New Systems, Old Arguments: Who Owns the Data?
Tanzania's financial sector is modernising fast. Two of the country's largest banks have replaced their core banking systems, and the Bank of Tanzania has moved interbank settlement to ISO 20022 while TIPS keeps expanding. The Personal Data Protection Commission has also begun on-site compliance audits.
At the same time, AI is moving up every institution's agenda. But the hardest data problems are rarely technical. They are unresolved decisions about who owns the customer, which system is right and whose definition wins. AI does not settle those arguments. It operationalises them.
That modernisation also creates a rare opportunity. New platforms, richer payment data and tighter data-protection obligations give institutions both the means and the pressure to clean and connect their data, strengthen governance and reduce legacy complexity, rather than carry existing weaknesses into new systems.
Whether institutions are mid-transformation or already running on new platforms, the question is the same: how do you settle who owns the data before you try to scale AI on it?
This private roundtable brings together senior leaders from Tanzania's banks, payment institutions and regulated fintechs to examine how to get the foundation right first. The aim is trusted, well-governed data for AI, automation and the next phase of digital transformation.
