Africa, the world’s second largest and second most populous continent, has long been a sleeping giant in the development of Islamic finance, but now has awoken to become an active contributor to the industry’s development. The Islamic finance industry is currently valued at $2.2 trillion and is projected to reach $3.8 trillion by 2022, according to the Islamic Finance Development Report. A continent of 1.2 billion people where around 40 percent are Muslim has huge potential to shift the growth curve of Islamic finance to cater to such a large population. However, a lack of qualified personnel and a lack of standardized regulations as well as the absence of an active Islamic finance market has stunted its growth trajectory.

Tanzania currently has one fully fledged Islamic bank which primarily offers Shari’ah compliant financial products. There are, however, other commercial banks which offer Islamic banking services. The main concern with respect to Islamic banking in Tanzania is that there is currently no specific legal framework to cater for Islamic banking as well as resolution of legal disputes arising from Islamic banking. This could be seen as hindering the progress of Islamic banking in Tanzania. When the legal framework for this is set up, we anticipate an increase in Islamic banking customers.

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