Tanzania’s return to the World Bank’s top GovTech tier highlights the region’s push for connected public services

Discover how Tanzania’s advanced digital government systems position it in the top GovTech maturity category, leading East Africa’s digital transformation.

Tanzania has been classified again in the World Bank’s highest GovTech maturity category, a designation that signals the country has advanced beyond isolated digitisation projects toward a more integrated model of digital government: core state systems, online service delivery, citizen engagement platforms, and the laws and institutional set-up required to keep them running.

In the GovTech Maturity Index (GTMI) 2025, the World Bank groups economies into four bands—A to D—based on average GTMI scores. Group A is described as “Extensive” GovTech maturity, and the World Bank stresses that GTMI is not a ranking, but an overview intended to map progress and gaps in public sector digital transformation.

The 2025 update measures maturity using 48 key indicators across four focus areas: Core Government Systems, Online Public Service Delivery, Digital Citizen Engagement, and GovTech Enablers—including strategy, institutions, laws and regulations, digital skills, and innovation policies.

Tanzania’s renewed Group A position follows an earlier jump in the prior cycle. Government sources cite the 2022 GTMI assessment, which covered 198 countries, where Tanzania moved from 90th in 2021 to 26th in 2022, shifting from Group B to Group A, ranking second in Africa after Mauritius and leading in East Africa. They also describe Tanzania as part of a small set of African economies in the top category, alongside peers such as Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya and Egypt.

The World Bank’s broader message in the 2025 update is that global GovTech progress has been real but uneven, and that the divide between high maturity and low maturity economies is widening. The Bank also flags a persistent gap that affects credibility: many governments are implementing GovTech policies and platforms, but still have weak measurement of actual usage and uptake—limiting course correction and improvement.

For Tanzania, the systems highlighted by government sources focus first on the “core” layer that reduces duplication and enables institutions to exchange data securely. The World Bank defines the Core Government Systems pillar to include shared digital infrastructure such as interoperability frameworks and service bus platforms, alongside key platforms such as human resources systems and e-procurement.

Tanzania cites the Human Capital Information Management System (HCIMS) and the Ajira Portal as examples of core platforms supporting workforce management and recruitment. It also points to the Government Enterprise Service Bus (GovESB) as the interoperability backbone that enables public institutions to exchange information more efficiently and securely—intended to reduce repetitive data collection, speed up workflows, and strengthen accountability.

The second focus area is online delivery of public services. Tanzania points to platforms that touch high-volume transactions: GePG for government payments, NeST for electronic procurement processes, and TAUSI for selected local government services.

The World Bank’s 2025 update notes that globally, adoption of digital service portals—such as e-payment services, customs/tax e-filing, and job portals—has expanded across a large share of economies since 2022, reinforcing the link between digitisation and day-to-day service access.

The third focus area—digital citizen engagement—often becomes the public legitimacy test. Tanzania highlights e-Mrejesho as its feedback and complaint-handling platform, enabling citizens to submit complaints, suggestions, advice and compliments and receive responses.

The World Bank notes that citizen engagement remains the least mature GovTech area globally, even as feedback platforms expand, and that maintaining open data and open government portals remains challenging in many contexts.

Eng. Benedict Ndomba, Director General of the e-Government Authority (e-GA), said the assessment was evidence-based and ran for a sustained period.

“The World Bank conducted this study for about a year, collecting evidence and various information on the use of ICT in government—an evidence-based GovTech Maturity Index survey—across different countries,” he said.

He urged public institutions to keep implementing ICT projects in line with national laws, standards and guidelines, strengthen citizen engagement systems, and connect institutional platforms through GovESB

Eng. Benedict B. Ndomba, Director General of the e-Government Authority, addressing members of the press on the Government’s wide-ranging GovTech initiatives aimed at expanding and strengthening the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) across the public sector.