Tanzania

Few landscapes have shaped our understanding of human origins as profoundly as the northern Tanzanian plains around Olduvai Gorge, often called a cradle of humankind. From the 1930s the Kenyan-British palaeoanthropologists Louis and Mary Leakey searched the gorge's exposed beds, recovering stone tools and animal bones. In July 1959 Mary Leakey uncovered the robust hominin skull known as Zinjanthropus, later classified as Paranthropus boisei (specimen OH 5), a find that drew the world's attention to East Africa. In 1960 the Leakeys' team recovered fossils that became the type specimen of Homo habilis, the early toolmaker associated with the Oldowan pebble tools found in the gorge, the oldest of which date to roughly 1.8 million years ago.

Some 45 kilometres south of the gorge, at Laetoli, Mary Leakey's team made an even more startling discovery in 1976–78: a trail of fossilised footprints preserved in hardened volcanic ash and dated to about 3.6 million years ago. Attributed to Australopithecus afarensis — the species of the famous 'Lucy' skeleton — the prints show that these early hominins already walked upright on two legs, providing some of the clearest physical evidence for the antiquity of bipedalism. The footprints and the surrounding fossil sites lie within the Ngorongoro Conservation Area.

For hundreds of thousands of years after these distant ancestors, the lands that became Tanzania were home to hunter-gatherer communities. The earliest inhabitants of the interior are thought to have spoken Khoisan-related and later Cushitic languages, herding and foraging across the savanna long before the great migrations and trading civilisations that would transform the region in the last few thousand years.

Turning points

1. c. 3.6 million years agoPeoples & Migration

   Hominins leave footprints at Laetoli

   Early hominins, attributed to Australopithecus afarensis, cross a layer of fresh volcanic ash near Laetoli; their footprints harden and survive, giving direct evidence of upright walking.

   ↗See the data

   [1] [2] [3]

2. c. 1.8 million years agoCulture & Ideas

   Homo habilis and Oldowan tools at Olduvai

   Early members of the genus Homo at Olduvai Gorge make simple flaked-pebble tools of the Oldowan industry, among the earliest manufactured implements known.

   [4] [6]

3. July 1959Culture & Ideas

   Mary Leakey finds the Zinjanthropus skull

   At Olduvai Gorge, Mary Leakey uncovers the robust hominin skull OH 5 (Zinjanthropus / Paranthropus boisei), a landmark in the study of human evolution.

   [4] [5]

4. 1976–1978Culture & Ideas

   Discovery of the Laetoli footprints

   Mary Leakey's team excavates the trail of 3.6-million-year-old hominin footprints at Laetoli, confirming early bipedalism and cementing Tanzania's place in human prehistory.

   [1] [2] [3]

Figures of the era

From around the first millennium BCE, the great Bantu expansion brought iron-working, farming communities into what is now Tanzania, reaching the coast between the Rufiji delta and the Ruvu river by the close of that millennium. These migrations, layered with later movements of Nilotic and Cushitic peoples, produced the deep ethnic and linguistic diversity of the modern country. Bantu speakers carried with them ironworking traditions linked to the Urewe culture of the Great Lakes, one of Africa's oldest centres of iron smelting.

Along the Indian Ocean coast a distinctive civilisation took shape. From roughly the eighth century onward, coastal Bantu communities trading with merchants from Arabia, Persia and India gave rise to the Swahili: a literate, urban, Muslim culture whose language, Kiswahili, is a Bantu tongue enriched with Arabic vocabulary. Towns built in coral stone grew into largely independent city-states, and according to tradition a Persian, Shirazi, dynasty — said to descend from Ali ibn al-Hasan of Shiraz — founded the ruling house of Kilwa. Islam spread steadily among the coastal elites.

The greatest of these cities was Kilwa Kisiwani, on an island off the southern Tanzanian coast. Between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries Kilwa flourished as it seized control of the gold trade flowing from the interior through its southern outpost of Sofala, minting its own coins and raising the Great Mosque, with its celebrated coral-stone domes — then among the largest mosques south of the Sahara. The Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta, who visited in 1331, praised Kilwa as one of the most beautiful cities he had seen. The ruins of Kilwa and neighbouring Songo Mnara are today a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Turning points

1. late 1st millennium BCEPeoples & Migration

   Bantu farmers reach the coast

   Iron-using Bantu-speaking farmers settle the Tanzanian coast and interior, part of the wider Bantu expansion that reshaped eastern and southern Africa.

   ↗See the data

   [7] [8]

2. c. 8th–10th century CECulture & Ideas

   Rise of the Swahili coast

   Coastal communities trading across the Indian Ocean develop the Swahili language and an Afro-Islamic urban culture, founding settlements that grow into trading city-states.

   [9] [8]

3. c. 11th–12th centuryFormation

   Shirazi dynasty founds Kilwa

   According to the Kilwa Chronicle, the Shirazi line founds the ruling house of Kilwa Kisiwani; the city begins its rise as a Swahili trading power.

   [10] [11]

4. 13th–15th centuriesEconomy & Trade

   Kilwa dominates the gold trade

   Controlling the gold exported through Sofala, Kilwa reaches its peak of wealth, minting coins and building the Great Mosque, the largest in the region.

