Tanzania’s Mining Boom Lifts GDP Share to 10.3% as Gold Exports Soar to $4.7bn

Mining Overtakes Tourism as Tanzania’s Economic Engine

Tanzania’s mining sector delivered a breakout performance in 2025, lifting its direct contribution to gross domestic product from 7.8% to 10.3% in a single year. Mineral export earnings surged to $5.4bn—a 31% jump—driven overwhelmingly by a 66% rise in the spot price of gold. Gold exports alone reached $4.7bn, dwarfing the $3.4bn recorded a year earlier. For the first time, minerals accounted for 52% of total export earnings, displacing tourism as the country’s top source of foreign currency.

The windfall has turned mining into a critical fiscal pillar. Mining‑related taxes, royalties and levies climbed from 624.6bn shillings ($237m) in the 2021/22 fiscal year to an estimated 1.4 trillion shillings ($530m) in 2025. The government collected this revenue from a portfolio of eight large‑scale mines—six for gold and two for gemstones—operated by international firms such as AngloGold Ashanti and Barrick Gold, often through joint ventures with the state.

Beyond the headline gold story, Tanzania is pushing to develop its vast untapped reserves of the minerals that underpin the energy transition. An estimated 18m tonnes of graphite, 890,000 tonnes of rare earth elements, the giant Kabanga nickel deposit, and the world’s largest known primary helium accumulation in the Rukwa Basin are attracting fresh investor interest. Eleven advanced critical‑mineral projects are deemed ready for development, and the government plans to raise geophysical survey coverage from 16% of the territory to 50% by 2030 to attract more exploration.

Why Gold Alone Won’t Secure Tanzania’s Mining Future

The Gold Price Is Doing the Heavy Lifting

The sector’s 2025 numbers are exceptional, but they are inseparable from the gold rally. Anna Rabin, managing director of Dar es Salaam‑based consultancy Above Ground Advisory, stressed that “we don’t just want to be reliant on commodity prices because that’s dependent on external factors.” With gold supplying 87% of mineral export value, a reversal in the spot price would immediately shrink export earnings and government revenue. New mines such as Perseus Mining’s Nyanzaga project—expected to add roughly 250,000 ounces per year from early 2027—will boost output, but they do not change the commodity‑concentration risk.

The Critical‑Mineral Window Is Finite

Tanzania’s geology aligns neatly with the battery, magnet and clean‑energy supply chains. The International Energy Agency expects lithium demand to quintuple by 2040, while copper, cobalt, graphite and nickel demand will at least double. Rabin warns that countries are racing to bring graphite and other projects online, and “there is always a finite window with some of the commodities and the demand cycles they are going through.” Mining‑licence delays remain a key risk: the longer it takes a company to go from discovery to construction, the greater the danger that the demand cycle moves on before Tanzania can benefit.

The New Regulatory Compact Has Teeth

Since 2017, Tanzania has rewritten its mining code to capture more value domestically. The most consequential change is the government’s right to a free‑carried equity interest of not less than 16% in medium‑ and large‑scale mining projects, typically landing at 16–20%. The state appoints directors to the local entities and collects this equity without any cash contribution, on top of taxes and royalties. Alongside this, rules now require at least 20% Tanzanian ownership for any supplier of goods or services to the sector, and certain procurement opportunities are reserved exclusively for wholly locally owned firms. The government is also monitoring expatriate‑to‑local employment ratios and demanding succession plans that phase out foreign hires. Rabin notes that companies initially sought exemptions but that “it is strongly enforced.”

The Pitch to Investors, and the Trade‑Offs

On one hand, the regulatory tightening has sharply boosted fiscal receipts and local participation. On the other, it adds compliance costs and can slow investment decisions, particularly for single‑asset junior miners that cannot spread regulatory burdens across a portfolio. The government’s plan to map half the country’s geology by 2030 will lower exploration risk, but only if licence‑issuance keeps pace. Tanzania holds the world’s largest primary helium deposit, but Helium is classified as an industrial mineral under the Mining Act; harnessing it will test whether the regulatory regime can adapt to a resource whose extraction and marketing differ markedly from solid minerals.

Where Policymakers and Investors Need to Act Next

For Tanzanian policymakers:

• Use the current gold boom to accelerate the licensing of the 11 advanced critical‑mineral projects. Rabin’s warning that “there is always a finite window with some of the commodities” means every month of delay risks losing first‑mover advantage for graphite and nickel.
• Expand geological mapping as planned, but tie the 50%‑by‑2030 target to a parallel commitment to publish standardised licence‑processing timelines. The government has the power to grant itself a free‑carried interest, but it cannot compel investors to wait indefinitely for permits.
• Introduce a specific regulation or guidance note for the helium deposit in the Rukwa Basin, clarifying extraction rights, fiscal terms and export infrastructure requirements under the Mining Act, to avoid the resource being stranded by legal ambiguity.

For mining houses and institutional investors:

• Integrate the 16–20% free‑carried government stake and the 20% local‑ownership supply‑chain rule into project financial models from day one; seeking exemptions has proven unsuccessful and only delays construction.
• Structure joint ventures with local partners that meet the ownership and employment mandates, and build training programmes that produce the succession pipeline for expatriate roles required by the government’s monitoring framework.
• Prioritise projects that combine gold with critical‑mineral exposure—such as nickel at Kabanga or graphite near Nachu—to hedge against a pullback in gold prices while positioning for the structurally rising demand outlined in the IEA’s 2025 outlook.