Tanzania’s global workforce is growing, but is employee health insurance ready for international mobility?

DAR ES SALAAM: For years, conversations with employers in Tanzania about medical insurance have centred on familiar questions: Which hospitals can employees access in Dar es Salaam? How much outpatient cover is available? Are spouses, children and other dependants included? These remain important considerations. Yet the nature of the workforce those policies are designed to protect is changing rapidly.

Increasingly, employees are no longer working within the boundaries of a single country. A Tanzanian executive may spend part of the month in Nairobi or Johannesburg. An engineer may move between project sites across East Africa. A senior manager based in Dar es Salaam may regularly travel to Europe, Asia or the Middle East. For multinational companies, employees moving between countries is no longer unusual; it is an ordinary part of doing business.

That shift raises a fundamental question for employers: does an employee healthcare benefit still reflect the way that employee actually works?

The question is becoming more relevant as Tanzania itself becomes increasingly connected to regional and global economic activity. The country’s real GDP grew by 5.9 percent in 2025, following growth of 5.5 percent in 2024, according to the Bank of Tanzania. The expansion was supported by continued activity across agriculture, industry, mining and quarrying, construction, financial services and transport.

The scale of that economic activity is significant. In the fourth quarter of 2025 alone, GDP at current prices reached 62.5tr/-, compared with 56.4tr/- during the corresponding quarter of 2024. Behind such figures is an economy in which businesses, capital, professionals and services are increasingly connected beyond Tanzania’s borders.

The movement of money tells a similar story. Bank-processed incoming remittances increased by 21 percent in 2025, reaching 2.29tr/- from 1.89tr/- in 2024. The number of incoming transactions also rose by 14.6 percent to 1.45 million. A further 1.17tr/- came through electronic money issuers across 8.74 million transactions.

These numbers are more than economic indicators. They reflect a country whose people, businesses and families are increasingly participating in a cross-border economy. Tanzanians are working abroad; international employees are working in Tanzania; families are distributed across different countries; and companies are operating across multiple markets.
Healthcare provision, however, does not always expand at the same pace as economic mobility.

Tanzania has made progress in expanding its health workforce, but the gap between available personnel and the level required remains substantial. The Ministry of Health reported 177,340 health workers in 2024 against a requirement of 391,950—a shortfall of 214,610, or approximately 55 percent.

There has nevertheless been meaningful improvement. The number of health workers increased from 126,925 in 2023 to 177,340 in 2024. Nurses and midwives reached 11.44 per 10,000 people, while doctors stood at 1.22 per 10,000.

These figures should not be interpreted as a criticism of the professionals working within Tanzania’s health system. Rather, they demonstrate the scale of demand facing the system and the challenges involved in ensuring that every patient can access the appropriate level of care when and where it is needed.

For most everyday healthcare needs, local medical insurance may remain entirely appropriate. But the situation becomes more complicated when an employee requires highly specialised treatment or when illness or injury occurs while that employee is outside Tanzania.

This is where International Private Medical Insurance (IPMI) becomes increasingly relevant.

IPMI is sometimes viewed simply as medical insurance for frequent international travellers. Its value, however, can be considerably broader. For internationally mobile employees, one of its central benefits is continuity of care across borders.

Depending on the policy, IPMI can provide access to hospitals and specialists in different countries, emergency medical assistance, evacuation and repatriation, alongside support in coordinating treatment.

In practical terms, this means that an employee does not necessarily have to navigate an unfamiliar healthcare system alone at the moment when they are most vulnerable.

The distinction becomes particularly important when something goes wrong unexpectedly.

Imagine an employee travelling for work who suddenly requires specialist treatment. The employee should not simultaneously have to determine which hospital can provide that treatment, whether the medical facility will accept their insurance, how payment will be arranged, or what happens if the appropriate care is unavailable locally.

This is an important consideration in our work at MIC Global Risks. As employees become more geographically mobile, medical insurance needs to reflect where people actually work and travel, rather than simply where their employment contract or primary residence is located.

For employers, however, the answer is not necessarily to transform every medical policy into a worldwide healthcare plan. That would neither be practical nor necessary.
The more important question is whether the level and geographical scope of cover correspond to the employee’s circumstances.

For an employee who works almost exclusively in Tanzania, local medical insurance may provide the appropriate balance of access, cost and protection. For expatriates, senior executives, consultants, technical specialists and employees who travel frequently across borders, a purely domestic policy may leave important gaps.
There is also a talent-management dimension to this discussion.

Healthcare is an important component of an employee benefits package, particularly for professionals whose careers involve regular international travel. Employees who are expected to move between countries reasonably expect their benefits to support that mobility. A medical plan that becomes difficult to use once an employee leaves the country may fail to provide the reassurance that the benefit is intended to deliver.

The broader lesson is therefore not that every employee needs international medical insurance. It is that employee healthcare should be designed around the workforce, not simply around the location of the company’s headquarters.

Tanzania is becoming more connected to the regional and global economy. Businesses are expanding, professionals are travelling, multinational companies are establishing and growing operations, and employees are increasingly operating across borders.
The workplace has changed. Employee healthcare must change with it.
After all, an employee may cross three borders in a week. Their medical insurance should not become a problem at the first one.

The writer is MIC Global Risks (Tanzania) Limited Vice Chai