Ten Shares and a CDS Account: Buying Shares on the Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange

Most people who want shares in a Tanzanian bank or brewer or cement maker begin by looking for that company's head office. It is the wrong address. A listed company does not sell its own shares across a counter, holds no discretion over the price, and has nothing to do with the transaction.

This page is the listed equity file: who is licensed to take an order, what opening a Central Depository System account requires, how an order for a named company actually reaches the market, the size of the market as it is currently reported, and the tax that applies to dividends and to gains.

Who is licensed to take an order?

Shares are bought on the Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange through a Licensed Dealing Member — a stockbroker licensed by the Capital Markets and Securities Authority under the Capital Markets and Securities Act, Cap 79. The Authority licenses brokers and dealers and publishes the register of licensees, and that register is the live list: it changes the moment a licence is granted, lapses or is suspended.

No broker is named on this page, and none should be taken from any page. A list copied into an article goes stale on the day it is copied. The register is consulted for the specific firm about to receive money, by name, before the money moves.

There were 24 Licensed Dealing Members as at 30 June 2026. The count is context, not a shortlist. A register states who holds a licence on the date shown; it is not a recommendation of any firm, and this page recommends none.

What does opening a CDS account require?

The broker opens the Central Depository System account and completes the customer due diligence checks. The depository sitting behind the account is CSD & Registry Company Limited.

Application forms differ between brokers, so the list below is what an investor prepares rather than a fixed national checklist — the chosen broker's own form governs. In practice it will ask for:

• Full name exactly as it appears on the national identity document or passport
• Nationality, gender and marital status
• Mobile number, postal address and email
• Identity document type and number
• Next-of-kin details
• Employer name, address and job title — or, for a self-employed applicant, the business name
• Tax Identification Number and business registration number
• Bank account details including SWIFT, and the account into which dividends are to be paid
• Mobile money details
• Beneficial owner details
• A declaration as to whether the applicant is a politically exposed person

Two items cause most of the delay. The first is the Tax Identification Number: many first-time investors do not hold one and must obtain it from the Tanzania Revenue Authority before the account can be completed. The second is the dividend account. A dividend that cannot reach a working bank account sits unclaimed, and correcting the mandate after a declaration is slower than getting it right at the outset.

There is a mobile route as well. Hisa Kiganjani allows an investor to register with a National Identification Number and transact by phone — the same market, the same exchange and the same rules underneath.

How are shares in a particular company bought?

The mechanism is identical for every company on the exchange.

• Confirm the company is listed. There were 28 listed companies as at 30 June 2026. The broker will confirm whether a particular company is among them, and so will the exchange.
• Open the Central Depository System account through a Licensed Dealing Member, as above.
• Give the broker the instruction — the company, the number of shares, at least ten, and whether the order takes whatever the market asks or stops at a price fixed in advance.
• Fund the account and check the contract note the broker issues against the instruction given.

The choice inside the third step is the one that matters most to a first-time buyer. An order that takes whatever the market asks will be filled, at a price nobody agreed in advance. An order capped at a price fixed beforehand may not be filled at all, and that is the point of it — the cap is the discipline, and an unfilled order costs nothing but the wait.

Bonds work differently on the same exchange: they trade in multiples of TZS 100,000 rather than in a minimum number of units.

No share price appears on this page, and a price on any page should be treated with suspicion unless it is dated to the trading day. A price is meaningful only at the moment it is quoted. The current price comes from the broker or from the exchange's published daily market report, on the day the order is to be placed, and the ten-share minimum means the cash required to start is whatever ten shares of that company cost that morning.

Where a listed company is named in any discussion of the exchange, including in market commentary, it is an illustration of what is listed. It is never a suggestion to buy it.

How large is the market, and what is listed?

Two different numbers are both called market capitalisation, and the difference between them accounts for most of the confusion about the size of the Tanzanian market.

Total includes the six cross-listed companies; domestic does not. The gap between the two as at 30 June 2026 was TZS 11,431.08 billion — close to a third of the headline number. A market capitalisation quoted without saying which of the two it means is not a usable figure, and the two are never interchangeable.

Scale matters when the amount to commit is being decided. Equity turnover was TZS 496.8 billion across the whole quarter to 30 June 2026, while secondary-market Treasury bond turnover in the same quarter was TZS 1,755.25 billion — about three and a half times as much. On those figures the bond market is the more liquid of the two, and where selling quickly matters more than the character of the return, Treasury bonds and bills belongs alongside this page rather than after it.

What tax applies to shares?

The Tanzania Revenue Authority is the authority on all of it, and on the capital gains position in particular. Rates and thresholds are revised by the Finance Act with effect from each 1 July, so the current edition of the Authority's published schedule governs.

