Central Bank of Tanzania buys 28 tons of gold worth $3.68B for reserves

Tanzania’s central bank has been on a gold shopping spree, and the numbers are hard to ignore. The Bank of Tanzania has purchased approximately 28 metric tons of gold over the past 18 months, a haul valued at roughly $3.68 billion.

To put that in perspective: $3.68 billion is more than half the country’s total foreign exchange reserves. This is not a rounding error in a central bank’s portfolio. This is a deliberate, structural bet on gold.

How Tanzania built a gold war chest

The program was reinstated around 2023 and has accelerated steadily since. By June 2025, the Bank of Tanzania had accumulated about 5 tonnes of gold, valued at approximately $554 million. A year later, by mid-June 2026, that figure had climbed to roughly 27.5 tonnes.

A key regulatory lever helped accelerate the buildup. Starting in September 2024, a new mandate required mining companies and gold traders operating in Tanzania to sell at least 20% of their exported gold directly to the central bank.

Governor Emmanuel Tutuba highlighted the program’s importance during remarks connected to an IMF-World Bank meeting, framing the gold accumulation as central to reinforcing the country’s reserve position and supporting the Tanzanian shilling.

Tanzania’s total foreign exchange reserves now stand at approximately $6 billion, covering roughly 4.3 months of imports. The gold holdings represent a substantial share of that buffer.

The program has also had an unexpected social dimension. The Bank of Tanzania reports that the gold purchasing initiative has led to the creation of more than 4,000 new bank accounts specifically for small-scale miners and mineral traders.

Why central banks keep buying gold

Emerging-market central banks have been quietly and consistently adding gold to their reserves for years, a trend that accelerated after the 2022 freezing of Russia’s foreign exchange reserves made dollar-denominated assets look a lot less safe to a number of governments.

Rather than buying gold on the open market at spot prices, Tanzania can source directly from domestic miners. The 20% export mandate effectively transforms Tanzania’s mining sector into a reserve-building pipeline.