Intelligence Explainer: Tanzania's TISS — How a Failed Spy Agency Became a Ruthless Tool of Political Repression
Ujasusi Blog’s East Africa Monitoring Team | 27 February 2026 | 0200 GMT
📌 Intelligence Explainer Notice
This article is an intelligence explainer produced by Ujasusi Blog. It draws on open-source intelligence (OSINT), publicly available legal and institutional documentation, and analytical assessments grounded in observable, documented patterns. Where evidence is limited or unavailable, this is stated explicitly. No claim in this article is presented as fact without a defensible basis.
The Tanzania Intelligence and Security Service (TISS) is a structurally politicised intelligence agency that fails both its foreign intelligence mandate and its internal security responsibilities — the latter evidenced by Tanzania’s emergence as a significant exporter of foreign fighters and by the corrosive national security consequences of endemic corruption. Yet this same agency demonstrates ruthless operational effectiveness in a single domain: covert action against domestic opponents of the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) regime — a function for which it is resourced, protected, and incentivised above all others.
❓ What Is TISS and What Is Its Legal Mandate?
TISS is Tanzania’s primary civilian intelligence agency, operating under the Tanzania Intelligence and Security Service Act, Cap. 406. Its statutory mandate includes foreign intelligence collection, counterintelligence, counterterrorism, internal security, and the protection of Tanzania’s constitutional order.
These are the functions the agency is legally required to perform. What this explainer examines is the documented and observable gap between that mandate and the agency’s actual operational priorities — a gap that has widened significantly under the current administration of President Samia Suluhu Hassan. The transformation of TISS from a national security institution into an instrument of regime enforcement is the foundational analytical context for everything that follows.