Dar es Salaam – Industry and Trade Minister Judith Kapinga has asked a visiting German business delegation to direct investment towards manufacturing and local processing, setting out an industrial-policy case for moving beyond the export of unprocessed resources.
Kapinga met Manfred Pentz, the State Minister for Federal, European and International Affairs and Bureaucracy Reduction of the German state of Hesse, in Dar es Salaam on September 16. Pentz was accompanied by about 30 German businesspeople and investors assessing opportunities in East Africa.
The meeting preceded the East Africa CEO and Investment Forum in Nairobi on September 17 and 18, where Pentz was due to lead a wider European Union delegation.
The forum, co-convened by the East African Development Bank and East African Business Council, is structured around business matching and attempts to turn investment-ready proposals into commercial agreements.
The initiative follows the January 2026 Invest.EastAfrica! meetings in Frankfurt and Berlin and will focus on sectors including digital technology, agribusiness, tourism, logistics, healthcare and critical raw materials.
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Kapinga told the delegation that investment opportunities lay in industry, agricultural value addition, technology, minerals and tourism. In separate public accounts of the meeting, Pentz identified agriculture, pharmaceuticals, tourism, oil and gas as areas in which German businesses could cooperate with Tanzanian partners.
The delegation was in the country to examine regional opportunities, rather than to announce a specific investment commitment.
Growing, but unequal
During her press conference Wednesday, Kapinga said the volume of bilateral trade had expanded by about 56 per cent over the previous seven years and that Tanzanian export trade had risen by about 62 per cent.
The latest figures published by Germany’s Federal Statistical Office put goods trade in 2024 at about US$374.5 million. Germany exported goods worth US$310.9 million to Tanzania, while its imports from Tanzania were US$63.6 million, leaving Tanzania with a goods-trade deficit of about US$247.3 million.
The figures show an established commercial relationship, but also the imbalance Kapinga referred to when she said Tanzania wanted to increase exports. They cover goods rather than services, and are reported from the German side.
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German investment is visible in several established businesses in Tanzania, though the available official data do not place Germany among the largest aggregate sources of foreign direct investment.
The Bank of Tanzania’s 2025 Investment Report, for instance, records German FDI inflows of US$38.2 million in 2024 and German FDI stock of US$150.7 million at the end of that year, compared with total FDI stock of US$21.7 billion.
The report’s leading source countries by FDI stock were the United Kingdom, Norway, Mauritius, the Netherlands and South Africa.
Kapinga cited Knauf and Tanga Cement as examples of German-linked industrial investment. Knauf’s Tanzania operation says its Mkuranga II facility has begun production as Sub-Saharan Africa’s largest plasterboard plant, with an annual capacity of more than 43 million square metres, illustrating the type of domestic manufacturing Kapinga sought to promote.
A policy, not a new shift
Kapinga described the preference for industry and processing as a change in emphasis, but it is also embedded in the Tanzania Development Vision 2050, adopted in 2025. The national blueprint identifies limited value addition as a constraint on participation in global markets and says priority should go to sectors that add value to raw materials.
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The vision links local processing and downstream industry to productivity, competitiveness, innovation, employment and export earnings. It names manufacturing, agro-processing and mineral processing among the areas intended to support a knowledge-based, industrialised economy and a target of a US$1 trillion economy by 2050.
The Long-Term Perspective Plan for 2026/27 to 2050/51 provides the broader implementation framework for that vision. It places industrial transformation, trade diversification, logistics, energy, science and technology, and business-environment reforms within the country’s long-term development agenda.
The policy direction explains why Kapinga’s pitch concentrated on processing agricultural goods, producing fertiliser and medicines, and developing mineral-related industries rather than simply selling raw inputs abroad.
