Tanzania’s strategic Indian-Ocean coastline ought to make the country a natural logistics hub for East Africa, yet its carriage of goods legislation remains tied to the 1924 Hague template. This study utilizes combined a doctrinal and comparative reading of the Merchant Shipping Act 2003 and the Carriage of Goods by Sea Act (Cap 164) alongside The Hague Rules, Hague-Visby Rules, Hamburg Rules and Rotterdam Rules, and benchmarks the findings against recent Kenyan and South-African reforms. The analysis exposes an enabling-order vacuum that leaves the ratified Hamburg Rules inoperative; a one-off seaworthiness duty and brief “tackle-to-tackle” liability window misaligned with multimodal reality; statutory silence on electronic bills of lading; and overlapping manifest-vetting mandates between the Tanzania Shipping Agencies Corporation and the Tanzania Ports Authority that prolong vessel clearance. These doctrinal and institutional gaps inflate insurance premiums, encourage forum shopping and blunt Dar es Salaam’s competitive edge. The paper urges timely incorporation of modern liability conventions, legal recognition of electronic documentation and consolidation of clearance functions within a single-window regulator to restore legal certainty and administrative efficiency.
Kamala et al. (Wed,) studied this question.