Tanzania Gaming Tax Hits TZS307.8 Billion: What South African Players Can Learn

Tanzania gaming tax revenue: what was announced

Tanzania's gaming sector paid TZS307.8 billion (about US$116.2 million) in tax in the financial year that ended in June 2026. The figure comes from James Mbalwe, director general of the Gaming Board of Tanzania, in an interview reported by iGaming Business on 30 October 2026. A second trade outlet, iGamingToday, carried the same headline number the same day. This post looks at what the Tanzania gaming tax revenue figure says about where African gambling is heading, and what South African players can take from it.

The number is a regulator's own statement relayed by the press, not an audited filing that we have seen. It covers the whole licensed Tanzanian sector, not online play alone. Even so, it is a useful marker. Mbalwe told the publication that tax receipts have risen year after year as the sector has grown, and he tied the latest growth to phones, mobile payments and a shift towards online products.

Tanzania is not South Africa, and nothing in the story changes the law here. We cover it because South African money and companies are part of the Tanzanian picture, and because the problems the regulator describes will sound familiar to anyone who follows the South African debate: unlicensed websites, weak safeguards for vulnerable players and a long argument about how heavily to tax online gambling.

We have also covered the same announcement as a short news item, which you can read in our Tanzania news brief. This longer piece adds context and a South African reading, and it labels our own interpretation clearly so you can separate it from what officials said.

Why online play now drives Tanzania's gambling revenue

The most interesting line in the interview is about history. Mbalwe said that before 2016 the biggest share of sector revenue came from land-based casinos, followed by slot machine operations. That has slowly reversed. In his words, revenue from online games is now on top.

His explanation is practical rather than technical. Smartphone use has spread, and the payment side of betting has been made far easier: staking money and withdrawing winnings both happen on a phone, with no trip to a venue. He also pointed to Tanzania's young population and its familiarity with digital entertainment. According to the iGaming Business report, he described sports betting and casino as the online products that have benefited most.

Tanzania's regulator also says the market is open to private and foreign investors. The only exception he named is the national lottery, which he described as government-owned but privately run. The ownership detail matters for South Africans, and we return to it below.

Our reading: the mix of phones, mobile money and young customers is not unique to Tanzania. South Africa also has widespread phone use, easy mobile payment options and a large young population, though we have not sourced figures for that here. The difference is the legal setting. Online sports betting with licensed bookmakers is regulated here, while no South African licence exists for online casino games. A regulator in Dar es Salaam can license online casino products and tax them. A South African regulator cannot, under the current National Gambling Act. You can read the background on our South Africa gambling law page.

That gap is why this story is a comparison rather than a model. We are not saying South Africa should copy Tanzania. We are saying that Tanzanian numbers show what a legal, taxed online market can look like in an African economy, and what the regulator then finds hard to control.

The numbers in context: tax, collections and licensed operators

To understand TZS307.8 billion, it helps to read it beside earlier figures from the regulator. In September 2025 the Gaming Board of Tanzania published a statement on its revenue collections. It said the board had collected more than TZS260.21 billion over four years, nearly double the TZS131.99 billion collected in the previous period. It also said the sector had contributed TZS922.25 billion in taxes and had created more than 30,000 direct and indirect jobs.

These figures measure different things, so they should not be set side by side as a simple growth line. The 2026 figure is one year of sector tax. The 2025 statement is a multi-year total of the board's own collections, plus a cumulative tax total. We mention both so you can see the scale, not so you can calculate a growth rate from them.

The same 2025 statement gives a picture of the licensed field. The board said it had licensed 62 companies offering a total of 8,549 betting games, and that new investment of TZS66.7 billion had come into the sector over the previous two years. It also said that five percent of the board's revenues go to sports development, with between TZS44 billion and TZS53 billion paid to the National Sports Council so far. It described unlicensed operators as an ongoing challenge, including the risk that minors take part.

For a South African reader, a few points stand out:

• A regulator that publishes licence counts and revenue figures is easier to hold to account than one that does not.
• Earmarking part of gambling income for sport is a policy choice, not a rule that applies everywhere.
• The regulator itself treats unlicensed activity as unfinished business, even in a country with a licensing system for online products.

Please remember the usual caveat. These are official statements reported by the press and by the regulator's own website. We have not audited them, and we have not tested any Tanzanian operator.

Tax debate: the 5% excise duty that was shelved

One short passage in the iGaming Business interview deserves attention because South Africa is in the middle of its own tax argument. Mbalwe said a proposed 5% excise duty on betting stakes was not implemented. In his words, it was shelved, so the status quo has remained the same.

The detail we do not have is why it was shelved, and whether it will return. The interview does not say. We would be guessing if we offered a reason, so we will not.

Mbalwe also said the 2027 Gaming Regulatory Africa Forum (GRAF), which Tanzania will host, should discuss taxation. He described a limited understanding across the industry of how gambling should be taxed and how to balance the scale of taxation. He added that online platform service providers benefit most from the ecosystem yet are the least levied, and that the forum should look at how to reverse that.

That is a regulator's view, and an operator or a supplier would argue differently. It is still a helpful sign of the questions African regulators are asking each other. Our reading is that taxation of gambling is not settled anywhere in Africa, and South Africa's debate sits inside a wider regional one.

On the South African side, National Treasury has floated a 20% tax on online gambling, and the argument over it has featured in our recent coverage. Our posts on the NGB annual report and R84.5 billion in gambling revenue and on Sun International's offshore gambling tax warning set out the local figures. A tax is a government revenue matter. For players, the practical point is that tax rules apply to licensed operators, and they do nothing to make an unlicensed site safe.

