DAR ES SALAAM, Feb. 3 -- PUBLIC debate around Tanzanias intention to sell part of its gold reserves has been shaped less by balance-sheet analysis than by narrative shortcuts. One of the most persistent of these is the assumption that reserve sales by African economies are necessarily signs of fiscal distress, driven by poverty or aid withdrawal.

This framing, while intuitive, is analytically weak and increasingly inconsistent with both modern central-bank practice and Tanzanias evolving macroeconomic position.

A more rigorous assessment requires integrating three dimensions that are often discussed separately: Reserve portfolio management, exchange-rate stress dynamics and the interpretation of global poverty diagnostics. Gold reserves...