Tanzania goes to the polls in October 2025. On the surface, it is another chapter in the long democratic journey of a country that has held competitive multiparty elections since 1995. Beneath the surface, it is something far more consequential: a moment at which the international community must decide whether it will stand by and watch as a democratic system is methodically dismantled, or whether it will use the tools at its disposal to defend the principles it claims to hold.
The Regime’s Blueprint
If the 2020 election offers a guide — and there is every reason to think it does — the pattern of the 2025 campaign is already clear. The playbook has not changed.
Opposition candidates will be disqualified on procedural grounds. In 2019’s local elections, the CCM government blocked 96% of CHADEMA’s candidates while approving more than 90% of its own — and then went on to claim 99.77% of the votes. The National Election Commission will be staffed by political appointees who have demonstrated their willingness to function as instruments of the ruling party. The internet will be restricted. Independent observers will face bureaucratic obstruction. Polling agents from opposition parties will be denied access to counting stations, or replaced with agents loyal to the ruling party.
And if the organized intimidation of opponents and the suppression of civic space over the past year is any guide, the violence will escalate as election day approaches.
What Makes 2025 Different
Two things distinguish 2025 from 2020.
First, the international scrutiny is greater. The Commonwealth complaint, the UN Working Group submission, the sustained documentation by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and the growing alarm of diplomatic missions in Dar es Salaam have created a record that is harder to ignore than anything that existed before the 2020 election. The world is watching — and the world has evidence.
Second, the stakes for the Tanzanian people are existential. After a decade of systematic erosion of democratic institutions under first Magufuli and then Hassan, the structures needed for a genuinely competitive election — an independent judiciary, a free press, an uncaptured electoral commission, a civil society capable of monitoring the process — have been progressively dismantled. If 2025 follows the pattern of 2020, Tanzania may not have another credible opportunity for democratic transition for a generation.
What the International Community Must Do — Now
Amsterdam & Partners calls on the international community to take the following steps before Tanzania’s 2025 election:
Commonwealth action: The Commonwealth Secretariat must act on the October 2024 complaint filed by Amsterdam & Partners. Provisional suspension of Tanzania from the Councils of the Commonwealth, as was done with Zimbabwe in 2002, would send an unambiguous signal and create concrete pressure for reform.
Targeted sanctions: Governments with Magnitsky-style sanctions frameworks — including the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, and Canada — should identify and sanction the individuals responsible for orchestrating electoral fraud, political persecution, and forced disappearances. These sanctions are targeted at individuals, not at the Tanzanian people.
Election monitoring: Comprehensive, independent international election monitoring missions must be accredited and given unconditional access. Attempts to restrict or obstruct such missions should be treated as evidence of intent to conduct electoral fraud and should trigger immediate diplomatic consequences.
Freedom for Lissu: The immediate dropping of all politically motivated charges against Tundu Lissu, Freeman Mbowe, and other CHADEMA leaders is a prerequisite for any credible democratic process. An election in which the principal opposition candidate is under active criminal prosecution is not a free election. It is a performance of democracy in the service of autocracy.
“The legitimacy of Tanzania’s 2025 election depends on what happens in the months before a single vote is cast. The time for action is now — not after the ballot boxes have been stuffed and the results announced.” — Amsterdam & Partners LLP
The campaign for Tundu Lissu is ultimately a campaign for every Tanzanian who believes their country deserves better than this. Join us.