IMF-在坦桑尼亚快速增长的人口中培养人力资本_坦桑尼亚（英）-2025.7_12页_862kb

Fostering Human Capital in Tanzania's Rapidly Growing Population: Summary

Background

Tanzania's human capital development is critically urgent due to its rapidly growing young population—almost half under 18—and projected doubling to over 130 million by 2050. The country lags behind regional peers in education and health coverage and quality, with issues like one-third of under-5 children stunted, student-teacher ratios high in education, and significant shortages in health facilities and workers. Since the ECF program's launch, priority social spending has increased marginally, but composition shifted more towards infrastructure than education and health.

Current Challenges

Despite recent improvements in access through policies like fee-free basic education and Universal Health Insurance, challenges persist. Education suffers from poor quality due to high student-teacher ratios (163, 61, 27 for pre-primary, primary, and lower-secondary respectively) and resource deficiencies. Health sector workforce shortages, particularly at primary care levels (requiring ~200,000 additional workers), coupled with high fertility rates, strain services. Recent social spending reforms under ECF have been overshadowed by low priority on health and education, despite demographic pressures.

Recommendations

To address these gaps, policy actions include:

• Increasing budget allocation for education and health to align with Vision 2050 and demographic needs, reaching targets similar to peer countries.
• Rebalancing spending to prioritize workforce expansion, facility provisioning, and digital tools for improved service delivery.
• Enhancing teacher and health worker training, especially in rural areas.
• Promoting private sector participation to boost efficiency and reduce public expenditure burden.
• Strengthening accountability and transparency in public spending.

Concluding Thoughts

Tanzania must urgently scale up investments in human capital to leverage its demographic dividend and achieve Sustainable Development Goals, with additional public spending requirements estimated at over 2 percent of GDP above regional averages.