34 Tanzanian Public Institutions Have No Board of Directors. 77 Are Processing Money Outside the Government's Own Accounting System. This Is What Governance Failure Looks Like in Data.
The governance chapter of the CAG's 2024/25 audit is the most structurally significant section of the report for Uchumi360's analytical framework. The MKUMBI II reform programme that Prof. Mkumbo presented in March 2026 addresses governance from the outside, from the perspective of what businesses experience when they interact with regulatory institutions. The CAG addresses governance from the inside, from the perspective of how those institutions actually manage their own resources, their own decision-making structures, and their own accountability obligations. Together they produce the most complete picture of Tanzania's institutional quality that any published source currently provides.
The Board Deficit
Thirty-four of Tanzania's 225 audited public institutions are operating without boards of directors. Nine additional institutions have boards with structural deficiencies: six with only a chairperson and no other board members, three with board members but no chairperson. In corporate governance terms, a board is not simply a legal compliance requirement. It is the accountability mechanism through which an institution's management is held to the performance and integrity standards that its mandate requires. Forty-three institutions, nearly one in five of Tanzania's audited public entities, are operating either without this mechanism or with a version of it that cannot function as intended.
The CAG does not speculate about the consequences of this governance gap. The audit findings across the 225 institutions document them: unauthorised expenditures, unremitted statutory deductions, unverified contracts, and risk management systems that either do not exist or exist on paper without operational implementation. These are not independent failures. They are the predictable outputs of institutions operating without the board-level oversight that is designed to prevent them.
77 Institutions Outside the Government's Accounting System
Tanzania's mandatory government accounting system, MUSE, is the infrastructure through which the Treasury maintains consolidated visibility of public sector financial transactions. Seventy-seven of 225 audited institutions are processing financial transactions outside this system without the required Treasury authorisation. Twenty-six institutions are running financial management systems that are not integrated with operational or revenue collection systems, defeating the purpose of having a unified financial management framework.
The consequences of this fragmentation are specific. When transactions occur outside MUSE, they create audit trails that are incomplete, manually maintained, and susceptible to manipulation. Revenue figures reported by institutions not using the integrated system cannot be independently verified against the transaction data that MUSE would capture. The Treasury's consolidated picture of public sector financial performance is, to the extent that 77 institutions are outside the system, a picture with 77 blind spots.
For Tanzania's fiscal management credibility with international partners and financial institutions, this fragmentation matters directly. Donors, development finance institutions, and budget support providers who rely on government financial reporting to assess fiscal performance and fiduciary risk are relying on a consolidated figure that is structurally incomplete.
Ten Institutions Without Risk Management Systems
Risk management systems are the institutional infrastructure through which organisations identify, assess, and mitigate the operational, financial, and strategic risks that could prevent them from delivering their mandates. Ten institutions are operating without any documented risk management system, risk register, or fraud risk policy. The CAG names them: the Dar es Salaam University College of Education, KMTC Manufacturing Company, the Vocational Education and Training Authority, the Tanzania Biological Products Limited, four water authorities including Bariadi, Tabora, Geita, and Kahama-Shinyanga, the National Sugar Institute, and the Tanzania Sports Council.
What is notable about this list is its diversity. It includes an educational institution, a manufacturing company, a regulatory authority, a biological products manufacturer, four water utilities, and a sports body. The absence of risk management is not concentrated in one sector or one type of institution. It is distributed across the institutional landscape in a pattern that suggests the gap is systemic rather than specific.
The Anti-Corruption Compliance Gap
Seven institutions are not complying with Tanzania's national anti-corruption strategy. The CAG identifies this as increasing the risk of unethical conduct going undetected. In the context of a report that also documents TZS 72.55 billion in contracts awarded to unqualified vendors, TZS 8.56 billion in unjustified expenditures, and multiple instances of payments made without proper verification of work completed, the anti-corruption compliance gap is not a procedural footnote. It is part of the same governance failure pattern that the other findings document.
Tanzania's anti-corruption institutional framework exists. The governance challenge documented in the CAG report is not the absence of a framework but the gap between its existence and its operational implementation across a substantial share of the public institutions that the framework is supposed to govern.
Uchumi360
Business Intelligence
Source: Ripoti ya Mwaka ya Mdhibiti na Mkaguzi Mkuu wa Hesabu za Serikali kuhusu Ukaguzi wa Mashirika ya Umma kwa Mwaka wa Fedha 2024/25. March 30, 2026.
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