Serious gold exploration in Tanzania starts with a licence you can actually get and ends with a drill hole in the right place. Between those two points sit an unusually well-documented Archaean craton, a national geological survey that holds a lot of data, and a satellite record that sees the surface in a way that none of those surveys do. This guide shows where each of those fits, with the numbers drawn from the Mining Act, the Regulations, the geological survey and the published geology.

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We will be direct about limits, because honest gold exploration in Tanzania with satellites starts there. A satellite does not see gold. It sees iron oxide, clay, silica, ridges, drainage and disturbed ground, and in the Lake Victoria region it often looks at laterite and woodland. The licensing sections below come first because they decide what you can legally do with whatever the screen finds.

“In Tanzania the smallest gold licence, a primary mining licence, covers at most 10 hectares, and a prospecting licence can cover up to 300 square kilometres.”

Gold exploration in Tanzania: the Mining Commission and the licence ladder

Mining rights in Tanzania are governed by the Mining Act, Cap. 123, and administered by the Mining Commission (Tume ya Madini) under the Ministry of Minerals. The Commission publishes the Act as revised in 2023 on its own site. The Act sets the licence types, terms and conditions. The Mining (Mineral Rights) Regulations, GN 1 of 2018, fix the maximum areas in regulation 7 and the minimum prospecting spend in regulation 9, and the fee schedule was replaced by GN 47 of 2018 and later amended by GN 741 of 2019, GN 419 of 2022 and GN 562 of 2025.

The Commission also explains the system in plain language on its pages for types of licence and application procedures. Where a number below comes from one of those documents we name it. Where two official sources disagree, as they do on renewal lengths, we show both. Later notices than the ones we could read may exist, so confirm the current schedule with the Commission before you draw a boundary or fix a budget.

Who can hold a mineral right

Section 9 of the Act, as revised in 2023, bars mineral rights for anyone under 18, an undischarged bankrupt, or a person convicted in the previous ten years of an offence involving dishonesty and sentenced to prison or a fine above twenty million shillings. A non-citizen individual must have been ordinarily resident for four years or the prescribed period. A company needs a physical and postal address in Tanzania for legal notices and must be incorporated under the Companies Act. Primary mining licences are narrower again: section 9(2) limits them to citizens, to partnerships made up only of citizens, and to companies whose members, directors and control all sit with Tanzanian citizens.

The Commission’s procedures page adds what an applicant should expect to hand over: audited financial statements for a company, a local content plan, an integrity pledge, and a check that the applied area is free of other rights and pending applications. Prospecting licences can also be offered by tender in areas the Minister designates (section 39), and a tender area cannot be taken by ordinary application.

The four rights that matter for gold

Prospecting licences have three features that matter to anyone doing gold exploration in Tanzania. First, the Act limits how many you can stack: under section 9(8) a prospecting licence cannot be granted to someone who already holds more than twenty valid prospecting licences unless the total area of those licences stays within 2,000 square kilometres. The Commission lists the same threshold in its procedures.

Second, they do not run forever, and here the official sources disagree. The Act as revised in 2023 (section 42) allows an initial period not exceeding four years, a first renewal not exceeding two years and a second renewal not exceeding two years, and says the licence is not renewable after that. The Commission’s own pages describe four years, then three, then two. The Commission page cites section 32(1)(b), the numbering used before the 2023 revision, so it may predate the change. Plan on the shorter total of eight years and ask the Commission in writing before you rely on nine.

Third, the spend is prescribed. Regulation 9 sets a minimum annual expenditure per square kilometre of USD 500 in the initial period, USD 2,000 in the first renewal and USD 6,000 in the second, for all minerals other than gemstones, industrial minerals and building materials. When the licence ends the ground reverts to the Government, and it can then go to a local mining company with Cabinet approval. A renewal application must be made within one month before expiry, and the renewal form asks for the size and coordinates of the area after any relinquishment.

