DAR ES SALAAM, March 3 -- EVERY month, Tanzanian companies lose money they never see. Not through theft. Not through fraud. But through poor data. A wrong price in a system. A duplicate customer record.

A loan approved using outdated income data. A warehouse stocked with the wrong product mix. These small errors compound. They distort decisions. They eat into margins. And for many businesses, this silent leak is now one of the biggest threats to profit.

Across Tanzania, firms are collecting more data than ever before. Banks track transactions. Telecom companies record billions of call and usage events. Retailers log sales daily. Government agencies collect tax, identity and licensing records. But collecting data is not the same as using...