Josephine Christopher is a senior business journalist for The Citizen and Mwananchi newspapers
Mwananchi Communications Limitted
Dar es Salaam. Tanzania must shift its focus from celebrating innovative ideas to ensuring they reach the market, create businesses and jobs, and solve problems facing citizens, speakers at the opening of Innovation Week Tanzania 2026 have said.
The call puts commercialisation and practical impact at the centre of this year’s Innovation Week, as government, the private sector, researchers and innovators seek to address what remains a key weakness in the country’s innovation ecosystem.
Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology (Costech ) Director General Dr Amos Nungu said Tanzania had no shortage of innovative ideas or young people with the ability to develop solutions, but needed a stronger system for taking those ideas from conception and prototypes into commercial production.
“The question now is whether our innovation ecosystem has the capacity to take innovation to the market and produce results with the speed required,” he said.
Dr Nungu said Innovation Week itself demonstrated the growing volume of ideas being generated in the country, but argued that exhibitions should not be the endpoint.
The next challenge, he said, was creating effective mechanisms to ensure innovations showcased during the week could move into government use, industry and the wider market.
He said Costech was working to strengthen systems that connect research, technology, intellectual property, investment and product development.
One of the priorities is improving the pathway from research to market, including helping innovators move from prototypes towards industrial production and connecting promising technologies with investors.
“After making a prototype, we want to see it going to industries,” Dr Nungu said.
National Planning Commission Executive Secretary Dr Tausi Kida similarly said innovative ideas should not remain concepts but should be tested, improved and scaled according to their results.
She said innovation should make development planning more evidence-based, adaptable and responsive to the actual needs of citizens.
Programme Manager of the Funguo Programme, Mr Joseph Manirakiza, said Innovation Week had itself evolved from a small event established in 2015 to showcase innovation projects into a national platform connecting young innovators with investors, government, development partners and other actors in the ecosystem.
He said the event received about 2,000 registration applications within the first 24 hours after opening this year, demonstrating the level of interest in innovation among Tanzanians.
But Planning and Investment Minister Prof Kitila Mkumbo said the country must go further by changing how innovation is understood.
Innovation, he said, should not be confined to sophisticated technologies.
A farmer using technology to increase productivity, a company redesigning its production process to reduce costs, or a public institution changing how it delivers services can all constitute innovation.
He also challenged researchers to measure the value of their work by its impact rather than simply the number of papers published.
“If you publish 100 papers, we will ask: how have they helped us?” he said.
Research, he argued, should ultimately influence policy, improve productivity, generate businesses, reduce public costs or solve challenges facing society.
Prof Mkumbo also called for government institutions to remove regulations and bureaucratic procedures that prevent young people and businesses from taking innovative ideas forward.
He said leadership must create an environment where people can experiment, challenge established systems and make mistakes without fear.
“There is no innovation without making mistakes,” he said.
The private sector also emerged as a key part of the commercialisation process.
Vodacom Tanzania External Affairs Director Ms Zuweina Farah said private capital would be essential in expanding the country’s digital economy, arguing that public policy should create conditions that encourage investment in infrastructure, devices and digital adoption.
She said Tanzania had already made substantial progress in mobile broadband coverage, but that infrastructure alone would not create a digital economy unless more citizens could afford devices and use the available connectivity.
The speakers’ message reflects a broader shift in the purpose of Innovation Week—from providing a platform to showcase ideas to creating connections that can turn those ideas into economically and socially useful solutions.
For Dr Nungu, the desired outcome is an ecosystem in which innovators can clearly identify where to obtain support, investors can identify promising technologies, researchers can connect with industry and successful prototypes can reach consumers.
He said this would require stronger coordination among the different actors supporting innovation.
Mr Manirakiza said the growth of Innovation Week had been driven by partnerships among government, development partners, private companies and organisations supporting young innovators.
The event, he said, should therefore be used not only to exhibit innovations but also to encourage stakeholders to ask difficult questions and engage directly with decision-makers.
Innovation Week Tanzania 2026 is being held under the theme “From Aspiration to Transformation: Innovating Tanzania’s Path to Inclusive Prosperity.”
The discussions this week are expected to focus on how innovation can move beyond ideas and demonstrations to become a practical driver of productivity, investment, entrepreneurship, employment and better services.