For small operators the primary mining licence is the main door. The Act makes it valid for seven years (section 65), and renewal must be applied for not later than three months before expiry (section 66). The Commission describes it as a small-scale licence for operations whose initial capital does not exceed USD 5 million. Under the Regulations an application goes on Form MRF 5, and where the Minister has designated an area for primary licence holders the Commission divides it into numbered blocks and a district Allocation Committee, chaired by the District Commissioner, allocates them. The committee weighs technical competence, experience and financial resources.

What it costs to hold ground for gold exploration in Tanzania

The fee schedule is in the First Schedule to the Regulations. The original schedule in GN 1 of 2018 was revoked and replaced by GN 47 of 2018, the primary mining licence lines were converted to shillings by GN 741 of 2019, and GN 419 of 2022 raised the minimum rent for small primary areas. Reading the three together gives the gold-relevant lines below. Regulation 11 says fees quoted in US dollars can be paid in shillings at the Bank of Tanzania mid-market rate on the day of the application.

The pattern is plain. Holding a prospecting licence costs little in fees, and the real commitment is the minimum spend, which is five times the rent in the initial period, about thirteen times in the first renewal and thirty times in the second. A 300 square kilometre licence in its second renewal carries a minimum yearly spend of USD 1.8 million under regulation 9, so holding ground you have not ranked is the expensive mistake in gold exploration in Tanzania.

Price the licence for gold exploration in Tanzania

A worked example: an 800 hectare prospecting area

Say you want to explore 800 hectares, which is 8 square kilometres and one prospecting licence, far inside the 30,000 hectare cap. In the initial period the first-year bill is USD 600 in application and preparation fees, USD 800 a year in rent and a minimum spend of USD 4,000 a year. On a first renewal that becomes USD 1,200 a year in rent and USD 16,000 a year in minimum spend, and on a second renewal USD 1,600 and USD 48,000.

Now suppose a satellite screen ranks 20% of the block as priority, which is 1.6 square kilometres. If you held only that ground at the first renewal, rent would be USD 240 a year and the minimum spend USD 3,200 a year, against USD 16,000 for the whole block. The calculator above runs these numbers for your own area. Section 73 of the Act lets a holder surrender part of the land, so the screening decision is also a money decision. The timetable matters as much: everything you learn from the screen has to be tested inside the initial period.

It also shows why we prefer to deliver zones as polygons you can hand to a surveyor or to a district committee. In gold exploration in Tanzania the legal unit is a block with defined corners and a sketch plan the Commission can identify. A target that cannot be turned into corners is a target that is hard to protect.

A primary mining licence, step by step

If you already hold ground or have a boundary in mind, draw it on mining.farmonaut.com, Map Your Mining Site, or send it through our mining query form for a quote on a satellite read of the polygon.

Gold in Tanzania: the Lake Victoria goldfields and the central belts

Most gold in Tanzania comes from the Archaean Tanzania Craton. The Geological Survey’s overview of geology and mineral potential says the majority of the country’s gold deposits sit in greenstone units of the Neoarchaean Nyanzian Supergroup, exposed south of Lake Victoria. These are dominantly mafic volcanics and immature sediments including chert and banded iron formation. The mineralisation is mostly orogenic, tied to steeply dipping, north-west striking, quartz-veined shear zones that run parallel to the main contacts, and the Survey gives a broad age window of 2700 to 2660 million years.

A 2024 paper in the Tanzania Journal of Science, co-authored by a Geological Survey of Tanzania geologist, describes the craton as divided into WNW-ESE trending superterranes that were reworked during the East African orogeny, grouped into the Lake Victoria region and central Tanzania. That split is useful because the two regions have different gold styles and different access to data, and planning gold exploration in Tanzania means choosing between them early.

Geita and the Lake Victoria goldfield

The Lake Victoria goldfield in north-west Tanzania is where most of the big names sit. An AusIMM paper on the Geita and Kukuluma trends describes six deposits within two mineralised trends, a pre-1966 history of underground mining at an average recovered grade of 5.3 g/t, and a geology that explains how the ground was found. Oxide-facies banded iron formation of the Upper Nyanzian System forms prominent topographic ridges and is the main host rock for gold. The main ore-grade zones are controlled by low-to-medium angle structures dipping north-west and north. Nyankanga was found in 1996 by drilling a soil anomaly of more than 100 ppb gold in laterite above ferricrete, and Kukuluma was found the same way. Almost none of this was seen from outcrop.

