Tanzania

The East African coast has been part of the Indian Ocean trading world for nearly two thousand years, and from around the eighth century Arab and Persian contact with Bantu-speaking communities produced Swahili civilisation — the city-states of Kilwa, Zanzibar, and others, Muslim, mercantile, and stone-built. Zanzibar became the seat of the Sultanate of Oman in the nineteenth century and the hub of a vast trade in enslaved people and ivory reaching deep into the interior.

Germany colonised the mainland as German East Africa from the 1880s, crushing the Maji Maji rebellion of 1905–07 with a scorched-earth campaign and famine that killed vast numbers. After the First World War, Britain took over the mainland (as Tanganyika) under a League of Nations mandate, while Zanzibar remained a British protectorate under its sultan.

Tanganyika became independent in 1961 under Julius Nyerere, and Zanzibar in 1963; a 1964 revolution overthrew Zanzibar's sultan, and that year the two united as Tanzania. Nyerere pursued Ujamaa, a policy of African socialism and village collectivisation that fostered national unity and literacy but left the economy weak. One-party rule lasted until multiparty elections resumed in 1995, with the ruling CCM winning every one since. President John Magufuli died in office in 2021 and was succeeded by Samia Suluhu Hassan, the country's first woman president. Zanzibar retains its own president and parliament and a semi-autonomous status that remains politically sensitive.

Tanzania's success in holding together a very diverse population — more than 120 ethnic groups, plus large Christian and Muslim communities roughly balanced on the mainland and an overwhelmingly Muslim Zanzibar — is often credited to Nyerere's promotion of Swahili and a deliberate national, rather than tribal, identity.

Coastal and island culture is Swahili and Islamic, with its own architecture, dress (the kanga and kanzu), taarab music, and Ramadan rhythms. Inland, communities such as the Maasai and Hadza retain distinct pastoral and hunter-gatherer ways of life, and Maasai imagery has become closely tied to the tourist industry.

Respect for elders, modest dress (particularly in Zanzibar and Muslim areas), greetings before business, and a relaxed sense of time (pole pole, "slowly slowly") are widely noted. Football and, increasingly, Bongo Flava music are national common ground.

About 65 million people live in Tanzania, a young and fast-growing population, still largely rural and dependent on farming — maize, cassava, bananas, coffee, cashews, and cotton — and livestock. Dar es Salaam is the commercial capital and one of Africa's fastest-growing cities; Dodoma, in the centre, is the official capital and seat of parliament.

The economy has grown steadily on agriculture, mining (gold, and newly significant natural gas offshore), and tourism, though poverty remains widespread and infrastructure patchy outside the main corridors. Chinese investment is prominent, including in the standard-gauge railway and the port.

On Zanzibar, the economy runs on cloves and spices, seaweed farming, fishing, and a large tourism sector, with a persistent undercurrent of political tension over the union with the mainland.

Everyday Tanzanian food centres on ugali, a stiff maize porridge eaten with the hands and dipped into stews of beans, greens (sukuma wiki or mchicha), fish, or meat. Rice, plantains (ndizi), and chapati are also staples, and nyama choma — grilled meat, usually goat or beef — is the sociable meal, often with a tomato-and-onion relish (kachumbari).

The coast and Zanzibar have a richer, spiced cuisine reflecting Indian, Arab, and Portuguese influence: pilau and biryani, fish and octopus in coconut curry (mchuzi wa pweza), urojo (Zanzibar mix soup), samosas, and mandazi fried dough. The Zanzibar night market at Forodhani is a well-known food scene.

Chai with spices and plenty of sugar is the standard drink, along with fresh tropical juices and sugarcane juice. Zanzibar's spice farms grow the cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, and cardamom that flavour the food, and Tanzanian coffee, grown around Kilimanjaro and Mbeya, is exported worldwide.

The northern safari circuit is among the finest in the world: the Serengeti, with the year-round wildebeest migration and its dramatic Mara and Grumeti river crossings; the Ngorongoro Crater, a natural amphitheatre packed with game including black rhino; and Tarangire, known for elephants and baobabs. Lake Manyara adds tree-climbing lions and flamingos.

Mount Kilimanjaro, at 5,895 metres the highest point in Africa and the tallest free-standing mountain on Earth, is climbed over five to nine days on several routes without technical equipment. Mount Meru near Arusha is a serious climb in its own right.

The south and west hold huge, wild, and little-visited parks — Nyerere (formerly the Selous), Ruaha, Katavi — and Gombe and Mahale on Lake Tanganyika, where chimpanzees can be tracked. Off the coast, Zanzibar's Stone Town is a UNESCO World Heritage Site of coral-stone palaces, mosques, and the former slave market, fringed by white-sand beaches, and the quieter islands of Pemba and Mafia offer diving and marine parks.