Which Businesses Foreigners Cannot Own in Tanzania: The Restricted List

Update, 18 October 2026. We have since read the penalty lines of GN No. 487A of 2025 and published them, with the fifteen reserved activities, in our BRELA fronting checks guide. A non-citizen carrying on a reserved activity faces a fine of not less than TZS 10,000,000 or up to six months' imprisonment, plus revocation of visa and residence permit (para 3(3)(a)). A citizen who assists faces a fine of TZS 5,000,000 or up to three months' imprisonment (para 3(3)(b)). Where this page says it publishes no penalty figure, that statement is superseded.

This page is the 2026 reserved-activity operating file: what GN No. 487A of 2025 is reported to do, which classes this desk will name, and why a Tanzanian company number is not a local owner. It is not a fee table, not a settled EAC ruling, and not an exhaustive reprint of the Gazette.

• Interactive screen: restricted-activity checker
• EAC-citizen overlay: EAC citizens and reserved classes
• Clearing trap: own-company clearing
• Mainland vs Zanzibar company: two registrars
• Local shareholding: local shareholding before capital

Desk review 10 September 2026. Reported commencement of the Order: 28 July 2025. This desk has not obtained the gazetted Order as an exhaustive schedule. Reported penalties conflict across secondary sources. No penalty figure is published here. No enabling section number is invented.

What the Order is reported to do

Secondary sources this desk treats as corroborated reporting describe GN No. 487A of 2025 as a business-licensing Order that closes scheduled activities to non-citizens. Fifteen categories are reported. A company incorporated in Tanzania that is majority-owned or controlled by non-citizens is reported not to cure the reservation. Whether the Order reaches every form of ‘control’, including some nominee and management arrangements, is an advocate’s question against the gazetted text, not a brochure inference.

This site’s other operating files already use that hedge on cashew (on-farm purchasing), TISEZA, mining-adjacent services and livestock. This page is the list file. It does not relax the hedge.

Classes this desk will name

That table is copied from this site’s restricted-activity checker, which refuses to invent unnamed classes. If a law-firm alert lists a fifteenth activity this table does not name, treat the alert as discovery. Obtain the Gazette.

A company number is not a local owner

Forming a company at BRELA creates a Tanzanian legal person. Beneficial ownership and control remain facts. The reported Order looks through to non-citizen control. A 51 per cent local shareholding on paper with a foreign veto, a nominee who cannot explain the money, or a management agreement that shifts control, is exactly the file an advocate should read against the gazetted text. This page does not design ‘workarounds’. The sibling slug on structuring around restrictions stays pruned for that reason.

EAC citizens are not a free pass

East African Community citizens sometimes assume the reserved list does not apply to them. Treatment of EAC ownership under reserved business-licensing rules is a live dispute this desk will not settle in a sentence. See EAC citizens and Tanzania business restrictions. Confirm the live Order and, where needed, instruct an advocate. Do not file on a Facebook ruling.

Zanzibar is not a Mainland photocopy

The Order discussed on this page is reported as a Mainland business-licensing instrument. Zanzibar licences, BPRA companies and ZIPA facilitation are a different stack. Do not assume a Dar reservation automatically reprints in Stone Town, and do not assume a Zanzibar company opens a reserved Mainland class. Confirm the jurisdiction of the premises and the licence.

Sequence before you pay a registrar

1. Write the activity in one sentence: what the company will actually do on day one.
2. Screen that sentence against the reported classes and against the gazetted Order once you have it.
3. If the class is reserved, stop forming a foreign-controlled vehicle for that class until an advocate has read the Order.
4. If the class is open, form the company that matches the premises: BRELA or BPRA, not both as a superstition.
5. Then licence the activity at the mandate-holder. A TISEZA conversation is not a licence.

Where this file stalls

• Forming first and discovering the licence class is reserved
• Treating a local minority shareholder as a cure without reading control
• Self-clearing imports through a foreign-controlled ‘logistics’ company
• On-farm crop buying dressed as ‘export’
• Inventing a penalty, a fifteenth class, or an enabling section from an alert
• Pointing at TISEZA or a work permit as if they opened a reserved class

Currency of this file

The Order is reported to have commenced on 28 July 2025. Secondary lists already disagree on the edges. This page will be restated the day this desk holds the gazetted schedule. Until then, named classes stay labelled reported. Unnamed classes stay unnamed.

Worked path: the shop, the clearing agent, the farm gate

A foreign manufacturer wants a Dar showroom to sell its own goods by retail. Wholesale and retail trade is a reported reserved class. A BRELA company with 100 per cent foreign shares does not, on the reported Order, open that till. Distribution through a citizen-owned retailer, or a structure an advocate designs after reading the Gazette, is a different conversation. This page will not draw the structure. It will say: screen before you sign the lease.

The same manufacturer wants to clear its own containers to ‘save the agent’. Clearing and forwarding is a reported reserved class. Being the importer of record is not the same as holding the clearing-agent licence. Importers still instruct a licensed agent. Confirm the live customs-agent class. The companion clearing page exists so this list page does not become a licensing manual.

An agri investor wants to ‘buy from farmers for export’. On-farm crop purchasing is the cashew example already used on this site. Exporting through a Board-licensed route is not automatically the same as buying at the farm gate. Read the crop statute and the reported Order together. The cashew operating guide is the crop file. This page is the reservation screen.

What ‘reported’ means, operationally

It means this desk has not held the gazetted schedule as an exhaustive table and will not pretend otherwise. It does not mean the Order is imaginary. Secondary sources agree on commencement around 28 July 2025 and on the look-through to foreign control. Until the Gazette is in the file, named classes stay named, unnamed classes stay unnamed, and penalties stay unpublished. That is slower than a blog. It is how you avoid citing a number that was never in the instrument.

Existing licences and renewal

Holders who were already licensed in a class that is now reported reserved ask what happens at renewal. That is a live licensing-authority question against the Order and the licence conditions. This page will not invent a grandfathering rule. Stop assuming renewal is automatic. Take the licence document and the Gazette to an advocate before the expiry month.

Mandate-holders this Order does not replace

Even where a class is open to foreign control, the activity still has a licence desk. Tourism has TALA and, in Zanzibar, Zanzibar tourism licensing. Clearing has the customs-agent class. Crop buying has the crop board. A clean GN 487A screen is not a TALA licence, not a Cashewnut Board licence, and not a municipal business licence. Sequence: screen the reservation, then form the person, then take the licence. Reversing that order is how you pay BRELA for a company that cannot be licensed.

TISEZA registration does not waive a reservation. A work permit does not waive a reservation. A local director who cannot explain the money does not waive a reservation. The reported look-through to control is the point of the Order as this desk understands the reporting. Confirm the gazetted text.

What this page will never publish

A penalty in shillings or dollars. An enabling section number guessed from an alert. A complete list of fifteen names invented to look exhaustive. A ‘safe’ foreign shareholding percentage. A statement that EAC citizens are exempt. A statement that Zanzibar is identical. Those sentences would be convenient. They would also be unsourced. The restricted-activity checker on this site uses the same discipline. This Insights page is the prose version of that checker, not a looser blog.