Evaluating the Adequacy of Tanzania's E-Commerce Legal Regime in Protecting Digital Market Participants

Abstract

Tanzania has enacted a cluster of statutes intended to facilitate electronic transactions and to protect participants in the digital marketplace. This article critically evaluates whether that legal regime adequately protects digital market participants in contemporary electronic commerce. Adopting a doctrinal methodology, the article examines the Electronic Transactions Act, the Law of Contract Act, the Personal Data Protection Act, the National Payment Systems Act, the Cybercrimes Act, the Fair Competition Act and the Evidence Act, together with relevant international and regional instruments, including the UNCITRAL Model Law on Electronic Commerce, the United Nations Convention on the Use of Electronic Communications in International Contracts, and the African Continental Free Trade Area Protocol on Digital Trade. The article argues that Tanzania has built an important legal foundation for e-commerce, but that recognition of electronic transactions has outpaced the development of comprehensive protection, effective remedies, and regulatory certainty. Particular weaknesses are identified in intermediary liability, cross-border enforcement, emerging technologies and institutional coordination. The article concludes that the Tanzanian framework should be understood not as absent protection but as a foundational, fragmented and incomplete system that requires targeted legislative consolidation, clearer allocation of platform responsibility, and an accessible dispute-resolution mechanism suited to low-value digital disputes.