain and distribution of key goods in one place, calling on the government to diversify its strategy by prioritising the placement of key industries in Tanzania, as well as untangling some of the vulnerabilities in the supply chain that could present a critical risk of disruption, such as the experience observed in the recent visa challenge.

On the visa issue, when The Chanzo visited the Chinese Embassy again on July 29, 30, and 31, traders who frequently travel to China noted that the embassy had increased the number of applicants it was receiving.

During its observation on July 30, 2026, The Chanzo found that from 6:00 a.m., applicants began lining up in the offical queue, even though most arrived much earlier in the morning. Between 8:00 a.m., when the embassy began processing applications, and by around 9:30 a.m., at least 100 people had already received official queue numbers, an improvement, according to travellers. By 11:00 a.m., when the embassy closed the queue, several applicants had already been served.

The Chanzo reached out to the Chinese Embassy in Dar es Salaam regarding the concerns raised during the reporting of this article but had not received a response by the time of publication.