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/HANDOUT
Tanzania has been placed in the World Bank’s highest GovTech
maturity bracket for the 2025 cycle.
The classification signals the country has built—at
scale—the core digital systems, online service channels, citizen engagement
tools and enabling rules that the bank tracks as the “plumbing” of a modern
digital state.
In the GovTech Maturity Index (GTMI) 2025, Tanzania is
listed in Group A (Extensive GovTech Maturity), alongside Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda
and Egypt—placing several economies that share trade, investment and mobility
links in the same top cluster.
The GTMI is not presented as a league table. The World Bank
explicitly states the index “is not a ranking,” but an overview of GovTech
practices that helps governments and partners spot gaps and design reforms.
Grouping is based on normalised GTMI scores: Group A is
≥0.75 to 1.0, with Group B, C and D below that.
The 2025 update covers 197 economies, and the World Bank
reports that 80 economies—41 per cent—are now in Group A, up from earlier
cycles, while warning that progress remains uneven and the digital divide is
widening.
Methodologically, the 2025 GTMI update draws on two sources:
self-reported survey responses from 158 participating economies and publicly
available data for 39 non-participating economies.
The World Bank says more than 1,000 government officials
contributed to the 2025 update through the global online survey.
The GTMI’s relevance is in what it measures. The index
tracks four pillars through 48 key indicators: Core Government Systems, Online
Public Service Delivery, Digital Citizen Engagement, and GovTech Enablers
(including strategy, institutions, laws and regulations, digital skills and
innovation policies).
The GTMI score is calculated as the simple average of the
normalised scores of those four components.
In Tanzania’s case, the country’s own narrative of why it
meets the “Extensive” threshold centres on core systems and
interoperability—areas that typically determine whether digital government is
experienced as one connected service, or as separate portals that cannot share
information.
The summary of Tanzania’s systems credits the country’s
progress to the presence and use of Core Government Systems, including public
workforce management platforms such as the Human Capital Information Management
System (HCIMS) and recruitment through the Ajira Portal, alongside an
interoperability push designed to connect public institutions.
That interoperability layer is anchored by the Government
Enterprise Service Bus (GovESB), described as a backbone that enables government
systems to exchange data securely and efficiently, with the practical goal of
reducing duplication, speeding up service delivery and strengthening
accountability.
Service delivery platforms cited include the Government
e-Payment Gateway (GePG) for government payments, the National e-Procurement
System (NeST) for procurement workflows, and local government service systems
such as TAUSI.
Together, those tools align with the GTMI’s emphasis on
whether online delivery is institutionalised rather than episodic.
The digital citizen engagement pillar is often the hardest
to sustain because it turns digitisation into a governance issue: whether
feedback loops work, whether institutions respond, and whether citizens can
track outcomes.
The World Bank flags Digital Citizen Engagement as an area
where “CivicTech lags behind other dimensions,” and it highlights that
“monitoring the use and uptake is an issue in most economies.”
Tanzania’s narrative points to e-Mrejesho as a key
engagement channel—positioned as a platform for citizens to submit complaints,
suggestions, advice and compliments, and to receive feedback.
In GTMI terms, the existence of such channels matters;
however, the World Bank’s emphasis on uptake means the next layer of
credibility is whether response performance can be tracked, published and
improved over time.
Another pillar that GTMI rewards is the enabling
environment. The World Bank’s indicators explicitly include whether governments
have the institutional and legal foundations for digital transformation—ranging
from a GovTech strategy and whole-of-government approach to laws and
regulations that support delivery and trust.
On Tanzania’s side, the summary attributes part of the GTMI
outcome to government policies, laws, regulations, standards and e-Government
guidelines that steer ICT projects under a unified national direction.
Commenting on the assessment, Benedict Ndomba, Director
General of the e-Government Authority (e-GA), said the result reflects a long
evidence-collection process rather than a short review.
“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.
Ndomba 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.
The regional significance is that the GTMI Group A list now
contains multiple economies that share supply chains, contractors, professional
services and cross-border investment flows.
In practice, that increases the pressure for
interoperability, procurement traceability and online service consistency to
keep improving—because businesses and citizens increasingly compare experiences
across borders, and because regional trade corridors function best when
administrative processes become predictable, verifiable and fast.
The World Bank’s own framing makes the next question clear;
after the platforms and policies, the hardest work is proving adoption and
performance.
The GTMI is designed to show whether the machinery exists
and is supported by institutions; the public test is whether that machinery
reliably reduces friction in payments, procurement, staffing processes and
citizen feedback—at scale and over time.