Covering approximately
365,000 square miles (945,000 square kilometers)—an area about one and one-half
times the size of Texas, Tanzania lies on the east coast of Africa, just south
of the equator. It shares borders with Kenya, Uganda, the Democratic Republic
of the Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, and the Indian
Ocean.
Tanzania also shares
three great lakes—Victoria, Tanganyika, and Malawi—with its neighbors. The
country is comprised of a wide variety of aggro-ecological zones: low-lying
coastal plains, a dry highland plateau, northern savannas, and cool,
well-watered regions in the northwest and south.
The 120 ethnic groups
that inhabit Tanzania have adapted to a wide range of geophysical and climatic
conditions. The specific habits, customs, and life-views of each group have
been influenced by tribal traditions and alliances, European invasions,
population movements over the centuries, and introduced and endemic diseases.
In the late 1990s, the
central political administration was moved from Dar es Salaam on the Indian
Ocean coast to the more centrally located city of Dodoma, which lies in the
middle of the central plateau. Because of Dodoma's dry climate, relative lack
of economic development, and small size, however, the port of Dar es Salaam
remains the urban center of national importance.
While each ethnic group
speaks its own local language, almost all Tanzanians are also fluent in the
national language, Swahili ( Kiswahili in Swahili), a coastal Bantu
language strongly influenced by Arabic. The second official language is
English, a vestige of the British colonial period. Most Tanzanians with
postsecondary educations speak both official languages fluently in addition to
their tribal language.
The country’s first
president and founder father Mwalimu J. Nyerere encouraged the adoption of
Swahili for all Tanzanians in a concerted and successful effort to enable
people from different parts of the country to communicate with one another and
to encourage them to identify themselves as one people. The use of a single
common language has greatly facilitated
The current population
in Tanzania is approximately 30 million, comprised of indigenous peoples and
Pakistani, Indian, Arab, and European subpopulations. There are heavy
population concentrations in the urban centers (including Dar es Salaam,
Mwanza, Tabora, and Mbeya), in the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro, and along
the coast of Lake Malawi.
It is said that the
mainland portion of what is now Tanzania was named by a British civil servant
in 1920, from the Swahili words tanga (sail) and nyika (bright
arid plain). Thus, what was known formerly as German East Africa became
Tanganyika Territory.
In 1964, Tanganyika was
joined with Zanzibar, an offshore archipelago of islands, to form the present
United Republic of Tanzania. Because of a unique combination of historic and
cultural factors, Tanzanians share strong feelings of national pride and
cohesion.
This sense of
nationalism has served to keep the country at peace for over two decades, while
most of its neighbors have been involved intermittently in catastrophically
destructive civil and cross-border wars. Tanzanians have been able to resolve
most internal problems without resorting to violence because of a shared
language, the lack of political or economic dominance by any ethnic group, and
the strong leadership provided by Julius Nyerere (1922–1999), the first
president of Tanzania.
At the same time,
however, repressive, corrupting influences emanating from the colonial,
socialist, and capitalist eras have fostered among many Tanzanians an attitude
of dependency and fatalistic resignation that helps keep the country one of the
poorest in the world.
Tanzania was cradle to
some of the earliest hominids on earth, made famous by the discoveries of Louis
and Mary Leakey at Olduvai Gorge. Bantu-speaking peoples migrated to eastern
Africa at the same time that trade between Arabic-speaking peoples and coastal
populations was initiated in the first century B.C.E. By the twelfth century,
Arab trading posts were well established along the coast and on some islands.
Peter K.
Philip
Adventure Kenya camping safaris,
Natural
Track Safaris
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