Tanzania’s $3.8bn gold stockpile overtakes dollar reserves

The Bank of Tanzania has amassed roughly 28 tonnes of gold over the past eighteen months, a stockpile now worth $3.8 billion that makes bullion the country's dominant foreign-exchange asset. By April 2026, gold holdings reached TSh8.3 trillion, officially surpassing the TSh7.2 trillion held in US-dollar securities and other foreign instruments.

This rapid accumulation stems from a deliberate monetary pivot launched in September 2023. The programme accelerated sharply after a June 2025 regulation required large-scale miners to sell at least 20 percent of their production directly to the central bank at market prices. Crucially, the bank conducts all of these purchases in Tanzanian shillings, directly integrating domestic mineral output into the monetary system and suppressing local demand for US currency.

The gold buying is the operational core of a strict de-dollarisation campaign. The government banned the use of US dollars in domestic transactions starting in July 2024, and subsequent regulations mandated that all local pricing and payments be conducted exclusively in shillings. According to economists cited by CGTN Africa, the currency appreciated roughly 6.5 percent against the dollar during the accumulation period.

For international investors, Tanzania is signalling a clear preference for self-custodied, non-dollar assets over reliance on external creditors. This mirrors a broader emerging-market trend driven by the geopolitical risk of dollar-denominated assets being frozen or sanctioned by foreign jurisdictions.

However, the strategy introduces acute concentration risk. Gold now comprises well over 60 percent of Tanzania's estimated $6 billion in total reserves. This leaves the central bank heavily exposed to price volatility in a single non-yielding commodity. For Western partners, the shift marginally reduces the financial utility of dollar instruments in the region, though it offers other resource-rich economies a template for pairing local-currency mandates with resource-backed reserves.

The growing stockpile has also triggered a domestic debate over fiscal boundaries. President Samia Suluhu Hassan reportedly directed the central bank to consider using part of the reserves to fund infrastructure projects like roads and power stations. The central bank has firmly resisted this. In February 2026, director of financial markets Emmanuel Akaro stated that any planned gold sales were strictly for liquidity and risk management after holdings exceeded board-approved targets, not a mechanism to finance government spending.