Register a Company in Zanzibar: BPRA, Not BRELA

This page is the Zanzibar incorporation operating file: BPRA is the registrar, BRELA is not, and ZIPA is not a substitute for either. It is not a Mainland ORS tutorial and not a ZIPA incentive table.

• The Union split: Mainland vs Zanzibar setup
• ZIPA facilitation: ZIPA orientation
• Zanzibar work and residence: Zanzibar permits
• Mainland formation: how to register a company in Tanzania

As at 10 September 2026. Confirm the live checklist on bpra.go.tz before you pay anyone. This page publishes no BPRA fee row. Zatra’s fee is only on /pricing/.

If the premises are in Zanzibar, the registrar is BPRA

The Zanzibar Business and Property Registration Agency registers companies and related business vehicles for Zanzibar. BRELA’s Online Registration System registers Mainland companies. A Mainland certificate does not place you on the Zanzibar register. Investors who ‘start at BRELA because the portal is familiar’ create a person who cannot hold the Zanzibar licence they actually need.

Name the registered office you will use. If it is in Unguja or Pemba, stop treating Dar es Salaam ORS as a warmup.

ZIPA is facilitation, not incorporation

The Zanzibar Investment Promotion Authority may register an investment, talk land, and talk incentives. It does not replace BPRA. A ZIPA conversation without a Zanzibar company (or the vehicle ZIPA actually requires on the live form) is a meeting note. Confirm zipa.go.tz and BPRA on the same week, in that order only if ZIPA’s live checklist says the company already exists: otherwise form first.

What the BPRA file usually looks like

Expect, as orientation not as a frozen form: proposed name; constitutional documents the live checklist names; particulars of directors and shareholders; a registered office in Zanzibar; and identification and, for foreign promoters, the notarised / consular set the desk currently asks for. Beneficial-ownership particulars, where the live form requires them, must match the people who will later face the bank. Confirm every field on the portal the day you file. Do not photocopy a Mainland BRELA pack and change the letterhead.

Tax and people after the certificate

Union taxes still have a TRA story as the law provides. Zanzibar domestic taxes have Zanzibar desks. Staff who will live and work in Zanzibar need Zanzibar work and residence authorisations: a Mainland permit is the usual wrong paper. Land for a factory or hotel is a Zanzibar land file. See land rights.

Reserved activities

GN No. 487A of 2025 is reported as a Mainland reserved-class Order. Do not assume it reprints in Zanzibar, and do not assume a BPRA company opens a reserved Mainland shop. Screen the activity where you will actually trade. This page publishes no penalty figure.

Sequence

1. Confirm the premises are in Zanzibar: not ‘the holding company is thinking about a branch’.
2. Screen the activity on Zanzibar’s live licence list.
3. File at BPRA on the live checklist.
4. Open tax files that match Union vs non-Union obligations.
5. Then ZIPA if the project is an investment ZIPA actually receives.
6. Then people and land on Zanzibar instruments.

Where this file stalls

• BRELA ORS used as the Zanzibar company
• ZIPA treated as the registrar
• Mainland director IDs with no Zanzibar registered office
• Inventing a BPRA fee from a 2019 blog
• Assuming a Dar work permit covers Stone Town staff

Currency of this file

BPRA forms and ZIPA checklists move. This page is the registrar split as at 10 September 2026. The live portal wins.

Worked path: tourism vehicle vs holding company

A tour operator that will employ guides in Unguja and collect money in Zanzibar is a BPRA company plus Zanzibar tourism licensing. Mainland TALA orientation does not finish that file. A holding company that only owns shares in a BPRA subsidiary and does not trade in Zanzibar may be a Mainland person: that is an advocate’s structure, not a slogan. Do not put the tour into the holding company to ‘keep it simple’.

Foreign promoters should expect identification, notarisation and, where the live checklist says so, consular legalisation. Times move. This page will not print a day-count. Start the notarisation chain before you promise a hotel opening date.

Names, objects and the licence class

A company name that says ‘bank’ or ‘insurance’ or ‘university’ will meet a sector overlay even in Zanzibar. Objects clauses that list every industry on earth do not open reserved classes. Match the objects to the activity you screened. Changing objects later is a filing; it is not a time machine.

After the certificate: the week people skip

Order stamps, a bank pack, tax registration, and the sector licence. Photograph the certificate. Diary the annual return the live BPRA rules require. A Zanzibar company that never files again is not ‘set and forget’. Confirm the live annual-filing line. This page does not invent it.

Foreign-promoter pack, without freezing a form

Expect passports, proof of address, and constitutional documents in the form BPRA currently wants. Foreign corporate shareholders usually need a certificate of incorporation, a good-standing paper, and a resolution to subscribe: notarised and, if the live checklist still says so, legalised. Names must match the passports. A trading name that is not the legal name will stall the bank even if BPRA was relaxed. Confirm the live list. Do not ship originals until the desk says originals are required.

Directors who will not enter Zanzibar still exist as legal facts. They do not replace work authorisations for the people who will actually manage the hotel. Incorporation is not immigration.

What this page is not

A fee table. A day-count. A ZIPA incentive matrix. A tourism-licence manual. Those are other desks. This page is the registrar. If you only remember one sentence: Stone Town premises, BPRA file.

ZIPA sits beside the certificate, not instead of it

ZIPA may register an investment, facilitate land conversations, and speak to incentives the live Zanzibar investment framework actually names. None of that is incorporation. A ZIPA letter in a folder labelled ‘company’ is how a Dar consultant ships a BRELA certificate to Unguja and calls the job done. Sequence: screen the activity, form at BPRA, then talk to ZIPA if the project is an investment ZIPA receives. Confirm zipa.go.tz for the investment door and bpra.go.tz for the person.

Incentives, where they exist, attach to a qualified project and a qualified person. A person formed at the wrong registrar is not qualified. Do not budget a tax holiday on a Dar company because the hotel is in Nungwi.

Banks, beneficial ownership and the Zanzibar extract

The bank will ask for the BPRA extract, the constitution, the signatory mandates, and a beneficial-ownership story that matches the people whose money is arriving. Filing beneficial ownership at BRELA because the Mainland template was in the shared drive is a contradiction. Confirm the live BPRA beneficial-ownership line. This page does not invent the form number.

If the shareholders are foreign companies, expect the bank to want those companies’ own extracts and a trail to natural persons. That is the source-of-funds sibling, applied to a Zanzibar person. The island does not make KYC optional.

Tourism licensing is not BPRA

A BPRA company that will operate tours, a hotel, or a restaurant still needs the Zanzibar tourism and health licences the live desks issue. Mainland TALA is the wrong paper. The Zanzibar tourism-licensing orientation exists so this registrar page does not become a hotel manual. Form the company. Then licence the activity. Do not reverse the order because a landlord wanted a trading name on a lease yesterday.

As-at 10 September 2026: BPRA checklist discipline

Print or save the live BPRA incorporation checklist the day you instruct the filing. Name, objects, registered office in Zanzibar, directors, shareholders, and the identification the portal currently wants. Those are the usual bones. Times, fees and notarisation rules move. This page prints none of them as a promise. Confirm bpra.go.tz. If a Dar agent says ‘same as BRELA, we know it’, find another agent.

After incorporation, diary the annual return and any beneficial-ownership refresh the live rules require. A Zanzibar company that is never filed again is not a holding structure. It is a future restoration file. Restoration, if needed, is a registrar process on the island, not a Mainland BRELA petition pasted into a different letterhead.