There’s something undeniably cinematic about watching Tanzania’s Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) cut across the plains — an echo of progress, gliding at high speed. From Dar es Salaam to Morogoro and onward, the trains run, stations gleam, and political speeches celebrate “transformation.” On paper, the country has achieved what many others in the region are still dreaming of: a functioning modern railway.
And yet, ask logistics players, traders, or even regional partners, and the verdict is cautious, if not skeptical. The trains run, yes — but the system around them does not. Cargo moves slowly, port delays persist, institutional confusion reigns, and coordination across sectors is fractured.
This isn’t an engineering problem. It’s institutional.
Institutional Fragmentation — Too Many Hands on One Track
At the heart of the SGR’s underperformance lies a silent, persistent obstacle: too many institutions acting in isolation, each with its own mandates, KPIs, and political incentives.
Consider the port of Dar es Salaam, the SGR operator (TRC), the Tanzania Ports Authority (TPA), the Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA), the Ministry of Transport, the Ministry of Industry and Trade, and the rail regulator. Each plays a role in the movement of goods. But in practice, their operations often collide, rather than synchronize.
There’s no central logistics brain coordinating this network. Instead, inter-agency meetings become crisis response mechanisms rather than long-term planning platforms. Data is siloed. Accountability is diffuse. Agencies protect jurisdiction more than they pursue outcomes.
So the railway — as sleek as it is — becomes just another arm in a dysfunctional body. Containers get stuck at the port because customs clearance isn’t aligned with rail schedules. Inland cargo stations remain idle because there’s no mandate to route cargo efficiently. And investments that should have unlocked economic value instead hit bureaucratic bottlenecks.
The Port–Rail Disconnect — A System Designed to Compete With Itself
One would expect the SGR and the Dar port to function as an integrated logistics corridor — a seamless artery moving goods from ship to train to hinterland. Instead, they operate as rival systems, each optimized for its own needs, but not for national throughput.
At the port, the customs process remains slow, documentation is still manually intensive in parts, and cargo dwell times often exceed planned targets. These inefficiencies ripple through the rest of the system, delaying rail loading and creating scheduling inconsistencies.
Worse, port and rail KPIs are often mismatched. The port prioritizes vessel turnaround. The rail prioritizes cargo volume. Neither is measured by how fast a container gets from ship to inland destination — the metric that matters most to clients.
This design flaw isn’t accidental. It reflects an old governance model where agencies grew in silos and accountability stopped at institutional boundaries. It means even when the SGR performs well technically, it cannot overcome delays created upstream. Like a relay race where one runner sprints, but the baton is late, the whole team loses.
Planning in Silos — Why Ministries Must Stop Building Alone
The SGR could have been the spine of a national logistics ecosystem — one that connects farms, factories, warehouses, and borders. But that vision would have required integrated planning across transport, industry, agriculture, and regional trade ministries. It didn’t happen.
Too often, Tanzania’s major infrastructure decisions are made within ministry walls rather than across them. Transport designs a railway. Industry scouts for industrial zones. Agriculture plans aggregation centres. But coordination is treated as an afterthought — a compliance box ticked late, not a design principle baked in from the start.
The result? Rail lines pass near, but not into, economic production zones. Stations exist, but lack facilities for bulk cargo or cross-docking. Industrial parks are developed without reliable last-mile rail links. This is not a failure of vision — it is a failure of institutional architecture.
No single ministry is to blame. Instead, it’s the operating logic of government itself — each ministry rewarded for outputs, not outcomes; for completing its plans, not creating shared systems. Infrastructure, in this context, becomes linear rather than systemic. And the SGR, however modern, cannot fulfil its promise alone.
Policy Without Execution — The Gap Between Strategy and System
Tanzania has no shortage of strategic documents. Transport masterplans, industrialization blueprints, logistics corridor visions — all exist. The problem is not ideas, but implementation.
The distance between paper and practice is wide. High-level goals often fail to translate into coordinated operational steps. For instance, a policy may call for increased intermodal cargo movement, but no single agency is tasked with synchronizing port offloading schedules with SGR capacity. Another plan may outline transit-time reductions, but without enforceable accountability mechanisms, the status quo remains.