Self-exclusion: Tanzania wants a central database

The part of the Tanzanian story with the clearest link to player welfare is self-exclusion. Mbalwe described the current process. A person asks the board to exclude them, the board takes their particulars and photograph, and that information is circulated to gambling operators, who are expected to refuse them access. He said this work is done manually and that it has proved not to be adequate.

The regulator's answer is an electronic central database that would let operators detect and stop self-excluded people from returning. Mbalwe said it would be procured through a public-private partnership. He gave no launch date in the interview, and neither did the second report we read, so we cannot tell you when it might arrive.

He also said the present Gaming Act (Cap 41) has limited coverage of responsible gambling and player protection. The law bars minors from gambling, he noted, but there is no elaborate framework beyond that. That is a candid statement from a regulator about the limits of its own legislation.

What does this mean for a South African player? It is a reminder that self-exclusion only works where the operator takes part in the scheme. A person who excludes themselves from one licensed site is not automatically blocked from an unlicensed one. Offshore casinos that accept South African players are not licensed here, so a South African self-exclusion tool would not reach them. If you want to restrict your own access, our responsible gambling page lists the practical options, including blocking software and where to find counselling.

If you feel your gambling is causing harm, speak to a counsellor or someone you trust. Gambling is entertainment with real financial risk, and it should never be treated as income.

Illegal machines, foreign licences and blocking unlicensed sites

Mbalwe said the board seized more than 3,000 illegal slot machines in the last financial year. He said reported incidents of illegal operations have fallen significantly, but that operators have adapted by moving into remote areas where enforcement is harder. He suggested local government authorities, who have a presence everywhere, could report illegal machines faster.

iGamingToday adds a parliamentary development from Thursday 29 October. Deputy Finance Minister Mshamu Munde told Parliament that the government is finalising a revenue-sharing agreement between central government and local councils for gaming-machine activity. The same report says the government has suspended new gaming-machine licences for foreign operators while it assesses the wider social and economic impact, and that a real-time monitoring system for gaming machines is being developed. These items are attributed to the iGamingToday article. We did not find them in the iGaming Business interview, and we have not seen the parliamentary record ourselves.

On the online side, Mbalwe said the framework limits access for unregulated online platforms, but that criminals and unscrupulous operators still exploit them. He called unlicensed online gambling hard to control because it crosses borders. The board works with the Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority and the Police Cybersecurity Bureau to investigate and block unregulated platforms, and with mobile companies to identify gaming payment aggregators and providers. He said licensed businesses may only use platforms certified by licensed global testing agencies.

Two features of this approach are worth noting. First, payments are treated as a control point: if the money route is identified, an unlicensed site becomes harder to run. Second, the regulator says it wants its own tools for removing unregulated platforms, which means it does not yet have them. The plan is a statement of intent, not a result.

South African readers will recognise the pattern. Our recent coverage includes a regional African regulators' cooperation workshop in Rome, where regulators start drafting a framework to work across borders. Mbalwe made the same point in his interview, saying most regulators tackle illegal online operators in silos with tools that stop at their own borders.

The South African connection: Ithuba and the Tanzanian lottery

The 2025 board statement includes a detail that links the story to South Africa directly. It says that in the 2024/25 financial year the board issued the National Lottery licence to Ithuba Tanzania Limited, a company with 40 percent Tanzanian ownership and 60 percent South African investment. The board said Ithuba had invested over US$20 million and began operations in April 2025.

That is a South African-backed business operating legally under a Tanzanian licence. It shows how cross-border African gambling works when a licence exists: the operator answers to the Tanzanian regulator, pays Tanzanian tax and follows Tanzanian rules. We have no information on Ithuba's performance in Tanzania, and nothing in the sources we read suggests it offers anything to South African players.

The same principle works the other way round. When a South African player signs up with an offshore casino, the operator answers to whichever foreign regulator licensed it, if any, and not to a South African one. Our news brief on the GiG and 888AFRICA deal covering Mozambique, Angola and Tanzania shows how quickly operators are moving across African markets. A company can be properly licensed in one country and have no authority to take South African bets.

This is the key distinction on this site. A casino that accepts South African players is not the same as a casino licensed in South Africa. Always check where an operator holds its licence, and treat a badge on a casino's own website as a claim to verify, not proof. Our payment methods page explains the deposit options South African players commonly see, but a convenient payment method says nothing about whether a site is legal or fair.

What to watch next, and what we do not know

Several things are still unclear after this announcement, and it is better to say so than to fill the gaps.

• The central self-exclusion database. There is no published start date or budget in the reports we read. It depends on a public-private partnership that has not yet been awarded, as far as we can tell.
• The shelved 5% excise duty. Mbalwe says the status quo remains, but he did not rule out a future tax change.
• Foreign gaming-machine licences. The suspension is reported by one outlet, and its length is not stated.
• Online blocking tools. The board says it plans to have its own tools. We do not know what they will be or when they will arrive.
• GRAF 2027. Tanzania will host the forum, and the board wants illegal online operations, platform services and taxation on the agenda. The date has not been given in the reports we read.

Our reading is that Tanzania is a good case study of an African regulator with growing revenue, a fast online shift and visible gaps. Revenue is rising, yet the regulator itself says the legal framework for player protection is thin. For South African players, the sensible takeaway is not about Tanzania at all. It is that licensing, tax and safeguards are separate things. A site can be profitable for a government and still leave a player badly protected.

Before you deposit anywhere, find out who licenses the operator, how you would complain if something went wrong and what tools you have to set limits. If any of those answers is unclear, walk away. Only gamble money you can afford to lose, and set limits before you start. This post is information, not advice to gamble.

Frequently Asked Questions