50 Fun Facts About Tanzania

Tanzania's coastline lies on which ocean?

The Indian Ocean washes all 1,424 km of Tanzania's coast; Arab, Persian and Indian traders had built trading cities along it by the 12th century.

Which mountain in Tanzania is the highest in Africa and the tallest free-standing mountain in the world?

Kilimanjaro, a dormant volcano, tops out at 5,895 metres, but its famous ice cap is vanishing: more than 80% of the ice mapped in 1912 has melted away.

What is Tanzania's official capital, moved from the coast by a 1970s decision?

Dodoma was chosen in the 1970s because it sits near the centre of the country, but the transfer of government offices from the coast dragged on for decades.

Who led Tanganyika to independence and served as Tanzania's president until 1985?

Julius Nyerere, known as Mwalimu ('teacher'), took Tanganyika to independence as prime minister in 1961 and three years later merged it with Zanzibar to create Tanzania.

After independence, Tanzania's highest summit was renamed Uhuru Peak; what does 'uhuru' mean?

Freedom is what uhuru means: an Uhuru Torch was lit to mark independence from Britain in 1961, and it became a national symbol.

The 1967 Arusha Declaration committed Tanzania to an African socialism known by what name?

Ujamaa, roughly 'familyhood', was the Arusha Declaration's African socialism: collective villages, nationalised banks and industries. The economy had sagged badly by the late 1970s.

Which European power ruled mainland Tanzania as a colony from 1885 until World War I?

Germany ruled the mainland as German East Africa until Allied troops overran it during World War I; Britain then governed it as Tanganyika under a League of Nations mandate.

Which 1905-07 uprising against colonial rule swept southern Tanzania?

The Maji Maji Rebellion spread across the south in 1905; fighters believed sacred water, maji, would turn bullets to water. Reprisals and famine killed at least 75,000 people.

Britain's 1896 war with the sultanate of Zanzibar is remembered as what?

The Anglo-Zanzibar War is the shortest war in history, lasting roughly 38 to 45 minutes on 27 August 1896; British warships shelled the palace after Khalid bin Barghash seized the throne.

Which rock star was born Farrokh Bulsara in Stone Town, on the island off Tanzania's coast, in 1946?

Freddie Mercury, Queen's frontman, was born Farrokh Bulsara on 5 September 1946 in Stone Town; his Parsi family fled to England after the 1964 revolution.

Which Tanzanian-born novelist won the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature?

Abdulrazak Gurnah, born in Zanzibar in 1948 and author of 'Paradise' and 'By the Sea', won the 2021 Nobel for his writing on colonialism and the fate of refugees.

Tanzania is home to the world's largest population of which animal?

Lions have vanished from about 95% of their historic range, which is why Tanzania's vast protected strongholds, among them the Serengeti and Ruaha, now count for so much.

Which animals star in the great annual migration across the Serengeti plain?

Wildebeest and zebra, well over a million of the former, travel a clockwise loop of the Serengeti each year, timing their calving for the rain-ripened grass of the southern plains.

In which Tanzanian park did Jane Goodall begin her study of chimpanzees in 1960?

Jane Goodall arrived at Gombe Stream, in western Tanzania, in July 1960; her observation of chimpanzees making tools upended assumptions about what separated humans from other animals.

The Ngorongoro Conservation Area is named after what kind of geological feature?

A volcanic caldera is what the Ngorongoro Crater is: a giant volcano erupted and collapsed on itself two to three million years ago, leaving the world's largest intact caldera.

Which family of fossil hunters made Tanzania's Olduvai Gorge famous with their finds of early human remains?

The Leakeys, Louis and Mary, dug in the gorge for decades; Mary found a celebrated early-human skull there in 1959, and in 1964 Louis announced a new species, Homo habilis.

Which jeweller named the gemstone tanzanite after its only source and launched it in 1968?

