The climate is tropical and coastal areas are hot and humid. The rainy season lasts from March to June. The central plateau is dry and arid. The northwestern highlands are cool and temperate and the rainy season here lasts from November to December and February to May.
Required Clothing
Tropical clothing is worn throughout the year, but in the cooler season, from June to September, jackets and sweaters may be needed, especially in the evenings. Clothing appropriate to temperatures below zero is required on the higher slopes of Kilimanjaro and Meru. Also note that it can get very cold at night on the Ngorongoro Crater and early morning game drives may be chilly before the sun comes up.
The shilingi (Swahili, English: shilling) is the currency of Tanzania, although widespread use of U.S. dollars is accepted. It is subdivided into 100 senti (cents in English). The Tanzanian shilling replaced the East African shilling in 1966 at par.
For earlier currencies used in Tanzania, see East African florin, East African rupee, Zanzibari rupee, Zanzibari riyal and German East African rupie.
At 364,875 mi² (945,087 km²[4]), Tanzania is the world's 31st-largest country (it comes after Egypt). It is comparable in size to Nigeria, and is slightly more than twice the size of the U.S. state of California.
Tanzania is mountainous in the north-east, where Mount Kilimanjaro , Africa's highest peak, is situated. To the north and west are the Great Lakes of Lake Victoria (Africa's largest lake) and Lake Tanganyika (Africa's deepest lake, known for its unique species of fish). Central Tanzania comprises a large plateau, with plains and arable land. The eastern shore is hot and humid, with the island of Zanzibar lying just offshore.
Tanzania contains many large and ecologically significant wildlife parks , including the famous Ngorongoro Crater, Serengeti National Park in the north, and Selous Game Reserve and Mikumi National Park in the south. Gombe National Park in the west is known as the site of Dr. Jane Goodall's studies of chimpanzee behavior.
The government of Tanzania through its department of tourism has embarked on a campaign to promote the Kalambo water falls in south-west Tanzania's region of Rukwa as one of Tanzania's many tourist destinations . The Kalambo falls are the second largest in Africa and are located near the southern tip of Lake Tanganyika.
The United Republic of Tanzania as it exists today consists of the union of what was once Tanganyika and the island of Zanzibar. Formerly a German colony from the 1880s through 1919, the post-World War I accords and the League of Nations charter designated the area a British Mandate.
British rule came to an end in 1961 after a relatively peaceful(compared with neighboring Kenya, for instance) transition to independence. At the forefront of the transition was Julius Nyerere, a former school-teacher and intellectual who entered politics in the early 1950s. In 1953 he was elected president of Tanganyika African Association (TAA), a civic organization dominated by civil servants, that he had helped found while a student at Makerere University. In 1954 he transformed TAA into the politically oriented Tanganyika African National Union (TANU). TANU's main objective was to achieve national sovereignty for Tanganyika. A campaign to register new members was launched, and within a year TANU had become the leading political organisation in the country. Nyerere became Minister of British-administered Tanganyika in 1960 and continued as Prime Minister when Tanganyika became officially independent in 1961.
Soon after independence, Nyerere's first presidency took a turn to the Left after the Arusha Declaration, which codified a commitment to Pan-African Socialism, social solidarity, collective sacrifice and "ujamaa" (familyhood). After the Declaration, banks were nationalised as were many large industries.
After a Leftist revolution overthrowing the Sultan in neighboring Zanzibar, which had become independent in 1963, the island merged with mainland Tanganyika to form the nation of Tanzania on April 26, 1964. The union of the two, hitherto separate, regions was controversial among many Zanzibaris' (even those sympathetic to the revolution) but was accepted by both the Nyerere government and the Revolutionary Government of Zanzibar due to shared political values and goals.
After the fall of commodity prices and the sharp spike of oil prices in the late 70s, Tanzania's economy took a turn for the worst. The 80s left the country in disarray as economic turmoil shook the commitments to social justice and it began to appear as if the project of socialism was a lost cause. Although it was a deeply unpopular decision, the Tanzanian government agreed to accept conditional loans from the IMF in the mid eighties and undergo "Structural Adjustment", which amounted in concrete terms to a large-scale liquidation of the public sector (rather large by African standards), deregulation of a liberalization of financial and agricultural markets. Educational as well as health services, however modest they may have been under the previous model of development, were not spared from cuts required by IMF conditionalities.
