Legal and Procedural Challenges in Authenticating Digital Forensic Evidence in Tanzania

Abstract

Digital forensic evidence is now central to civil and criminal proceedings in Tanzania, but the rules governing its authentication have not kept pace with the technology that generates it. Using doctrinal legal research, this article analyses the Constitution, the Law of Evidence Act, the Electronic Transactions Act and the Cybercrimes Act, together with the relevant judicial decisions and applicable international instruments, to assess whether Tanzania’s legal framework secures not merely the admissibility of digital evidence but also its integrity. It finds that the framework does not: sections 19 and 20 of the Electronic Transactions Act establish admissibility and list the factors relevant to evidential weight, but no provision supplies a clear authentication standard, a settled procedure for laying a foundation, or a codified chain of custody, and judicial decisions reveal persistent inconsistency, with some courts requiring a certificate of authenticity and others accepting oral testimony alone. These gaps are compounded by the fragmentation of the governing rules across several instruments and by limited institutional capacity among investigators, prosecutors and the judiciary. Existing Tanzanian scholarship has documented these problems individually; this article’s contribution is to integrate them into a single doctrinal account, read against comparative and international benchmarks, showing how the absence of a domestic authentication standard interacts with institutional capacity to produce a distinct and remediable gap in the law. It concludes that the framework secures admissibility without integrity, and recommends a clear authentication standard, a codified chain of custody, recognition of the digital forensic expert, and investment in institutional capacity.