Tiffany & Co. decided the mineral's own name, zoisite, would not sell, so it named the gem for Tanzania, still the only country where it is mined.

On Tanzania's flag, a gold-edged black band separates a green triangle from one of what colour?

Light blue stands for the country's lakes, rivers and sea; the 1964 flag blends the colours of the old Tanganyika and Zanzibar flags, with gold edging for mineral wealth.

Tanzania's national anthem is a Swahili version of which hymn, which is also part of South Africa's anthem?

Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika, written by Enoch Sontonga in 1897, spread north as a liberation hymn; Tanzania sings it in Swahili as 'Mungu ibariki Afrika', and Zambia borrowed the tune.

Which country financed and built the TAZARA railway from Tanzania to Zambia in the 1970s?

China financed and built the 1,860 km TAZARA line between 1970 and 1975, giving landlocked Zambia a route to the sea that bypassed white-ruled Rhodesia and South Africa.

In 1978-79 Tanzania fought a war that ended with the overthrow of which neighbouring dictator?

Idi Amin of Uganda struck first, invading in 1978 and claiming Tanzania's Kagera region; Tanzanian troops and Ugandan exiles then pushed on to Kampala and toppled him.

Who became Tanzania's first female president in March 2021?

Samia Suluhu Hassan, born in Zanzibar in 1960, was sworn in on 19 March 2021 after her predecessor died in office, having been vice president since 2015.

Which party was formed in 1977 by merging TANU with Zanzibar's Afro-Shirazi Party?

Chama Cha Mapinduzi, the 'Party of the Revolution', was created on 5 February 1977, and it governed as the sole legal party until multi-party politics was legalised in 1992.

More than 1,500 years ago the Haya people of north-western Tanzania built furnaces that forged what?

The Haya smelted carbon steel in tall charcoal furnaces roughly 2,000 years ago, using preheated air blown through clay tuyeres; archaeologists reported temperatures above 1,800 °C.

Which medieval Swahili city-state on Tanzania's coast grew rich on the gold trade from Sofala?

Kilwa Kisiwani, an island city-state on the southern coast, minted its own coins, controlled the Sofala gold trade and dominated the Swahili coast until the Portuguese sacked it in 1505.

The sultan of which country moved his capital to Zanzibar in the 19th century?

Oman's ruler Said bin Sultan shifted his court from Muscat to Zanzibar, which grew into the centre of the East African slave trade.

Which explorer did Henry Morton Stanley track down at Ujiji, in today's Tanzania, in 1871?

David Livingstone had been out of touch with the outside world for years when a US newspaper sent Stanley to find him; Stanley reported greeting him with 'Dr Livingstone, I presume?'

Tanzania is the most populous African country located entirely where?

Tanzania lies entirely south of the equator, between about 1°S and 12°S; with roughly 67 million people in 2024 it had outgrown South Africa, the next-largest wholly southern-hemisphere country.

Which of Africa's Great Lakes on Tanzania's border is the continent's deepest?

Lake Tanganyika is the world's second-deepest lake after Siberia's Baikal; Richard Burton and John Speke reached it in 1858 while hunting for the headwaters of the Nile.

Which Tanzanian soda lake is East Africa's only regular breeding site for lesser flamingos?

Lake Natron, a caustic soda lake below Ol Doinyo Lengai, is the only regular breeding ground of East Africa's lesser flamingos; its high alkalinity keeps predators away from the nests.

The Tingatinga school of Tanzanian painting is known for what?

Bright enamel paintings of daily life and wildlife are the style Edward Saidi Tingatinga began in 1968 with bicycle paint on hardboard squares; other painters carried it on after his death in 1972.

Which Tanzanian pop genre grew out of the Swahili rap scene of the early 1990s?

Bongo flava's pioneers were early-1990s rappers who set Swahili rhymes to American hip-hop beats; the genre later folded in local styles such as taarab.

Taarab, one of Tanzania's official music genres, is best described as what?

