The operation, provided by the 2020 Electronic and Postal Communications (SIM Card Registration) Regulations, was supposed to end on January 31, 2023. However, the government is allowing an additional 14 days for Tanzanians who are yet to comply to do so.

The Tanzanian government has extended the SIM card verification by another 14 days. The new deadline is February 13, instead of January 31, 2023. According to ICT Minister Nape Nnauye, who announced the deadline extension during a press briefing last Tuesday, after that deadline, the unregistered SIM cards will be disabled. 

According to Mr.Nnauye, who urged Tanzanians to comply with regulations, the new deadline will be the last. "We will disable the numbers because people are using other people's identities to register lines. Therefore, the lines we are going to shut down are those that are falsely registered," he explained.

The ongoing SIM card verification campaign comes against a backdrop of increasing fraud involving mobile devices in the country. Since 2019, the regulator has been trying to enforce the country's existing SIM registration laws. The first operation to identify telecom subscribers took place from May 1, 2019, to January 20, 2020. It was followed by a massive crackdown that resulted in the deactivation of millions of SIM cards.

The new deadline extension is expected to allow all Tanzanian telecom subscribers to have their SIM cards verified to continue enjoying telecom services while at the same time helping combat cybercrime and fraud in the Tanzanian digital space. It is also expected to help update the databases of active SIM cards in the country to improve reporting on the performance of the telecom sector.

As of January 19, 58.4 million active cell phone lines had been verified out of a total of 60.7 million, according to Nnauye. That leaves 2.3 million SIM cards that have not been verified and are likely to be deactivated.

Isaac K. Kassouwi