Zanzibar is a semi-autonomous archipelago that is part of the United Republic of Tanzania and is home to approximately 1.8 million people. Zanzibar is looking to stimulate sustainable economic growth, and the digital economy will play a key role in ushering it in. In its Development Vision 2050, Zanzibar states its goal to attain Upper Middle-Income status by the year 2050 through sustainable and inclusive human development”. It highlights the creative and digital economy as one of seven priority areas that will facilitate its economic transformation. Similarly, Zanzibar’s Digital Government Strategy (ZDGS) aims to leverage cutting edge digitalization technologies to enhance the delivery of Zanzibar’s government services. Digitalization also maintains a key role in Zanzibar’s Five Year Development Plan 2021 – 2025 (ZADEP), which highlights the creative and digital economy as a key economic segment that the government aims to boost by:

1. Increasing synergies between creative industries and tourism.
2. Supporting and training for human capital development in ICT and entrepreneurship.
3. Commercializing technology focused on innovation for use in government, business and trade.
4. Introducing a school curriculum incorporating ICT and other essential science, technology, and innovation topics at all levels.

Additionally, Zanzibar’s Digital Transformation Policy 2025 seeks to create an enabling policy environment for start-ups to operate on the island.

The Government of Zanzibar, in collaboration with the Zanzibar Research Centre for Socio-Economic and Policy Analysis (ZRCP), requested UNCDF to adapt UNCDF’s Inclusive Digital Economy Scorecard for Zanzibar to identify priority areas for the Digital Transformation Policy 2050 and serve as a baseline for its implementation. The inclusive digital economy scorecard (IDES) is a policy tool developed by UNCDF to help governments set priorities for their country’s digital transformation. It identifies critical market constraints limiting the development of an inclusive digital economy and helps set the right priorities to foster a digital economy that leaves no one behind. Though the IDES scorecard is typically assessed at the national level, UNCDF leveraged data unique to Zanzibar, where available, to calculate an IDES scorecard for Zanzibar.

The IDES provides an overall score for the development of a digital economy based on the following four vital building blocks of a digital economy (Policy & Regulation, Infrastructure, Innovation and Skills). It also provides a score for the inclusiveness of the digital economy for marginalised population segments (rural population, women, youth, Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs), elderly, people with disabilities). The inclusiveness of the digital economy is primarily measured through a qualitative assessment of the efforts made by the public and the private sector to include specific segments in the expansion of the digital economy.

UNCDF prepared the Zanzibar IDES through extensive collaboration with ZRCP and key ministries in Zanzibar’s government. The efforts were kick-started by the Minister of Infrastructure, Communication, and Transport in December 2023. The ministries engaged included Zanzibar’s Ministry of Ministry of Infrastructure, Communication and Transport (MoICT), Zanzibar’s Planning Commission (ZPC), the Office of the Chief Government Statistician (OCGS), and other relevant government partners. The ministries and government partners provided vital statistics about Zanzibar’s current digital economy and relevant data proxies from Tanzania’s national statistics. The Zanzibar IDES was presented to the government in May 2024 during the Digital Transformation Policy validation workshop led by ZRCP.

This brief provides an overview of the development and inclusivity of Zanzibar’s digital economy in 2023.