From the mid 1980s through the early 1990s Tanzania's GDP grew modestly, although Human Development Indexes fell and poverty indicators increased.
Today, Tanzania is one of the developing nations in the world as it struggles with economic development that was left decrepit following years of socialism during Nyerere's reign although its prospects are relatively positive due to increasing natural resource exports
As of 2006, the estimated population is 38,329,000, with an estimated growth rate of 2%. Population distribution is extremely uneven, with density varying from 1 person per square kilometer (3/mi²) in arid regions to 51 per square kilometer (133/mi²) in the mainland's well-watered highlands, to 134 per square kilometer (347/mi²) on Zanzibar. More than 80% of the population is rural. Tanzania still has a very high unemployment rate,which is about 67%. Dar es Salaam is the largest city and is the commercial capital; Dodoma, located in the center of Tanzania is the new capital and houses the Union's Parliament. Zanzibar Town houses the Zanzibar Parliament.
The African population consists of more than 126 ethnic groups, of which the Sukuma and Nyamwezi, the Hehe and Bena, the Gogo, the Haya, the Makonde, the Chagga and the Nyakyusa have more than 1 million members. Other groups include the Pare, Sambaa or Shambala and Ngoni. The majority of Tanzanians, including such large ethnic groups as the Sukuma and the Nyamwezi, have Bantu origins. Groups of Nilotic or related origin include the nomadic Masai and the Luo, both of which are found in greater numbers in neighboring Kenya. Two small groups speak languages of the Khoisan family peculiar to the people of the Kalahari in southern Africa. Cushitic-speaking peoples, originally from the Ethiopian highlands, reside in a few areas of Tanzania. Other Bantu groups were refugees and immigrants from nearby countries.
Although much of Zanzibar's African population came from the mainland, one group known as Afro-Shirazis claims its origins to be the island's early Persian settlers. Non-Africans residing on the mainland and Zanzibar account for 1% of the total population. In the 1960s and 1970s thousands of Asians emigrated, frequently under duress. Often they attempted to emigrate to the United Kingdom , and now the UK is home to 100,000 Tanzanians making the Tanzanian British community the world's largest overseas Tanzanian community. Their community, including Hindus, Sunni Muslims, Sikhs, Parsis and Goans, has increased in the past decade to 350,000. An estimated 240,000 Arabs and 70,000 Europeans still reside in Tanzania.
According to the World Refugee Survey 2008, published by the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, Tanzania hosted a population of refugees and asylum seekers numbering 432,500 in 2007. The majority of this population was from Burundi (331,900 persons) and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (99,100 persons).Between May 2006 and May 2007, the Tanzanian government expelled approximately 15,000 Rwandans and several thousand Burundians. Refugees in Tanzania are required to live in camps, and face fines and arrest if they leave the designated camps or seek employment without official permission
Capital Dodoma
Largest city Dar es Salaam
Official languages Swahili (de facto)English (Higher Education, Commercial,Administrative)
Demonym Tanzanian
Government Republic
- President Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete
- Prime Minister Mizengo Pinda
Independence from the United Kingdom
- Tanganyika December 9, 1961
- Zanzibar December 10, 1963
- Merger April 26, 1964
Area
- Total 945,087 km² (31st)
364,898 sq mi
- Water (%) 6.2
Population
- November 2006 estimate 37,849,1331 (32nd)
- 2002 census 35,214,888
- Density 41/km² (159th)
106/sq mi
GDP (PPP) 2007 estimate
- Total $27.12 billion (99th)
- Per capita $1,100 (178th)
Gini (2000–01) 34.6 (medium capital = Dar es Salaam)
HDI (2005) ▲ 0.467 (low) (159th)
Currency Tanzanian shilling (TZS)
Time zone EAT (UTC+3)
- Summer (DST) not observed (UTC+3)
Internet TLD .tz
Calling code +255²
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