For gold exploration in Tanzania with satellites, that history is a gift and a warning. The ridges show clearly, so mapping BIF outcrop and its extensions is feasible. The ferricrete and laterite that mask the ground are visible as well, which at least tells you where the surface geochemistry and any spectral signal are least likely to reflect the rock below.

Central Tanzania and the small-scale fields

The same journal paper says central Tanzania is largely amphibolite-facies terrane that hosts hypozonal gold systems in ductile shear zones, and it names small but significant systems such as Mwenge in the Moyowosi-Manyoni goldfields, Madengi Hills in the Dodoma Basement goldfields and Kitunda in the Dodoma Schist goldfields. Its own study area at Ikungi-Manyoni used high-resolution aeromagnetic data to delineate faults, shears and fracture systems trending north-east to south-west, north-south and sometimes north-west to south-east. The structural intersections it mapped matched known mineral occurrences, including the Shanta gold mine, old pits and small-scale workings. The authors say sites that share characteristics with proven gold ground should be prioritised for ground follow-up. That is a good summary of how we use screening in gold exploration in Tanzania.

The Survey’s overview names more ground in the same belt. The Singida goldfield includes Sekenke, Kirondatal and Londoni, and the Handeni Gold Trend in the Kilindi-Handeni terrane carries the Mkurumu, Negero, Ngezi and Magambazi deposits, hosted by amphibolite-facies greenstones and orthogneiss and tied to east-west to east-north-east regional shear zones. It describes Magambazi as highly prospective, with an endowment of over 40 tonnes of gold. That is an endowment estimate in an overview, not a reserve, and ownership and status change.

Lupa and the south-west

The Lupa goldfield in the south-west is the third area worth naming. The Survey’s overview calls its gold economically less important than the Archaean belts and describes it as shear-zone hosted in greenschist to amphibolite rocks of the Ubendian domain. It adds that the lower metamorphic grade may mean the mineralisation relates to a tectonic sliver of Nyanzian greenstone. The USGS yearbook lists the New Luika mine in Songwe Region among 2019 producers. The Survey’s geological mapping page lists map sheets 228 and 229, in the Lupa goldfield in Mbeya Region, among six sheets selected for updating from 1:125,000 to 1:100,000.

The airborne layer is what sees through cover. The Survey’s overview says the 2012 to 2013 high-resolution survey included a smaller block, Block 1, over the Lupa goldfields. A satellite screen on a Lupa block should be read next to that data, not instead of it, and anybody planning gold exploration in Tanzania on that ground should ask the Survey whether it covers their polygon.

Gold deposits in Tanzania: output, exports and who holds the ground

The best-known gold deposits in Tanzania are large and foreign-operated, but the number of people working gold is mostly small. The USGS reports that as many as 1.5 million artisanal miners were estimated to produce minerals in the country, with gold the largest export in 2019 at 39.8% of the total. It also records that the Government set up 28 mineral trading centres to formalise small-scale mining and that sales of gold from small-scale mines rose from 337 kilograms in 2016 to 4,660 in 2019, and that the 2017 mining laws mandated at least 16% Government ownership in mining projects. Its 2019 mine table lists about 18,800 kg of gold at Geita, 11,500 at North Mara, 10,500 at Bulyanhulu, 4,800 at Buzwagi and 2,600 at New Luika, with artisanal and small-scale output estimated at 5,200 kg. Mines have changed hands since, so check current operators.

The Mining Commission publishes its own series. Its gold production and value file shows output of 44.2 tonnes in 2015/16, 42.0 tonnes in 2018/19, 50.4 tonnes in 2023/24 and 66.9 tonnes in 2024/25, worth TZS 12.27 trillion in the last of those years, on a July to June financial year. The same file shows 35.4 tonnes for the first half of 2025/26, to December 2025, which is why that year is left off the chart below. The USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries put Tanzanian mine output at 55 tonnes in 2023 and an estimated 60 tonnes in 2024, on a calendar year, with reserves of 400 tonnes, so the two series differ by basis and by year.

