Tanzania’s diplomatic balancing act after a contested mandate
The recent general elections held in Tanzania saw a landslide victory for President Samia Suluhu Hassan. Official returns indicated she secured over 97 per cent of the vote. But the electoral process itself was marred by serious controversy, as the key opposition challengers were barred from standing, the main opposition party was disqualified, and many candidates and activists were already detained.
In the aftermath, large-scale protests erupted across major cities. Police and security forces, according to multiple observer reports, responded with excessive force: tear gas, live ammunition, and crackdowns. There were credible allegations of deaths and mass arrests. There was an internet shutdown for several days, including during and after the voting, making independent reporting and transparent communication difficult.
Internationally, observers condemned the election. The African Union (AU) said the 2025 election “failed to comply with democratic standards”, citing ballot-stuffing, curbs on free information (internet blackout), excessive use of force, and “a climate not conducive to peaceful conduct and acceptance of electoral outcomes”. The European Union (EU), among others, threatened sanctions and a funding freeze over post-election abuses. Charges of treason were filed against dozens of protesters and opposition figures, and national civil society organisations demanded transitional justice and fresh elections.
It is against this background that President Hassan’s turn toward a diversified foreign policy becomes especially interesting - and, arguably, necessary. As major and middle powers compete for influence across Africa, Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan is attempting to chart an approach that is neither confrontational nor passive — but deliberately plural. Since taking office, she has repositioned Tanzania not as a country aligned with any single external actor, but as one that seeks strategic autonomy through diversification. Her emerging foreign policy is built on the simple premise that no nation should place all of its geopolitical eggs in one basket. For Tanzania, a country of immense natural wealth and strategic geography, the stakes of overdependence are too high and the world too fluid for narrow alignments.
The starting point for understanding this shift is the legacy she inherited. Under President John Magufuli, Tanzania enjoyed strong but uneven external relationships - particularly a heavily China-centric orientation in large-scale infrastructure and investment. While these delivered substantial benefits, they also created perceptions of imbalanced dependency. One of Hassan’s first moves, therefore, was to widen Tanzania’s diplomatic bandwidth. She neither abandoned the Chinese relationship nor embraced an alternative bloc; instead, she began systematically broadening the country’s engagement with India, Japan, the US, the EU, the Gulf states, and multilateral financial institutions. This reset was not cosmetic — it signalled a recalibration of Tanzania’s place in an increasingly multipolar world.
A crucial pillar of this approach has been Hassan’s outreach to Western partners. Relations with the US and the EU, strained in earlier years due to governance and investment concerns, were quickly revived. This shift became visible in 2025, when Tanzania and the US moved to finalise major investment agreements in Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG), nickel, and graphite, building on a commercial landscape where over 400 US companies already operate in Tanzania. At the same time, the EU deepened its economic partnership with Dar es Salaam, anchoring cooperation through a €585 million development package focused on green transition, governance reforms, and digital and transport infrastructure under the Global Gateway framework. These renewed development compacts, business missions, and governance dialogues reflect a deliberate strategy to re-anchor Tanzania within the global trade and financial networks. By expanding Western economic footprints alongside those of Asian partners, Tanzania gains negotiating leverage and reduces the risk of any single external actor becoming indispensable.
Yet diversification does not mean dilution of existing friendships. Tanzania has maintained and deepened its partnership with China — but on more balanced and interest-driven terms. The most emblematic moment in Tanzania’s rethinking of its China relationship actually came even in 2019, when it suspended the US$10 billion Bagamoyo port project, one of the largest planned Belt and Road investments in Africa. Tanzania publicly denounced its proposed terms as “exploitative and awkward”, including a 99-year lease and sweeping tax exemptions for the Chinese operator. However, the decision did not sever Tanzania-China ties, but it sent a clear message: while Chinese capital would be welcomed, Chinese control would not. Bagamoyo has since resurfaced periodically in negotiations, including under President Samia, but always with the explicit caveat that the terms must be revised to protect national interests.
At the same time, Tanzania has not walked away from China. President Samia paid a high-profile state visit to Beijing in 2022, upgrading bilateral relations to a “Comprehensive Strategic Cooperative Partnership” and signing agreements across trade, infrastructure, agriculture, and the digital economy. This illustrates the calibrated nature of her strategy: Tanzania continues to engage China as a major development partner, but within a broader foreign-policy framework that prioritises diversification and avoids the structural overexposure that has constrained many other African economies.
Nowhere is the pluralistic foreign-policy orientation more visible than in Tanzania’s growing ties with India. New Delhi has quietly become one of Dar es Salaam’s most significant partners: India was Tanzania’s second-largest trading partner in 2024-25, with bilateral trade reaching about US$8.6 billion, covering pharmaceuticals, machinery, consumer goods, and more, and Indian companies are among the top investors in sectors such as telecommunications, energy, steel, and agro-processing in Tanzania. Defence cooperation, ranging from capacity-building to maritime security, has expanded as both countries recognise the importance of the Western Indian Ocean. Therefore, India’s rise in Tanzania’s external matrix is not accidental; it reflects Hassan’s calculus that a diversified Asia policy strengthens national resilience.
Rhetoric matters in foreign policy — and Hassan’s messaging reinforces her strategic direction. Her consistent emphasis on “economic diplomacy”, “diversified partnerships”, and “strategic autonomy” is not mere wordplay; it is a declaration that Tanzania intends to navigate the great-power competition on its own terms. In a world where external pressure can easily skew national choices, articulating a strategic diversification approach gives Tanzania a conceptual anchor for policy continuity.
But if Tanzania wants to project stability and credibility abroad and avoid becoming isolated or reliant on a single partner, it must first settle its internal affairs, as internal stability and diversified external engagement must go together. A stable domestic environment underpins external credibility. International partners, investors, and multilateral lenders will be wary of deep cooperation while reports of rights abuses and political repression dominate headlines. For diversification to work, concerns regarding governance and rule of law must be addressed. Diversified diplomacy can provide an external buffer and leverage, but only if domestic legitimacy is restored.
At present, the overriding priority for Tanzania should therefore be domestic healing and institutional reform, ideally alongside a recommitment to political pluralism, press freedom, and independent scrutiny. Only then will Tanzania’s broader diplomatic ambitions stand on a solid footing.
If and when that happens, Hassan’s diversified foreign-policy approach could yet emerge not as a distraction or a payoff for international capital, but as a genuine path toward a resilient, independent, globally engaged Tanzania — one whose foreign policy rests on stable domestic governance, not on transactional expedience.
The writer is President of the Chintan Research Foundation and former Director of WTO, with extensive experience in international trade, finance, and industry; views are personal
