Tanzania — map and facts

About Tanzania

Tanzania is a large East African nation formed by the 1964 union of Tanganyika and the island archipelago of Zanzibar. It has a population of approximately 65 million people, making it one of the most populous countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The capital for government functions is Dodoma, located in the centre of the mainland, though Dar es Salaam on the Indian Ocean coast remains the largest city and commercial hub. Tanzania is a republic with a multi-party political system; the Chama Cha Mapinduzi party has dominated politics since independence. Swahili and English are the official languages, and Swahili serves as a widely spoken lingua franca across East Africa. The country borders eight other nations and has immense ethnic diversity with over 120 ethnic groups. Agriculture employs the majority of the workforce, with tea, coffee, cashews, tobacco, and cotton among the key export crops. Tourism centred on the country's extraordinary wildlife and landscapes is a vital source of foreign exchange and has grown substantially in recent decades.

Geography and Landscape

Tanzania's geography is extraordinarily diverse. In the north, Mount Kilimanjaro — the highest peak in Africa at 5,895 metres — rises dramatically from the surrounding savanna near the Kenyan border. The Great Rift Valley cuts through western Tanzania, containing a string of deep lakes: Lake Tanganyika, one of the world's deepest lakes, forms the western border, while Lake Malawi lies to the south. Lake Victoria, the world's largest tropical lake, occupies the northwest and is shared with Kenya and Uganda. The vast Serengeti Plain in the north hosts the largest terrestrial wildlife migration on Earth, involving over 1.5 million wildebeest. The Ngorongoro Crater, an ancient collapsed volcano, forms one of the world's largest intact calderas. The eastern coastal zone features Indian Ocean beaches, mangrove forests, and coral reefs, while Zanzibar and Pemba islands lie offshore. The central plateau is semiarid savanna. The Selous Game Reserve in the south is among the largest protected areas in Africa.

History

The coast of present-day Tanzania has been a centre of Indian Ocean trade for over two thousand years. Arab and Persian merchants settled along the coast, establishing the Swahili civilisation and trading cities such as Kilwa Kisiwani, which thrived between the ninth and fifteenth centuries exporting gold and ivory. Portuguese navigators arrived in the late fifteenth century and disrupted existing trade networks. Omani Arabs later reasserted control, with Zanzibar becoming the capital of the Omani Sultanate in 1840 and a major hub of the East African slave trade. German colonial rule over mainland Tanganyika began in the 1880s, and Britain took control after World War I under a League of Nations mandate. Julius Nyerere led Tanganyika to independence on 9 December 1961, and Zanzibar followed in 1963 before a revolution ousted its sultanate. The union of the two territories in 1964 created Tanzania. Nyerere's socialist Ujamaa policies shaped the country for two decades. Multiparty democracy was introduced in 1992, and Tanzania has since maintained relative political stability by regional standards.