Cold chain emerges as new investment frontier in Tanzania

Dar es Salaam. Tanzania’s expanding production of perishable goods is creating a new investment opportunity in cold-chain infrastructure, with demand growing across horticulture, livestock, fisheries, poultry, food processing and logistics.

The opportunity comes as inadequate cold-storage capacity continues to constrain Tanzania’s ability to preserve products, reduce post-harvest losses and meet quality requirements for domestic and export markets.

A Bank of Tanzania working paper published in 2025 identified inadequate cold-chain and storage infrastructure as a key constraint to horticultural exports, citing limited cold-room capacity, poor insulation and a shortage of temperature-controlled offloading facilities.

A 2022 investment analysis estimated Tanzania’s cold-infrastructure market at $50 million, with annual growth of about five percent. Imports of cold-storage facilities averaged $25.9 million annually between 2016 and 2020, highlighting the scale of the infrastructure gap.