For millions of Tanzanians, the most visible sign of government isn’t a ministry building in Dodoma or a new port in Dar es Salaam, it’s the strip of tarmac or gravel that cuts across their village. Roads are how citizens measure presence, progress, and promises.
In the past four years, the Tanzania Rural and Urban Roads Agency (TARURA) has overseen an unprecedented expansion. The network of rural and urban district roads grew from 108,946 km in 2020 to 144,430 km in 2024, a 32.6% increase. By mid-2024, TARURA had already surpassed the CCM 2020–25 manifesto target for road access. On paper, it is one of the most ambitious expansions of local connectivity in the country’s history.
However, statistics don’t always align with lived reality. In village after village, roads celebrated with ribbon-cuttings have cracked, washed away, or dissolved into potholes before the next rainy season. For rural communities, the political theatre of infrastructure collides with the mud underfoot. What was promised as permanence often proves fleeting.
The Surge of Pledges
Every election cycle in Tanzania brings a familiar refrain: “no village left behind.” Roads are at the heart of this promise. MPs and councillors campaign with pledges to pave feeder roads, connect villages to highways, and guarantee year-round access to schools and clinics. To rural voters, a road is more than asphalt; it is recognition. It says, “the state sees us.”
The numbers reflect this political intensity. By mid-2024, paved district roads had reached 3,337.7 km, surpassing the 2025 target of 3,100 km. Gravel district roads expanded to 42,059 km, steadily extending the reach of TARURA’s mandate. Funding has surged, too: TARURA’s annual allocation has tripled in less than a decade, from around TSh 275 billion in 2018–20 to nearly TSh 870 billion in 2023/24.
This surge has delivered real gains; villages that once relied on footpaths now see gravel trucks. But it has also raised expectations. Communities don’t just want roads announced; they want roads that last.
The Reality Check, Poor Quality, Short Lifespans
Expansion has come at a cost: quality. In its 2024 report, the National Audit Office found that 10% of newly constructed urban paved roads were already failing to meet their intended purpose. Surfaces cracked, drainage failed, and potholes returned almost as soon as contractors left. For villagers, it confirmed a cynical suspicion: some roads are built to be seen, not to last.
To stretch budgets, TARURA has embraced cost-saving technologies, ECOROADS, Ecozyme, and geopolymer stabilisation, which can halve construction costs compared to conventional methods. In pilot projects, these approaches allowed more kilometres to be built with fewer shillings. But cheaper is not always better. Without robust maintenance and oversight, even innovative surfaces can erode quickly under seasonal rains and the weight of heavy trucks.
The funding model deepens the problem. The Roads Fund Board admits that road user charges remain insufficient to cover maintenance needs. New kilometres keep being added, but the pot for upkeep grows more slowly. The result is a vicious cycle: flashy new roads at election time, followed by rapid deterioration and disillusionment.
In the end, the numbers may look impressive, but for rural citizens trudging through potholes, the verdict is harsher: a road that dies in the first rainy season is not a road at all.
TARURA’s Dilemma
On paper, TARURA is one of the country’s most important agencies. It manages over 80% of Tanzania’s road network, including the district and feeder roads that connect villages to markets, schools, and clinics. By 2024, this mandate covered 144,430 km of roads, more than three times the length under TANROADS.
Yet TARURA operates under constant strain. Funding has increased dramatically, tripling over the past five years, but still falls short of what is needed to maintain such a vast network. The pressure to build new roads for political visibility is relentless, while maintenance, which is less glamorous and harder to showcase, often slides down the priority list.
Staffing is another bottleneck. TARURA offices in rural districts may have only a handful of engineers, responsible for overseeing hundreds of kilometres of roadworks. Oversight is thin, monitoring is inconsistent, and contractors exploit the gaps. The result is uneven quality: some roads hold up, while others crumble within months.
Caught between technical duty and political pressure, TARURA often looks less like an independent planner and more like a political vehicle, one whose performance is judged by kilometres built rather than by how long they last.
The Human Consequences of Broken Promises
The political failings of rural roads are felt most sharply at the human level. When a feeder road collapses after a rainy season, it doesn’t just inconvenience travellers, it upends lives.
Farmers watch produce rot in storage or along the roadside because trucks cannot reach them in time. Studies estimate that 20–30% of harvests are lost post-harvest, partly because poor roads delay transportation to markets. Families who should benefit from bumper harvests instead face losses that deepen rural poverty.
For health, the stakes are even higher. Ambulances stuck in muddy ruts arrive too late for emergencies. Women in labour are carried on stretchers through flooded paths. In some districts, mortality statistics rise every rainy season, as isolation cuts people off from clinics.
Education suffers too. Schoolchildren miss classes for weeks when feeder roads wash out. Teachers assigned to remote schools often refuse postings or leave early, citing impassable roads.
For rural citizens, broken roads are more than infrastructure failures. They are broken promises, visible proof that political words do not match delivery. And with every failed road, trust in institutions erodes further.
Roads as Symbols of Belonging
In Tanzania’s rural politics, a road is not just a path from A to B; it is a statement of belonging. To have a road that holds through the rainy season is to feel seen, recognised, and included in the nation’s progress. To have a road that collapses is to feel forgotten.
This symbolism gives rural roads a unique political weight. Citizens do not measure inclusion by policy documents or speeches; they measure it by whether their village has a usable road. When politicians pledge to pave the way, they pledge recognition. When the surface cracks and potholes return, it feels like a sign of abandonment.
That is why rural roads stir such strong feelings. They are not just transport links but instruments of trust. Durable roads say, “you matter.” Fragile ones say, “You don’t.” And in a democracy where rural voters form the majority, this symbolism makes every kilometre of road a battleground of legitimacy.
From Mud to Mandate
Rural roads will remain one of Tanzania’s most potent forms of political currency. They are the visible threads that tie citizens to the state, shaping how people judge both government competence and sincerity. But when those threads snap, when roads wash away after one rainy season, the promise is not just broken tarmac; it is broken trust.
The challenge is not a lack of ambition. TARURA has expanded the rural network faster than any agency in the country’s history, backed by record funding. The problem is how to turn this expansion into durability. A road that survives election season but fails in the rains becomes another symbol of short-term politics, not long-term commitment.
For rural communities, the demand is simple: they want roads that last. Roads that carry harvests to market, ambulances to clinics, children to school, not just on sunny days but when the rains come.
In the end, political legitimacy may run along the same fragile lines as the roads themselves. Strong if built well. Fragile if left in the mud. The mandate, then, is clear: promises on paper and at podiums must become promises that endure on the ground.
