Tanzania is digitising health at remarkable speed, but without strong health data governance, we risk leaving rights, trust, and equity behind.
Across Tanzania, health data is increasingly shaping how decisions are made, from planning maternal health services to responding to outbreaks and powering new digital health innovations. Electronic Health Records (EHRs), District Health Information System 2 (DHIS2), telemedicine platforms, and interoperable systems are no longer future ambitions; they are today’s reality.
Yet one critical question remains unresolved: Who governs health data, in whose interest, and under what safeguards?
With support from Transform Health and the Pan African Health Informatics Association (HELINA), the Tanzania Health Informatics Association (TAHIA) recently held national consultations, landscape reviews, and roadmap validation workshops in October and December 2025. The clear and consistent message emerging from these is that Tanzania must urgently move from general data protection to strong, health-specific data governance if digital health is to truly serve people, communities, and the goal of Universal Health Coverage (UHC).
Health Data is different and deserves special protection:
Despite its current posturing under Tanzania’s data protection regime, health data is not just another category of personal data. It can expose intimate details about people’s lives, shape access to services, affect livelihoods, and even impact entire communities. Poorly governed health data can lead to discrimination, misuse, loss of trust, and exclusion, especially for vulnerable populations.
It is acknowledged that Tanzania has taken an important step with the enactment of the Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA) of 2022, which establishes privacy rights and creates the Personal Data Protection Commission (PDPC). However, national assessments show that the PDPA alone is not enough to address the unique risks and opportunities of health data.
- The law remains largely sector-neutral, leaving unanswered questions about:
- Informed consent for secondary use of patient data
- Governance of genomic and biobanking data.
- Community and collective rights in health data.
- Cross-border use of Tanzanian data for research and
- Accountability mechanisms tailored to health harms.
Without clear rules, responsibility becomes fragmented and people are left unprotected.
A rare moment of National alignment:
What makes the current moment so significant is the unprecedented alignment among stakeholders.
National workshops convened by the Ministry of Health, Prime Minister’s Office Regional Administration Local Government (PMO-RALG), TAHIA, HELINA, PDPC, and partners have brought policymakers, regulators, implementers, researchers, civil society, and development partners into the same room, often for the first time, to confront these issues collectively
These dialogues have produced:
- A shared understanding of HDG Principles;
- A mapped ecosystem of roles and responsibilities;
- Clear identification of legal, institutional, and technical gaps; and
- Critically, a validated HDG Roadmap for 2025–2028
This is not abstract theory. It is a nationally owned plan grounded in Tanzania’s legal system, health priorities, and digital reality.
The HDG roadmap: From principles to practice
The validated roadmap sets out a practical and phased approach to implementation, built around six pillars:
1. Policy and Regulatory development
Health-specific regulations under the PDPA to clarify consent, data sharing, research use, emergencies, and emerging technologies.
2. Institutional arrangements
Formal leadership by the Ministry of Health and a multi-sectoral National Health Data Governance Steering Committee.
3. Standards and interoperability
Stronger national interoperability layers so systems can securely “talk to each other” without compromising privacy.
4. Capacity building and awareness
Training health workers, regulators, researchers, and empowering the public to understand their data rights.
5. Resource mobilisation
Moving beyond donor dependency toward sustainable public and blended financing for governance reforms.
6. Monitoring and accountability
Clear indicators, periodic reviews, and transparent evaluation of compliance and impact
Together, these pillars translate high-level principles into concrete actions.
Why implementation cannot wait
Delaying implementation carries real risks. Without health-specific governance:
- Patient consent remains weak and inconsistently applied;
- Data may be extracted for research or AI development without fair benefit-sharing;
- Cross-border data use may undermine national sovereignty and public trust;
- Innovation may advance faster than ethical and legal safeguards.
Conversely, strong HDG unlocks enormous value. It builds trust in digital systems, improves data quality, enables responsible innovation, strengthens research ecosystems, and ensures that communities (not just technologies) benefit from digital transformation.
As stakeholders repeatedly emphasised, governance is not a barrier to innovation; it is its foundation.
A call to action
Tanzania has done the hard work of diagnosis and design. What is needed now is political commitment, sustained financing, and coordinated implementation. The following are imperative:
- Government institutions must fast-track health-specific regulations under the PDPA;
- Development partners should align funding with the national HDG roadmap;
- Implementers and innovators must embed governance by design;
- Civil society and academia must continue to champion rights, equity, and accountability.
Health data will define the future of Tanzania’s health system. The question is whether it will be governed for people, or merely about them.
The roadmap is ready. The consensus is clear. The time to implement HDG in Tanzania is now.