Practical Challenges in the Investigation and Prosecution of Cross-Border Cybercrime in Tanzania: A Doctrinal and Comparative Analysis

Abstract

Tanzania’s Cybercrimes Act, 2015 confers on domestic courts jurisdiction over offences committed wholly or partly within the country, and over conduct directed against a computer system, device, data or person located in Tanzania, regardless of the offender’s nationality or location. Yet this statutory reach has not translated into effective enforcement when the offender, evidence, or infrastructure lies abroad. Using a doctrinal legal method with an integrated comparative element, this article examines the adequacy of Tanzania’s legal framework governing the investigation and prosecution of cross-border cybercrime, identifies the practical challenges that impede its enforcement, and proposes actionable reforms. It analyses the Cybercrimes Act, the Electronic Transactions Act, the Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters Act, and the Extradition Act against five theoretical lenses: territoriality, effects-based jurisdiction, international cooperation theory, Lessig’s regulatory theory, and Castells’ network theory, and compares Tanzania’s position with Kenya’s Computer Misuse and Cybercrimes Act, 2018 and Rwanda’s Law No. 60/2018. The article finds that Tanzania’s jurisdictional trigger is already comparable to, or broader than, both comparators, so that the principal deficiency lies not in the assertion of jurisdiction but in the absence of a plainly worded effects test, in slow and generalist mutual legal assistance procedures unsuited to volatile digital evidence, in unresolved uncertainty over the cross-border chain of custody, and in Tanzania’s continued non-participation in the Budapest Convention and its Second Additional Protocol. The article recommends amending section 30 of the Cybercrimes Act to adopt an explicit effects-based clause modelled on Rwanda’s example, embedding an expedited, dedicated international-cooperation channel within the Cybercrimes Act itself along the lines of Kenya’s model, developing comprehensive cross-border digital evidence rules, and strengthening forensic capacity, institutional coordination and treaty participation.