The Bank of Tanzania’s January 2026 review, reported by The Citizen, puts gold export earnings at USD 4.7 billion in 2025, up 37.4%, and 45.7% of goods exports, helped by higher prices and increased production. Total goods exports were USD 10.28 billion against 9.12 billion the year before. The previous year’s gold figure works out at about USD 3.4 billion, which is our arithmetic from the stated growth rate, not a published figure.

It also shows up in the number of rights. The Commission’s licence statistics record 420 prospecting licences and 8,795 primary mining licences granted in 2023/24, against 120 and 2,456 in 2018/19. Most of the ground is held in many small pieces, and the arithmetic of the application fee, the rent and the shape rule is what a small holder lives with.

That attention shows up in the rules. The Mining Act requires a mineral right holder to set aside a percentage of minerals, set by the Minister, for processing, smelting or refining in Tanzania, and the Act created a Mining Cadastre and a National Gold and Gemstone Reserve. If you are weighing a project or buying into one, ask who holds the licence, which tier it sits in, and what local-content and government-participation terms apply. This is general information, not investment advice.

What satellites can and cannot see around the Tanzanian goldfields

Gold exploration in Tanzania with satellites works best when you match the method to the surface you actually have. Three things dominate.

Ridges and structure

Where banded iron formation forms ridges, the surface expression is obvious, and SRTM-class elevation data and optical imagery both show it. Structures are the other reliable layer. The Ikungi-Manyoni study used aeromagnetic data to find fault intersections, and optical lineaments can complement it where the surface is exposed, but lineaments from imagery are only candidates and need geophysical or field confirmation. That caution applies to every site of gold exploration in Tanzania.

Published academic work supports that use. A 2015 study in Advances in Space Research by Mshiu, Gläßer and Borg looked at hydrothermal paleofluid pathways in the Sukumaland Greenstone Belt of the Lake Victoria goldfield, using remote sensing to pick out structures and alteration. Treat that as support for screening in gold exploration in Tanzania, not as a promise that any one polygon will return a target.

Laterite, ferricrete and vegetation

The Geita discoveries came from soil anomalies in laterite over ferricrete, which tells you how much of the prospective ground is capped. Optical alteration mapping on a laterite cap mostly reports iron oxide at the surface, not what is beneath it. Dense vegetation reduces exposure as well. A published Farmonaut case study states that the surface signal weakens under cover, thick laterite and dense canopy, and that depth is modelled and not measured.

Where a screen earns its keep

• ✔ Greenfield ground between known belts. In the Ikungi-Manyoni area the authors found no detailed delineation of small-scale structures despite active small and medium-scale miners, and argue that high-resolution data should reach those operators at minimal or no cost.
• 📊 Ranking existing licences. If you hold several primary or prospecting licences, a screen helps decide which ones get the first soil lines.
• Mapping access, farmland, water and settlement from imagery, which matters when you plan sampling.
• ⚠ Limits. No satellite replaces airborne geophysics, soil sampling or drilling, and no target is a resource.

Tanzania cadastre, geological survey and data sources

Section 36 of the Act defines the Mining Cadastre as the central online system for processing applications for mineral rights, and the Commission’s cadastre portal runs on the Landfolio platform. The procedures page says applications can go in online or in hard copy, with coordinates in the Arc 1960 datum on a 1:50,000 map or site plan, and that the applied area must be free of existing licences and pending applications. Our cadastre portal guide explains how portals of this kind work and how Tanzania’s compares with neighbouring countries. We could confirm only the platform and the Act’s description. Before gold exploration in Tanzania moves onto the ground, check what the public view shows for your area, and confirm the current route with your zonal mining office.

