Tanzania’s election aftershocks and coming wave of dangerous migration

 By Richard Lamu

The dust may have settled on Tanzania’s recent and highly disputed elections, but beneath the surface, the country is entering a period of deep uncertainty.

While elections are supposed to reset expectations, renew confidence, and open the door to new social and economic possibilities, for many Tanzanians, especially our youth, the outcome has intensified doubts about whether the future promised during election campaigns will ever materialise.

When people lose faith that their circumstances can change at home, they start to look elsewhere, regionally and internationally.

And in Africa today, looking outward often means being vulnerable to deceptive recruitment agents, traffickers, and foreign interests who profit from the desperation of those seeking better opportunities away from their home country.

This rising sense of disillusionment is not unique to Tanzania. Regionally, political transitions often trigger a surge in outward migration as some citizens prefer to move to start their lives afresh with better opportunities.

But this comes at a huge risk in today’s technologically advanced world. What makes the moment particularly dangerous now is the sophistication and speed at which trafficking networks operate.

We are not talking about the old-fashioned recruiters of the past who relied on whispers and classified adverts. The current ones operate online, use social media algorithms to target the unemployed, and speak the language of opportunity fluently to convince the masses.

They promise salaries in dollars, cheap visas, paid flights, and professional training. And they strike when governments are distracted, mostly during elections, transitions, or moments of national tension.

Tanzania today fits this pattern almost perfectly. The country’s growing youth population, rising cost of living, high unemployment, and limited training opportunities have created a timebomb of unmet expectations.

For thousands of young people, the idea of an overseas job is no longer just a dream but feels like the only lifeline left. And this is exactly what makes this group extremely vulnerable. East Africa does not have to imagine the implications of such vulnerability as it breeds deliberate exploitation.

Russia’s Alabuga Start programme stands as one of the clearest examples. Marketed across Africa as a scholarship-and-job initiative offering training in hospitality, logistics, and technical trades, Alabuga presented itself as a legitimate pathway to global opportunities.

But investigations by the BBC, the Associated Press, and independent African journalists have revealed a darker truth. Young African women have been lured to Russia after promises of professional work, only to be placed in factories assembling military enemy drones.

Many spoken to have described exhausting shifts, strict controls, and conditions that amounted to coerced labour. Clearly, what was thought to be a career opportunity turned out to be an elaborate trap.

The deception took an even more dangerous turn for some men from African countries. In Kenya, dozens of young job seekers travelled to Russia on the belief that they had secured construction or warehouse jobs, but were transported to the Russia-Ukraine war zone upon arrival. They were pressured, or simply forced, to take part in a conflict they did not even understand and had no stake in.

Some have since reached out to Kenya’s embassy in Moscow pleading for emergency repatriation, while families at home wait anxiously for updates that rarely come. This is the same for South Africa.

Let us also not forget how Tanzania recently lost one of its own – student Nemes Tarimo – who was recruited by mercenary group Wagner, now called the Africa Corps, to fight in Ukraine on behalf of Russia. He died trying to secure his own freedom after promises of a prison pardon for an offence he may not even have committed.

South Africa recently confronted its own version of this nightmare. On November 6, 2025, the government announced that seventeen South African men, aged between 20 and 39, had sent distress calls from Donbas, Ukraine, after realising they had been lured into mercenary operations disguised as “high-paying employment.” Sixteen of these young men came from KwaZulu-Natal, one from the Eastern Cape.

Their stories are similar to the Kenyan experiences almost word-for-word - glossy job adverts, quick processing, promises of foreign salaries, followed by a terrifying awakening in a conflict zone.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa responded to these revelations by ordering an investigation and using unusually strong language to condemn the exploitation of vulnerable young people.

South Africa reminded its citizens that participation in foreign military activity without government approval is illegal under the Foreign Military Assistance Act of 1998.

The statement was careful but blunt: young people are being targeted, exploited, and used.

These developments show a regional pattern that Tanzania cannot afford to ignore.  The same tactics used in Kenya and South Africa are spreading across East Africa using online advertising, fake recruitment agencies, WhatsApp groups promising jobs abroad, and middlemen who vanish once victims arrive overseas.

Tanzanians are already being targeted because traffickers know the country is now in a post-election lull, a moment when public frustration is high and state attention is fragmented. Migration itself is not the problem. For many years, Tanzanians have sought opportunities abroad, building successful careers as a result.

However, what is emerging now is migration driven by despair rather than aspiration. And we all know that desperation lowers defences.

It makes offers seem more believable, encouraging people to take risks they normally wouldn’t take. And it creates the perfect opening for criminal networks.

Families across East Africa have already lived this nightmare. A son leaves the village with excitement, promising to send money home, only for his parents to later learn he is stranded in a foreign country with no documentation.

Or a daughter boards a plane believing she is going into hospitality training, only to end up isolated in a factory producing equipment for a war she had never heard of. By the time governments are alerted, the damage has already been done and reversing everything is a tall order.

Tanzania now stands at a crossroads. If the government responds proactively, it can protect thousands of young people from falling into these traps.

That means tightening oversight of foreign recruitment agencies, improving coordination with neighbouring countries to track trafficking networks, and mounting clear, accessible public-awareness campaigns that debunk the false promises circulating online.

Most importantly, Tanzania needs to create meaningful domestic opportunities such as skills programmes, apprenticeships, rural job schemes, and targeted support for unemployed youth.