Sung poetry with a string band sums up taarab, which flourished on Zanzibar: it was modelled on the Egyptian-style court music played at the sultan's palace there from the 1870s.

Which two clubs from the largest city are the giants of Tanzanian football?

Simba and Young Africans (Yanga), both based in the Kariakoo district, have dominated the league since the 1960s; their Kariakoo derby is one of Africa's biggest club fixtures.

Tanzanian runner Filbert Bayi set world records in the 1970s over which two distances?

1500 metres and the mile: at the 1974 Commonwealth Games Filbert Bayi led from the start and held off New Zealand's John Walker for the 1500 record, then took the mile record in 1975.

Which cattle-herding people of northern Tanzania perform the adumu, a warriors' jumping dance?

The Maasai make the adumu a test of height: one after another, warriors spring straight up with their bodies held upright, each trying to out-leap the last.

What is Tanzania's currency?

The Tanzanian shilling dates from 1966, when the shared East African shilling was retired and the countries that had used it each issued a currency of their own.

Which people are the largest of Tanzania's more than 120 ethnic groups?

The Sukuma are the largest group, yet with more than 120 peoples in the country even they are a long way from a majority.

Which spice crop did Zanzibar's 19th-century sultans plant on slave-worked estates, making the islands famous for it?

Cloves arrived in force under Sultan Said, who encouraged planting across the islands; the trade grew so large that the archipelago is nicknamed the Spice Islands.

Who won Tanzania's first multi-party presidential election in 1995?

Benjamin Mkapa won three years after the constitution was changed to let rival parties stand, though the opposition and international observers called the vote flawed.

What did Tanzania's Laetoli site preserve for over 3.5 million years?

Early human footprints: three individuals crossed wet ash that set hard behind them, leaving proof that our ancestors already walked upright on two legs.

Which lake on Tanzania's border is the world's second-largest freshwater lake and the chief reservoir of the Nile?

Lake Victoria was reached in 1858 by John Speke, who pressed on without Richard Burton and guessed correctly that the Nile began there.

The Makonde people of south-eastern Tanzania are famed for intricate sculptures carved from which wood?

Ebony towers of intertwined figures, each holding up the next, are a Makonde signature, carved as a picture of mutual support and prized by collectors around the world.

Which country borders Tanzania to the north-east, where the Serengeti's grasslands run on across the frontier?

Kenya's Mara reserve is the northern end of the Serengeti; when the first East African Community collapsed in 1977, Tanzania shut the border between them, and it stayed closed until 1983.

What is the proper name of Zanzibar's main island, where Stone Town stands?

Unguja is the main island's real name; 'Zanzibar' properly covers the whole semi-autonomous group, which also takes in Pemba to the north.

What is Tanzania's largest city and principal port?

Dar es Salaam, usually translated 'abode' or 'haven of peace', was founded by Sultan Majid of Zanzibar in the 1860s; a 1970s decision named another city the capital, but it remains the commercial centre.

Which president died in office in March 2021, elevating his vice president to the top job?

John Magufuli, nicknamed 'the Bulldozer' for the road-building projects he drove through, died on 17 March 2021, aged 61, months into his second term; the government gave the cause as heart complications.

Which river, Tanzania's largest, reaches the sea through a mangrove delta facing Mafia Island?

The Rufiji is Tanzania's largest river by catchment; the fresh water and silt it pours out opposite Mafia Island feed the delta's mangroves and the coastal fisheries beyond.

Which Portuguese explorer called at the coast of present-day Tanzania in 1498 on his pioneering voyage to India?

Vasco da Gama's visit opened the way for Portugal, which set up supply posts for its India fleets and dominated the East African coast for two centuries.

Which two hunter-gatherer peoples of Tanzania are thought to be East Africa's indigenous populations?

The Hadza and Sandawe both speak click languages unrelated to those of their Bantu neighbours, a sign they were here long before farmers spread across the region; the Hadza still forage around Lake Eyasi.