Tanzania has passed the midpoint of its National Financial Inclusion Framework 2023-2028 with access and usage running ahead of target. That is the finding of the official mid-term evaluation, published in June 2026 by the Secretariat of the National Council for Financial Inclusion at the Bank of Tanzania. The same report finds that progress on welfare and on parts of the plan’s activity schedule has been slower.
“A mid-term evaluation is where a plan is measured against its own numbers, and that makes it one of the most useful documents anyone in financial services can read,” says Ivo Bozukov, a payments industry executive who follows financial inclusion policy across East Africa. “Tanzania has set out precisely what it wanted to achieve by 2025, and now it has reported precisely how far it has come.”
The targets set in 2023
The framework is Tanzania’s third, a five-year plan presented as a public-private stakeholders’ initiative. Its stated vision is universal access to and usage of a broad range of affordable and quality financial products and services.
Progress is tracked across four dimensions: access, usage, quality and welfare. Each carries measurable targets for 2025 and 2028. The framework aimed to lift the share of adults living within five kilometres of a financial access point from 89% in 2023 to 92% by 2025 and 95% by 2028. For adults with active accounts at financial service providers, the targets were 70% by 2025 and 75% by 2028, from a 2023 baseline of 60%.
The framework also names the groups it most wants to reach: women, youth, micro, small and medium enterprises, persons with disabilities, smallholder farmers and fishers, and the rural and urban poor. Both the framework and its mid-term evaluation are published on the Bank of Tanzania’s financial inclusion frameworks page.
Access and usage ahead of schedule
On the first two dimensions, the evaluation reports clear progress. Financial service access points grew by 60.7% between December 2023 and December 2025, reaching more than 2.2 million nationwide. An estimated 93% of adults now live within five kilometres of one, against the mid-term target of 92%.
Usage has moved in step. Active mobile money accounts rose to 75.8 million, and active account usage among adults was estimated to have increased from 60% to 72.5%, ahead of the 70% mid-term target. The direction is consistent with the Bank of Tanzania’s earlier Annual Financial Inclusion Report 2024, which recorded the Tanzania Financial Inclusion Index rising from 0.69 in 2023 to 0.81 in 2024.
Bozukov places more weight on the usage figure than on the access figure. “Access tells you the infrastructure is there. Active usage tells you it has become part of how people manage their money,” he notes. “Moving from 60% to 72.5% in two years is a meaningful shift in everyday behaviour, and it is the number providers should pay closest attention to.”
Slower ground: Welfare and implementation
The evaluation is equally direct about the areas still catching up. Of the 368 activities scheduled for 2023 to 2025, 184 were completed, 123 were ongoing and 61 had not commenced.
Progress under the welfare dimension was described as positive but slower than under access and usage. The quality dimension recorded moderate improvement, with financial literacy estimated to have risen from 60% in 2023 to 66.3% in 2025, just above the framework’s mid-term target of 65%.
The report also notes that financial resilience remains constrained, particularly among rural households, smallholder farmers, youth and persons with disabilities. Activities aimed at women performed relatively well, while those for micro, small and medium enterprises, youth, smallholder farmers and persons with disabilities progressed more slowly.
Among its recommendations, the evaluation calls for dedicated budget lines for the framework, stronger real-time data systems, more targeted financial products for priority groups, certified financial education, and deeper digital infrastructure and electronic customer verification.
A map of who remains to be reached
The evaluation and the framework behind it amount to a public statement of which customers Tanzania still wants to reach. The groups named in 2023 are largely the same groups the mid-term review identifies as needing more attention.
Ivo Bozukov regards that as valuable intelligence for product teams. “Most markets leave you to guess where the unmet need is. Here, it is written down, with targets attached,” he says. “Rural households, smallholder farmers, young people and people with disabilities are named in this framework for a reason, and services designed around how they earn, save and cope when money is short are the ones that will move the remaining numbers.”
The view from the implementing institutions is broadly positive. According to the evaluation, 87.2% were confident that the 2028 targets remain achievable.
The next checkpoint is 2028. By then, the framework expects 95% of adults to live within five kilometres of an access point, and 75% to hold active accounts. On both measures, Tanzania has passed the halfway mark ahead of the pace it set itself.
