The multi-party era

Ali Hassan Mwinyi succeeded Julius Nyerere as president in 1985 and began opening the economy that Nyerere's ujamaa policies had closed. On the political side, the National Assembly passed the Political Parties Act of 1992, ending 27 years of one-party rule by TANU and then Chama cha Mapinduzi (CCM). Opposition parties, including the Civic United Front and NCCR-Mageuzi, registered in the years that followed.

Tanzania's first multi-party general election was held on 29 October 1995. Benjamin Mkapa of CCM won the presidency. General elections have been held every five years since — 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015, 2020 and 2025 — and every president elected since Mkapa has taken office through one. The presidents, vice-presidents and prime ministers of the period are listed on Who runs Tanzania.

Benjamin Mkapa's government continued privatising the state-owned enterprises, or parastatals, that Nyerere's government had created, a process that had begun in the late 1980s under Mwinyi. Hundreds of parastatals were sold or restructured over the decade.

In November 2001 Tanzania reached the completion point of the IMF and World Bank's Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative, cancelling roughly $3 billion, or about 54%, of its external debt. The government presented this as freeing up money for education and health spending rather than debt service.

On 30 November 1999, in Arusha, Tanzania signed the treaty reviving the East African Community with Kenya and Uganda. It came into force on 7 July 2000, and the community was later joined by Rwanda, Burundi, South Sudan, the DR Congo and Somalia.

The economy opened further to private investment, including in gold mining: see Gold.

Jakaya Kikwete succeeded Mkapa in 2005. The economy grew at some of its fastest rates on record during his two terms.

Natural gas had first been found onshore at Songo Songo Island, Lindi Region, in 1974, and at Mnazi Bay, Mtwara Region, in 1982; the two fields were connected to the grid and industry from 2004 and 2006. From 2010 a series of much larger discoveries were made offshore in deep water, raising Tanzania's estimated gas reserves into the tens of trillions of cubic feet. A pipeline from Mtwara to Dar es Salaam, built to carry the gas to the national grid, opened in 2015.

John Magufuli was elected in 2015 under the slogan Hapa Kazi Tu ('just work here'). On 23 July 2016 he ordered every government ministry to relocate to Dodoma; the move was declared complete in 2019 – 2020, finishing the shift of the capital that had been decided in 1973 (see the Nyerere years).

His government began two of Tanzania's largest infrastructure projects. Construction of the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) started in April 2017, with the first 300 km section, from Dar es Salaam to Morogoro, contracted to a Turkish–Portuguese consortium. And in December 2018 Tanzania signed the construction contract for the Julius Nyerere Hydropower Project, a 2,115 MW dam on the Rufiji River at Stiegler's Gorge; construction ran from June 2019.

Magufuli died in office on 17 March 2021, aged 61, of chronic atrial fibrillation, a heart condition he had been treated for. He was the first Tanzanian president to die in office since Nyerere's era, and the first to do so as an elected multi-party president.

As vice-president, Samia Suluhu Hassan was sworn in as president on 19 March 2021, two days after Magufuli's death, becoming Tanzania's sixth president and its first woman to hold the office. She set out a governing approach built on four themes she called the 4Rs — reconciliation, resilience, reforms and rebuilding.

Her government completed the projects begun under Magufuli: the Dar es Salaam–Morogoro stretch of the SGR entered service in June 2024, later extended toward Dodoma, and she formally commissioned the Julius Nyerere Hydropower Project on 22 August 2026.

Tanzania's most recent general election was held on 29 October 2025; Samia Suluhu Hassan was sworn in for a second term on 3 November 2025. Full details of the current government are on Who runs Tanzania.