Vision
About OTESHA
We Are Building Tanzania's Green Balance Sheet
Not an NGO. Not a campaign. OTESHA is Tanzania's National Green Asset Management System — the infrastructure layer that turns environmental intent into verified, permanent national wealth.
Our identity
We treat Tanzania's trees the way we treat roads, ports, and power lines — as managed national infrastructure.
Tanzania plants millions of trees every year. Most of them die. Not because Tanzanians do not care — but because there has never been a system to track survival, fund ongoing maintenance, or assign clear ownership.
OTESHA changes this. We GPS-register every tree with a digital identity. We assign every planting zone to a trained, paid community caretaker. We give corporations a real-time ESG dashboard. We give government verified national data. And we give every Tanzanian a platform to own a piece of their country's green future.
We are not a policy maker. We are not a charity. We are the accountability infrastructure that makes every other environmental effort more effective.
The crisis
160 to 200 million trees are lost in Tanzania every year. We exist to reverse this.
Tanzania produces 186 million metric tons of CO₂ equivalent annually across all sectors. To offset this through nature alone would require 9.3 billion mature, growing trees — simultaneously absorbing carbon across the national landscape. We are nowhere near that number.
460,400 hectares of forest are lost every year — to land degradation, agriculture, and unmonitored ecosystem change. The tree-planting drives that follow focus on planting-day numbers. Between 34% and 50% of those seedlings die within two years from lack of follow-up care.
The gap is not goodwill. The gap is infrastructure. OTESHA is that infrastructure.
Mission
To build and operate Tanzania's National Green Asset Management System — connecting communities, corporations, and government through one transparent, GPS-verified platform that turns trees into tracked, maintained, and monetisable national assets.
Guiding principles
What drives every decision
Accountability
Every tree has a digital ID. Every caretaker visit is time-stamped. Every mortality event triggers an alert. If it cannot be verified independently, it did not happen.
Transparency
Our dashboards are live. Our survival data is real. Our carbon calculations are independently auditable. We publish our numbers — including the ones that show room for improvement.
Local Ownership
Communities do not just plant trees — they own them, maintain them, and earn from them. The green economy starts at the village level. Our caretakers are not volunteers. They are paid professionals.
Collaboration
Government, corporations, NGOs, communities, schools, and individual citizens all operate inside one unified system. Tanzania's forests belong to all Tanzanians — and all Tanzanians should benefit from protecting them.
Sustainability
A tree that dies in year two is not an environmental achievement — it is a failed investment. We do not measure success in planting events. We measure it in trees still alive, still growing, and still absorbing carbon in year five.
Practicality
Our platform is built for real Tanzanian conditions — low bandwidth rural areas, feature phone users, seasonal caretaker access, and government procurement cycles. If it cannot work in Dodoma's dry season, it does not ship.