Even when coordination structures are set up — like interministerial task forces — they often operate in isolation, poorly resourced and lacking enforcement power. Meetings happen, but mandates remain fragmented.
The SGR suffers from this execution deficit. It was positioned as part of a wider development corridor strategy, but the downstream infrastructure — cold storage facilities, feeder roads, dry ports — lag behind. The train runs, but the rest of the system stumbles. Without a functioning implementation engine, policies become wishlists — admirable, but inert.
Regional Trust Deficit, The Invisible Political Risk
Beyond Tanzania’s borders, the stakes are even higher. Landlocked countries like Rwanda, Burundi, and the DRC are not just potential clients — they are litmus tests of Tanzania’s logistics reliability. And right now, the verdict is mixed.
Delays at the port, inconsistent customs practices, and unclear logistics pricing structures create uncertainty for regional partners. These countries need assurance not just that the SGR exists — but that it works consistently, efficiently, and without bureaucratic friction.
When Rwanda considers routing goods via Dar es Salaam rather than Mombasa, it doesn’t compare construction milestones. It looks at clearance times, digital tracking availability, policy predictability, and dispute resolution channels. Trust is built through experience — not announcements.
Unfortunately, Tanzania’s fragmented logistics governance weakens that trust. A single delayed consignment, or a sudden policy shift with no communication, can push regional partners to reroute. And once trust is lost, even the best infrastructure can sit underutilized.
Tanzania must see itself not just as a rail builder — but as a regional logistics state. And logistics, unlike rail, runs on reliability.
What Coordination Could Look Like — A Tanzanian Model
Fixing this isn’t about importing complex foreign systems. Tanzania needs coordination designed for Tanzanian realities, one that acknowledges ministerial silos, political interests, and capacity constraints, while still pushing for results.
A starting point could be a Central Logistics Integration Unit, anchored in the Prime Minister’s Office, empowered to:
- Align investment plans across transport, trade, industry, and agriculture.
- Track shared KPIs on cargo volumes, turnaround time, and transit reliability.
- Coordinate timelines across TPA, TRC, TRA, and other logistics actors.
- Enforce Service Level Agreements across agencies — from port to rail to warehouse.
This model wouldn’t erase institutional mandates, but it would force them to talk, share data, and be accountable to a common outcome: cargo moving efficiently.
Digital integration would help too. A national logistics dashboard accessible to all relevant actors could reduce duplication, anticipate congestion, and inform traders. Combine that with stakeholder forums and feedback loops — including from private sector users — and the system can begin to learn, adapt, and perform.
This isn’t utopian. It’s practical. And overdue.
- Political Incentives and the Blame Game
But coordination won’t happen by accident, especially in a governance culture where blame is easier than reform.
Every delay invites finger-pointing. If cargo volumes fall, the SGR blames the port. The port blames customs. Customs blames incomplete paperwork. Ministries blame contractors. Contractors blame funding. And by the time responsibility is traced, the opportunity is lost.
At the heart of this cycle is politics. Infrastructure projects are political capital. No one wants to be seen as the weak link in a presidential flagship. So institutions retreat into self-preservation, not problem-solving. Plans are delayed rather than fixed. Criticism is suppressed rather than addressed.
What’s needed is a shift in political incentives: reward agencies that collaborate, not those that merely protect turf. Performance contracts could reflect cross-institutional KPIs. Political leadership should speak not only of ribbon-cuttings, but of timelines met, blockages removed, and user satisfaction.
Unless collaboration becomes politically valuable, fragmentation will remain the default.
We Built the Track, But Did We Build the System?
Tanzania’s SGR is real. It is running. It is ambitious. But it is not yet transformational, because the system around it isn’t ready.
We’ve built steel, but not synergy. Tracks, but not trust. Terminals, but not coordination. The dream of regional logistics leadership will remain just that — a dream—unless institutions begin to operate as one ecosystem, not a collection of fiefdoms.
This moment still holds promise. The infrastructure is in place. The ambition is clear. What remains is to build the system — quietly, patiently, and with a political will that values alignment over applause.
Only then will Tanzania’s SGR be more than a train. It will be a turning point.
Read more articles by Dr. Wilson Pesabelele