Tanzania Finalizes Digital Assets Regulations as African Governments Move to Rein In Bitcoin
Tanzania’s central bank is finalizing laws to supervise digital assets including Bitcoin, Governor Emmanuel Tutuba has said, marking the country’s most significant step yet toward formal oversight of a fast-growing digital asset market.
Tutuba announced the move during a visit to the Bank of Tanzania pavilion at the 50th Dar es Salaam International Trade Fair. He said the framework is intended to strengthen oversight while protecting investors from the risks of a rapidly evolving sector.
“We are currently finalising the preparation of laws and regulations for the supervision of digital assets, particularly virtual assets, cryptocurrencies and stablecoins, so that we can strengthen regulation and oversight,” Tutuba said.
Protecting Young Investors
The governor tied the push to rising participation among young Tanzanians, alongside a growing number of complaints from people who had lost money.
“Many young people are investing in this area, but we have also received complaints from people who have lost money,” he said. “We are therefore looking at how to put in place an enabling environment that will protect Tanzanians from further harm.”
Tutuba said the rules would also address money laundering, terrorist financing, and other illicit financial activity linked to virtual assets. Participants in the sector, he added, would be required to operate under guidelines the central bank will issue.
From Warnings to Rules
The announcement is a notable shift for a country that once told its citizens to stay away from digital assets entirely.
In 2019, the Bank of Tanzania warned the public against digital asset trading, pointing to the dangers of an unregulated market. The direction has changed steadily since. A 3% withholding tax on digital asset transactions arrived under the Finance Act 2024, and in May 2026 the central bank approved a stablecoin sandbox pilot for regulated entities to test dollar-pegged tokens.
The final text of the framework and its implementation timeline have not yet been released. The central bank has said it completed a full study of the sector and is awaiting government guidance before proceeding.
Part of a Continental Wave
Tanzania is not moving alone. Across Africa, governments that once dismissed Bitcoin are now racing to regulate it, often within weeks of one another.
On July 17, Nigerian President Bola Tinubu signed an executive order creating a coordinated framework for virtual assets, placing the central bank, the securities regulator, and the tax authority under a single council. Rwanda went further and faster, enacting a virtual assets law in May that puts all digital assets activity under its Capital Market Authority and bars individuals from operating as businesses.
South Africa has gone furthest of all. A June High Court ruling reclassified Bitcoin as “money” and “capital” under exchange control law, meaning Bitcoin sent to an offshore wallet now counts as exporting capital. Separately, draft Treasury regulations propose powers to search devices for seed phrases, jail penalties of up to five years for failing to declare digital asset or hand over private keys, and, most strikingly, the possible compelled surrender of digital assets above certain thresholds to bolster national reserves.
The common thread is timing. For most of Bitcoin’s history on the continent, adoption was driven from the ground up by traders, developers, and communities, frequently in the face of official warnings and outright bans. That adoption is now large enough that the same institutions which once looked away are arriving to supervise it, and in some cases to claim a share of what they never helped build.