   ↗See the data

   [10] [11] [12]

5. 1331Religion

   Ibn Battuta visits Kilwa

   The traveller Ibn Battuta describes Kilwa as a prosperous, devout and beautifully built Muslim city, attesting to the wealth of the medieval Swahili coast.

   [10] [11]

In 1498 the Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama, seeking a sea route to India, reached the East African coast. The Portuguese soon used superior firepower to disrupt the rivalrous Swahili city-states, exacting tribute from Kilwa and others and establishing footholds at Mombasa, Kilwa and beyond. Their dominance hastened the decline of Kilwa and the older coastal order, though their hold on the coast was always contested and never deeply rooted.

From the late seventeenth century Omani Arabs displaced the Portuguese north of Mozambique, and over the following century the coast and its trade fell increasingly under Omani influence. In 1840 the Omani ruler Said bin Sultan moved his capital from Muscat to Zanzibar, recognising the islands' commercial potential. He promoted clove plantations worked by enslaved labour until Zanzibar and Pemba became the world's leading clove producers, and made the sultanate the dominant commercial power of the western Indian Ocean. When Said died in 1856 his domains were divided, and Zanzibar became a separate sultanate.

Zanzibar's wealth rested heavily on a brutal trade in enslaved Africans and ivory. Caravans reached deep into the interior — as far as Lake Tanganyika — and tens of thousands of captives were marched each year to coastal entrepôts such as Bagamoyo and shipped to Zanzibar's notorious slave market. This trade caused immense suffering and depopulation across the region. Under sustained British pressure, Sultan Barghash signed a treaty in 1873 prohibiting the seaborne slave trade and closing the Stone Town market, though slavery within the islands persisted for decades more.

Turning points

1. 1498Colonisation

   Vasco da Gama reaches the coast

   The Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama arrives on the East African coast en route to India, opening an era of Portuguese intrusion that disrupted the Swahili city-states.

   ↗See the data

   [13] [14]

2. 1840Politics & Power

   Said bin Sultan moves his capital to Zanzibar

   The Omani ruler Said bin Sultan transfers his capital from Muscat to Zanzibar, making the islands the commercial heart of the western Indian Ocean.

   [15] [16]

3. mid-19th centuryEconomy & Trade

   Clove plantations and the caravan trade

   Zanzibar and Pemba become the world's leading clove producers, while caravans reaching to Lake Tanganyika feed a vast and brutal trade in enslaved people and ivory.

   ↗See the data

   [15] [16] [17]

4. 1856Politics & Power

   Zanzibar becomes a separate sultanate

   On Said's death his domains are divided; his son Majid becomes the first sultan of Zanzibar, separating the islands from Oman.

   [16] [15]

5. 1873Politics & Power

   Zanzibar bans the seaborne slave trade

   Under British pressure Sultan Barghash signs a treaty prohibiting the maritime slave trade and closing the Stone Town slave market, though domestic slavery endures for decades.

   [17] [18]

Figures of the era

From the mid-1880s Germany claimed the mainland. The adventurer Carl Peters signed treaties with local rulers, and in 1885 the German government granted his company an imperial charter, the basis of the colony of German East Africa, which covered present-day Tanzania (excluding Zanzibar) together with Rwanda and Burundi. German rule was harsh, imposing taxes, forced labour and compulsory cotton cultivation on African communities.

These exactions provoked the Maji Maji rebellion of 1905–07, one of the largest anti-colonial uprisings in eastern Africa. Inspired by the prophet Kinjikitile Ngwale, whose followers believed a sacred water (maji) would turn German bullets to water, the revolt spread across the southeast. The Germans suppressed it with a scorched-earth campaign that destroyed crops and villages; the resulting famine, remembered as the Great Hunger, killed an estimated 75,000 to 300,000 people, overwhelmingly through starvation. Scholars have described the policy as genocidal.

During the First World War British and allied forces occupied German East Africa after a long campaign. By the Treaty of Versailles (1919) Germany lost the colony; Britain took the greater part as the Tanganyika Territory, administered from 1922 as a League of Nations mandate and later a United Nations trust territory. British rule was less developmental than extractive, but it left the mainland on a path toward the constitutional politics that would carry it to independence.

Turning points

1. 1885Colonisation

   Germany establishes German East Africa

   Following Carl Peters's treaties, the German government charters his company, founding the colony of German East Africa over the Tanzanian mainland and the Great Lakes territories.

   ↗See the data

   [19] [20]

2. 1905–1907War & Rupture

   Maji Maji rebellion

   Inspired by the prophet Kinjikitile Ngwale, southern peoples rise against German rule, forced labour and cotton-growing; the revolt spreads widely before being crushed.

   ↗See the data

   [21] [22] [23]

3. 1906–1907Catastrophe

   Scorched earth and the Great Hunger

   German forces suppress the rebellion by destroying crops and villages; the ensuing famine kills tens to hundreds of thousands of people, a catastrophe scholars term genocidal.

