Safe Rides and Secure Seas: How Tanzania is Reimagining Insurance for the Uninsured

September 8, 2026

For a bodaboda motorcycle taxi rider in Dar es Salaam, a split-second accident doesn’t just mean broken bone, it means a completely lost livelihood. For a seaweed farmer in Zanzibar, a sudden spike in sea temperatures can wipe out months of backbreaking labor overnight.

These are the real-life faces of Tanzania’s “protection gap”, the millions of hardworking people who keep the economy moving but have absolutely no safety net when disaster strikes. How do we move insurance beyond good ideas from corporate boardrooms discussions and promising products to solutions that genuinely protect people and sectors that remain underserved?

This question was at the center of the discussions during the “Closing the Protection Gap: Innovation and Investment in Inclusive Insurance” session at Tanzania Innovation Week 2026. Bringing together regulators, insurers and agile tech innovators, the session proved that closing this gap requires much more than developing new insurance products. It takes an entire supportive ecosystem – one that actively listens to local needs, identify real protection needs, invest in new ideas, create space for responsible experimentation and ultimately take solutions to market and scale. The discussion brought to life different dimensions of UNDP’s Insurance and Risk Finance work in Tanzania, showing how regulatory engagement, private-sector partnerships and innovation can come together to expand inclusive insurance.

Creating an Environment to Try New Things

The conversation began with the regulatory perspective from the Tanzania Insurance Regulatory Authority (TIRA).
Edgar Shao Manager of Planning and Research at the Tanzania Insurance Regulatory Authority (TIRA) explained that traditional regulatory frameworks weren’t built for the digital age. To reach people who have never owned an insurance policy before, regulators have to embrace a degree of flexibility.

To bridge this gap, TIRA has championed the Regulatory Sandbox. Think of it as a controlled test-drive:
• It allows fintech and Insurtech startups to test their products on a small scale with real customers.
• It keeps consumers protected from catastrophic failures.

It gives regulators the real-world data they need to draft permanent modern policies. “Innovation needs the room to make mistakes and learn,” Edgar noted. Regulation shouldn’t block progress; it should serve as the guardrails that help build public trust in these new digital tools.

The Reality Check: Making the Math Work

While ideas are cheap, execution is expensive. Susan Massaga from MUA Insurance a key partner and investor in the UNDP Inclusive Insurance Innovation Challenge, brought a healthy dose of practical reality to the panel.
The Innovation Challenge recently selected three winning ideas targeting highly vulnerable groups: boda boda riders, waste pickers and sugarcane farmers. But Susan pointed out, winning a trphy is only the beginning.
“Coming up withan innovative idea is often not the hardest part,” Susan explained. “The real challenge is making the product survive the market. You have toget the pricing right, secure the underwriting, handle the data, distribution, teach the customer how it works, make sure claims get paid quickly and regulatory requirements right”
Importantly, true investment in insurance innovation isn’t just about handing over startup capital. It means investing in data, product development, technology, distribution, customer education and technical expertise, together with institutional ownership and the patience to test, learn, redesign and improve.

Twende Bima: Built for the streets

One of those challenge winning solutions is Twende Bima, led by Justin Kaishigili. Justin’s team didn’t sit in an office and draft a complex, multipage policy to sell to boda boda riders. Instead, they went directly to the stages an parking hubs to talk to the riders themselves.
directly into the conversation.

They asked simple, direct questions:
•     What are you actually afraid of when you start your shift?
•    Where does your money go if get hurt?
•    How much can you afford to pay, and how often?

The result is a solution designed entirely around the erratic daily cash flows of informal transport workers. By connecting these riders directly to the broader insurance ecosystem, Twende Bima is showing how technology can strip away the intimidating jargon of traditional insurance and replace it with simple, digital first peace of mind.

Zanzibar’s Seaweed Farmers: Rewriting the Norms
While Twende Bima is almost navigating the streets, another bold experiment is quietly taking shape on the beaches of Zanzibar. Christopher Mazali, Agricultural Insurance and Agribusiness Development Specialist presented an emerging seaweed insurance solution currently being designed under the UN Zanzibar Joint Programme.
Seaweed farming is a vital economic driver, especially for women in the islands, but climate change and warming waters are making harvests increasingly unpredictable.

This project is challenging traditional insurance. Because standard historical data on seaweed crop failures doesn’t exist, the team is forced to think differently:
•    They are exploring new ways to gather climate and marine data.
•    They are studying how to structure payouts when a heatwave hits.
•    They are working out how to distribute their micro-policies to rural, coastal women who may not even have traditional bank accounts.
Because this product is still in its design phase, it setves as a powerful reminder that innovation is a journey of continuous exploration, not a finished off the shelf product.

One Innovation Journey, Different Perspectives

Although each speaker approached the issue from a different position, together they presented one connected story.

TIRA demonstrated the importance of creating regulatory space for responsible experimentation and providing a pathway towards the market.

MUA Insurance demonstrated the role of the insurer as both a technical partner and investor, helping promising ideas move towards commercially and technically viable protection.

Twende Bima brought the conversation back to the people insurance is intended to serve, demonstrating how innovation can begin with the real protection challenges faced by boda boda riders.

And the emerging seaweed insurance solution demonstrated how insurance innovation can move into new areas, challenging conventional approaches and exploring protection for climate-vulnerable livelihoods.
These examples illustrate the broader approach being advanced by UNDP through its Insurance and Risk Finance work in Tanzania: connecting innovators, insurers, regulators, industry partners and development programmes so that promising ideas have a pathway towards meaningful protection.

The Takeaway: It takes a Village to Build a Safety Net
Ultimately, these diverse projects tell a single story. No single entity can close the protection gap alone.

Identify the protection gap → Listen to the customer → Develop the idea → Mobilise partnership and investment → Design the solution → Test responsibly → Learn and refine → Enter the market → Scale up

To turn promising ideas into sustainable, life changing protection, Tanzania needs regulators who willing to experimentat, insurers prepared to invest beyond capital, innovators who understand the realities of underserved customers, and partnerships that can help successful solutions move from ideas to the market. Through its Insurance and Risk Finance work, UNDP is serving as the connective tissue likning TIRA, ATI, MUA insurance and local grassroots startups to make sure that “insurance” is no longer a luxury for the few, but a basic shield for everyone.