By 
Tanzania has opened its sixth annual eGovernment meeting in Arusha with a clear message to ministries and agencies: stop building disconnected systems, follow the law, and treat cyber security and data protection as part of service delivery, not an afterthought.
The event runs from February 17 to 19, 2026 at the Arusha International Conference Centre.
In his opening address, Chief Secretary Moses Mpogole Kusiluka framed digital government as operational reform, not an ICT showcase. In the speeches shared at the meeting, he directed public institutions to comply with Tanzania’s eGovernment legal framework from project initiation to daily operations, and warned that officials who bypass the required approval process will face disciplinary action.
He also pushed the meeting to produce practical resolutions, making it clear that execution, not ceremony, is the point.
eGA Director General Benedict Ndomba said the forum is meant to review implementation progress and agree fresh actions around secure, inclusive and integrated systems that improve public service delivery. The conference programme places Kusiluka as guest of honour and schedules multiple sessions across the three days.
Why this matters in Zambia is simple: Zambia already has much of the legal and institutional architecture that makes the Arusha message immediately relevant. SMART Zambia Institute, under the Office of the President, is mandated to coordinate and implement electronic government, while the Electronic Government Act, 2021 provides the legal basis for managing and promoting digital public services and processes.
Zambia also already runs digital public-service rails through ZamPortal and ZamServices, alongside ZamPay, the government payment gateway for public-service e-payments. In other words, the same terrain Tanzania is trying to harden, standards, integration and accountability where money and services meet, is already central to Zambia’s own digital state project.
Arusha also leaned heavily into workforce realism. That should resonate in Lusaka. Zambia’s own public-service digital transformation strategy explicitly calls for stronger digital literacy in the public service and among citizens, while SMART Zambia has begun rolling out decentralised digital skills training across government institutions. That is a recognition that digital government cannot succeed on infrastructure alone.
It depends on whether the people running systems can manage change, use tools properly, and respond to new risks as services move online.
Then there is trust. Tanzania’s leadership told agencies to prioritise cyber security and personal data protection, including responsible use of emerging technologies such as AI. Zambia has its own trust architecture in place.
The Data Protection Act, 2021 established the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner, which is now operational as the central authority for oversight and enforcement.
At the same time, SMART Zambia has issued public-service standards on interoperability and information security, including requirements for institutions to comply with data-sharing and security rules. That means the question for Zambia is no longer whether the framework exists.
It is whether the framework is being enforced early enough and consistently enough across ministries, provinces and agencies.
The takeaway for Zambian readers is not that Tanzania held another conference. It is that a neighbouring government is tightening the screws on how digital projects are approved, integrated, secured and governed.
Zambia, for its part, is already pursuing a digital transformation agenda built around reliable, secure and integrated public services.
That makes the Arusha message less a foreign observation than a regional checklist: enforce standards early, integrate by design, build skills continuously, and protect citizen data as a first-order requirement.
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