   ↗See the data

   [22] [23]

4. 1919–1922Colonisation

   Tanganyika becomes a British mandate

   After the First World War the Treaty of Versailles strips Germany of the colony; Britain administers the mainland as the Tanganyika Territory under a League of Nations mandate from 1922.

   ↗See the data

   [19] [24]

Figures of the era

In 1954 the teacher Julius Nyerere — known to Tanzanians as Mwalimu, 'the teacher' — transformed an existing association into the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU), which campaigned for independence through peaceful, constitutional means. TANU swept the territory's elections, and on 9 December 1961 Tanganyika became independent, with Nyerere as prime minister; a year later, on 9 December 1962, it became a republic with him as its first president. Independence had been achieved without the armed struggle seen elsewhere in Africa.

The islands followed a more violent path. Zanzibar gained independence from Britain in December 1963 under its Arab-led sultanate, but on 12 January 1964 the African majority rose in the Zanzibar Revolution, overthrowing the sultan and the Arab-dominated government and establishing a republic led by Abeid Karume. The upheaval was bloody. Within months Nyerere and Karume agreed to merge their states: on 26 April 1964 Tanganyika and Zanzibar united to form the United Republic of Tanzania, with Nyerere as president and Karume as vice-president, while Zanzibar retained substantial autonomy and its own government.

Nyerere set out to build a distinctive African socialism. In the Arusha Declaration of 5 February 1967 he proclaimed Ujamaa — 'familyhood' — committing Tanzania to socialism, self-reliance and equality, nationalising key sectors and launching a programme of collective villages (ujamaa vijijini). The vision was idealistic and won Tanzania international respect, but in practice the villagisation drive, increasingly coercive, disrupted farming and failed to deliver the prosperity it promised.

Turning points

1. 1954Politics & Power

   Founding of TANU

   Julius Nyerere builds the Tanganyika African National Union, which campaigns for independence by constitutional means and comes to dominate the territory's politics.

   [25] [26]

2. 9 December 1961Independence

   Tanganyika gains independence

   Mainland Tanganyika becomes independent from Britain under Nyerere and TANU; it becomes a republic with Nyerere as president on 9 December 1962.

   ↗See the data

   [25] [26]

3. 12 January 1964Politics & Power

   Zanzibar Revolution

   The African majority overthrows the Arab-led sultanate of Zanzibar in a bloody uprising, establishing a republic under Abeid Karume.

   [27] [28]

4. 26 April 1964Formation

   Union of Tanganyika and Zanzibar

   Tanganyika and Zanzibar unite to form the United Republic of Tanzania, with Nyerere as president and Karume as vice-president; Zanzibar keeps its own government.

   [29] [28]

5. 5 February 1967Politics & Power

   The Arusha Declaration

   Nyerere proclaims Ujamaa, committing Tanzania to socialism and self-reliance, nationalising key sectors and launching the policy of collective villages.

   [30] [31] [32]

Figures of the era

By the early 1980s the Ujamaa model had run aground: collectivisation had ended around 1977–78, agricultural output had stagnated and the economy was in crisis. In 1985 Nyerere voluntarily stepped down — a rare peaceful handover in the Africa of his day — and was succeeded by Ali Hassan Mwinyi, who began to liberalise the economy. Tanzania abandoned its one-party socialist path, reintroducing multiparty politics in 1992 and holding its first multiparty elections in 1995, won by Benjamin Mkapa.

Tanzania has since remained among the more stable countries in eastern Africa, avoiding the civil wars that struck several neighbours, though the union with Zanzibar — which retains its own president and assembly — has at times been a source of political tension. The official capital was designated as Dodoma, in the centre of the country, while Dar es Salaam has remained the largest city and main commercial hub. The economy has grown steadily, driven by agriculture, mining, tourism centred on the country's celebrated wildlife parks and Mount Kilimanjaro, and the port trade of the coast.

In the twenty-first century power has continued to pass through regular elections, dominated by the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (the party descended from TANU). President John Magufuli, elected in 2015, pursued an assertive anti-corruption and infrastructure agenda before his death in March 2021, when Vice-President Samia Suluhu Hassan succeeded him to become Tanzania's first female head of state. Tanzania today honours Nyerere's legacy of national unity and a single Swahili national language, holding together a country of great ethnic, religious and geographic diversity.

Turning points

1. 1985Politics & Power

   Nyerere steps down

   Julius Nyerere voluntarily retires from the presidency, handing power to Ali Hassan Mwinyi in a peaceful transition and opening the way to economic liberalisation.

   [25] [34]

2. 1992Politics & Power

   Return to multiparty politics

   Tanzania amends its constitution to permit multiple parties, ending decades of one-party rule; the first multiparty elections follow in 1995.

   [7] [34]

3. 1996Politics & Power

   Dodoma confirmed as capital

   Tanzania advances the long-planned move of its capital to the central city of Dodoma, while Dar es Salaam remains the largest city and commercial centre.

   [7]

4. March 2021Politics & Power

   Samia Suluhu Hassan becomes president

   On the death of President John Magufuli, Vice-President Samia Suluhu Hassan is sworn in as the first female president of the United Republic of Tanzania.

   [35] [34]