The dividend, worked. Take a declared dividend of TZS 100,000.

• From a DSE-listed company at 5%: TZS 5,000 withheld, and TZS 95,000 reaches the shareholder.
• From an unlisted corporation at 10%: TZS 10,000 withheld, and TZS 90,000 reaches the shareholder.

The difference is TZS 5,000 on every TZS 100,000 of dividend — half the tax rate, for holding the listed version of the same kind of income.

The capital gain, worked. Take a realised gain of TZS 500,000 on a disposal of shares.

• Resident, holding under 25% of a DSE-listed company: nil. The exemption applies.
• Resident, where the exemption does not apply — the holding is 25% or more, or the shares are not DSE-listed: TZS 500,000 × 10% = TZS 50,000.
• The same position, non-resident: TZS 500,000 × 20% = TZS 100,000.

An ordinary retail holding sits far below 25% of a listed company, so most individual investors fall inside the exemption. That does not make the qualification decorative. It is a condition, and a condition has to be met — a holder whose stake crosses 25%, or who holds shares that are not listed, is outside it. The capital gains on shares file works the computation through in full.

The 25% and the 35% are different rules and must not be merged. The 25% is the shareholding threshold governing the capital gains exemption on a holder's own shares. The 35% is a public-shareholding threshold governing a reduced corporate tax rate for an issuer — a rule about the company and its own tax bill, reached by issuing shares to the public, as the share capital file sets out. One is about a shareholder's gain. The other is about a company's rate.

May a foreign investor buy shares on the DSE?

Yes, and without a ceiling. Foreign investors face no participation limit in listed securities. The Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange states the position directly: a foreign investor may hold securities of any listed company and invest any amount. There is no quota on foreign holdings and no residency condition attaching to a Central Depository System account.

Government securities opened to investors of all nationalities separately, in August 2026, under a different instrument and a different regulator: the Bank of Tanzania's tender documents state that all investors including foreign nationals are eligible to participate. That is different paper under different rules, and the two should not be read as one change.

What the broker and the Rules govern, not this page

Three figures that other pages publish confidently are deliberately absent here, because they are set by rule and by contract rather than by an article: the exchange's trading hours, the settlement cycle that applies to an equity trade, and the brokerage commission.

All three are confirmed with the broker, in writing and before the first order is placed, and against the current DSE and CSD Rules. A broker that will not put the commission and fee schedule in writing has answered a different question than the one asked.

The written schedule to ask for covers the commission on a buy and on a sell, any Central Depository System account opening and maintenance fee, any levy collected with the trade, and the settlement cycle that will apply to the order. Those numbers decide what an order actually costs, and they belong on paper before the instruction is given, not on the contract note afterwards.

Where shares in a company are offered outside this process — away from a Licensed Dealing Member, away from the exchange, with a promised return attached — the offer is not a market transaction at all, and how to spot a pyramid scheme is the page to read before any money moves.

Mandate-holders this file does not replace

The Capital Markets and Securities Authority licenses stockbrokers, dealers and investment advisers under the Capital Markets and Securities Act, Cap 79, publishes the register of licensees, approves public offers and supervises the exchange. The Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange owns the market itself, its listing requirements, its daily market report and, with CSD & Registry Company Limited, the Rules governing trading and settlement. The depository owns the Central Depository System account and the register of holdings behind it. The Licensed Dealing Member owns the order, the customer due diligence file and the contract note. The Tanzania Revenue Authority owns the Tax Identification Number, the withholding tax on dividends and the capital gains position. The Bank of Tanzania owns government securities and the eligibility terms attaching to them. An investment adviser licensed by the Capital Markets and Securities Authority owns advice on whether any holding suits a particular investor. Zatra prepares, structures and coordinates the file, grants no licence and does not practise law.

What to confirm before the Client acts

• That the firm about to receive the money appears, by name, on the current register of licensees published by the Capital Markets and Securities Authority.
• The broker's own account-opening list, obtained from that broker, since forms differ between Licensed Dealing Members.
• That the Client holds a Tax Identification Number from the Tanzania Revenue Authority before the account is submitted.
• That the bank account nominated for dividends is open, correctly named and capable of receiving them.
• The commission on a buy and on a sell, any account opening and maintenance fees, the settlement cycle that will apply and the exchange's current trading hours — all in writing from the broker, and against the current DSE and CSD Rules.
• The current price of the intended company on the day of the order, from the broker or the exchange's daily market report, and whether that company is in fact listed.
• Whether the Client's holding in any listed company approaches 25%, which is the point at which the capital gains exemption stops applying, confirmed with the Tanzania Revenue Authority.