Rostam Aziz calls for Kenya-Tanzania single commercial system

Tanzanian billionaire Rostam Aziz used the platform of a formal Kenya-Tanzania Investment Forum on Monday to make an argument that went significantly beyond the diplomatic language of the occasion: the two countries need to stop thinking about trade and start building a single commercial system capable of competing for global capital.

“We need to move from trade to something much bigger, a system that can compete and scale to attract capital for both regional and global markets,” Aziz told the forum, which was held alongside the state visit of Kenyan President William Ruto to Dar es Salaam. Ruto arrived in Tanzania on May 4 for a two-day visit anchored around deepening bilateral economic ties and is scheduled to address the Tanzanian Parliament on May 5, the first Kenyan head of state ever to do so.

Aziz was direct about the scale of the ambition required. He told the forum the global economy is currently valued at approximately $100 trillion, against global debt of roughly $300 trillion, leaving governments with limited fiscal room to borrow and invest. The capital needed for the kind of transformative infrastructure both countries require must come from private markets, he argued, and private markets allocate capital at scale. That means the unit competing for it must be at scale too.

He called specifically for harmonisation of public-private partnership frameworks across both countries to support large infrastructure projects financed through bonds and initial public offerings rather than government budgets. “This approach will transform infrastructure in both countries and unlock our true potential,” he said. He expressed confidence that deeper integration was indispensable to building a multi-trillion-dollar combined economy by 2050. “I don’t see how we can reach that ambition without working together through a single commercial system that provides the scale needed to attract capital,” he added.

Kenya and Tanzania carry a complicated bilateral history. Despite sharing a 769-kilometer border, the EAC’s oldest and largest trading partnership, and decades of rhetoric about integration, the two countries have repeatedly clashed over trade barriers, work permit restrictions, and competitive agricultural policies. Tanzania has at various points restricted Kenyan goods including poultry, dairy and sugar. Kenya has pushed back on Tanzanian limits on Kenyan professionals working in its mining and services sectors.

Aziz is not a neutral observer in that landscape. His business portfolio bridges both economies in ways that make bilateral friction directly personal. Through Taarifa Limited, his private investment company, he recently acquired a 54.08% controlling stake in Nation Media Group from the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development, ending a 66-year relationship between AKFED and NMG and making Aziz the largest shareholder in one of East Africa’s most influential media companies, whose flagship publications include the Daily Nation and The East African. He also owns Taifa Gas, Tanzania’s largest LPG supplier, which commissioned a $130 million terminal at Mombasa’s Dongo Kundu Special Economic Zone in Kenya in 2023 after a multi-year regulatory battle that Ruto himself resolved on taking office.

Aziz was identified by Forbes in 2013 as Tanzania’s first dollar billionaire. His portfolio spans telecommunications, mining through Caspian Limited, leather manufacturing, LPG, real estate across Dar es Salaam, Dubai and Oman, and now media. His voice at the Investment Forum carries the weight of someone who has put real capital across the border and waited out the bureaucratic consequences.

Bilateral trade between Kenya and Tanzania surpassed $1 billion in the most recent full year, according to Kenya’s State Department of Foreign Affairs. Both governments signed several memoranda of understanding during Ruto’s visit covering trade, infrastructure, transport and other sectors. Whether those agreements translate into the structural commercial integration Aziz is calling for will depend on execution that has historically lagged behind the rhetoric.