For geology, the Geological Survey of Tanzania is the custodian, and it is the first call for data on gold exploration in Tanzania. Its 2023 profile says it acquires, processes, interprets, archives and disseminates national geoscientific data, holds geoscientific maps and reports, countrywide low-resolution and some high-resolution geophysical data, a core shed and a museum, and offers remote sensing and cartographic services and data processing and interpretation services. It lists its main office in Dodoma and its history back to 1925.

The Survey’s own overview and geophysics page describe what exists. The countrywide low-resolution airborne magnetic and radiometric data were flown in 1977 to 1979 at a height of 200 metres and 1 kilometre line spacing, supplied by quarter-degree sheet. A high-resolution survey flown in 2012 to 2013 under the World Bank-supported Sustainable Management of Mineral Resources Project covered 137,500 square kilometres of central and north-eastern Tanzania at 250 metre line spacing, 554,500 line kilometres in all, plus gravity at 3,000 metre spacing. The overview also says 18 quarter-degree sheets, about 53,000 square kilometres, had been mapped at 1:50,000 and published at 1:100,000. These are the Survey’s figures from an undated overview, so ask for the present coverage over your block and the price list.

Coverage is still partial. TanzaniaInvest’s report on the 2026/27 mining budget says detailed geophysical coverage is to rise from 16% to 34% of the country, with a longer target of 50% by 2030. Those are stated plans, not delivered data. Until they are, a satellite read is often the only layer you can buy for a block that no airborne survey has touched.

Satellite screening for gold exploration in Tanzania

You send us the boundary as a KML, KMZ or coordinates, with the country and target mineral. We choose multispectral or hyperspectral data, run the analysis and deliver in 5 to 20 business days, depending on area size and mineral complexity. Our satellite-based mineral detection flags likely mineralised zones, alteration halos and structures, and the premium report adds prospectivity heatmaps, high-potential zones with estimated location and depth ranges, geological interpretation and georeferenced GIS files. Premium+ adds TargetMax drilling intelligence and 3D subsurface models. We have also published a video on gold in Tanzania showing the process.

• ✔ Speed and cost. Satellite screening can lower early-exploration cost by up to 80 to 85% and cut timelines from months to days, compared with starting on the ground.
• 📊 Sample deliverable. The 3D prospectivity mapping overview shows what we deliver.
• Choose the area carefully: a 10 hectare primary licence and a 300 square kilometre prospecting licence need very different screens.
• ⚠ Not licensing advice. We are not a licensing authority, filing agent or lawyer, and a target is not a resource.

“A Tanzanian prospecting licence can cover 30,000 hectares, but its clock is four years, so ranking the ground first matters.”

A short checklist for gold exploration in Tanzania

1. Match the tier to the ground: prospecting licence for exploration, primary licence for small-scale work, mining licence only after a feasibility study.
2. Check the cadastre and the reserved and tender areas before you draw the boundary.
3. Confirm the current fees, rents and area caps with the Mining Commission, since the schedule has been amended since 2018.
4. Shape the polygon into a north-south square or rectangle in the Arc 1960 datum before you apply.
5. Screen the polygon and look first at ridges, structure and cover.
6. Plan for the data bank: licence holders must submit exploration data to the Geological Survey.

Frequently asked questions

Reviewed October 2026 against the Mining Act, Cap. 123 R.E. 2023 and the Mining Commission’s regulations, licence-type, application-procedure, royalty, licence-statistics and gold-production pages, including GN 1 of 2018, GN 47 of 2018, GN 741 of 2019, GN 419 of 2022 and GN 562 of 2025, the Finance Act 2025, the Geological Survey of Tanzania profile, overview and mapping and geophysics pages, the Tanzania Journal of Science study of Ikungi-Manyoni, the AusIMM paper on the Geita and Kukuluma trends, the USGS Minerals Yearbook and Mineral Commodity Summaries, the Bank of Tanzania export review reported by The Citizen and TanzaniaInvest’s report on the 2026/27 budget. Fees, area caps and portal rules change, so confirm with the Mining Commission before you apply. Targets are exploration targets, not resources. Nothing here is legal or investment advice.