Name: United Republic of Tanzania (Swahili: Jamhuri ya Muungano wa Tanzania).
The name 'Tanzania' comes from the portmanteau of the former state of Tanganyika and the island of Zanzibar, which united in 1964.
Capital: Dodomo (~325K)
Largest City: Dar es Salaam (~2.5M, 2002)
Official Language: Swahili
Swahili, or Kiswahili, is a Bantu language spoken by 5 to 10 million people in East Africa. Over one-third of the Swahili vocabulary derives from the Arabic language, gained through more than twelve centuries of contact with Arabic-speaking traders. It also has incorporated Persian, German, Portuguese, English and French words into its vocabulary through contact during the last five centuries.
Most Tanzanians' first language is that of their local tribe, but Swahili is taught in primary school and used as the unifying language of the country. Although not an official language, English is used in higher courts and secondary and university education.
People and Culture:
Tanzania's population was estimated to be 43.7 million in 2009. The population distribution is irregular, with high densities in the fertile areas around Mount Kilimanjaro and the shores of Lake Victoria and comparatively low densities in much of the interior. The population consists of more than 120 native African groups, the majority of whom speak a Bantu language. The largest groups are the Sukuma and the Nyamwezi, each representing about a fifth of the population. Tanzania is also home to people of Indian, Pakistani, and Goan origin, and small Arab and European communities.
Muslims, Christians, and those with indigenous beliefs make up relatively equal proportions of Tanzania’s population. Muslims live mainly along the coast and on Zanzibar, while Christians reside primarily inland and in the larger cities. Traditional/animist beliefs are still strong in many areas of the country.
Despite Tanzania's ethnic and religious diversity, it is known for its tolerance and has remained a country of relative peace (unlike many of its African neighbors, most notably Rwanda and more recently Kenya). Many attribute this to Kiswahili, the unifying national language of the country, as well as the many years of socialist policy based on African concepts of brotherhood and community, under former President Nyerere.
History:
Tanzania is probably one of the oldest known continuously inhabited areas on Earth; fossil remains of humans and pre-human hominids have been found dating back over two million years. During the first millenium B.C., Cushitic-speaking people from southern Ethiopia migrated through the eastern part of the Great Rift Valley into north central Tanzania. Early cattle herders found an unoccupied niche in the virgin grasslands and coexisted with the Khoisan hunters and gatherers who were already there. During the first millennium A.D., Bantu-speaking peoples originating from west central Africa filtered into western Tanzania and the fertile volcanic mountains of the northeast. These ironworking cultivators preferred wetter areas and thus avoided the dry savannas that were already occupied by hunters, gatherers and pastoralists.
Early residents of Tanzania’s coastal region experienced heavy Eastern, rather than African, cultural influences, developing a different culture from the people living in the interior. Merchants from Egypt, Assyria, Phoenicia, Greece, India, Arabia, Persia, and China were already visiting this region during the first century A.D. By the ninth century, Arabs and Shirazi Persians were significant traders on the coast, and large numbers of them settled on the offshore islands. In time, the Arab and Shirazi communities intermingled with the Bantu-speaking mainland groups and a new culture —the Swahili — was born.
During the late 19th century, European explorers and missionaries used Zanzibar as a point of departure for the mainland. Their travels helped define future colonial boundaries and paved the way for Protestant and Roman Catholic missionaries. In its desire to establish an economic and political foothold among other European powers, a newly unified Germany entered present-day Tanzania, Rwanda, and Burundi in 1884, establishing German East Africa. With the onset of World War I, Germany lost control of mainland Tanzania, which was taken over by Great Britain and renamed Tanganyika. In 1922, the League of Nations consigned Tanganyika to the British Empire under its mandate system (present-day Rwanda and Burundi were ceded to Belgium).
It was not until 1961 that Tanganyika gained independence from Britain, with Julius Nyerere serving as the country’s first president. In January 1964, revolutionary forces overthrew the sultan of Zanzibar, and three months later, the mainland and the islands of Zanzibar joined to become the United Republic of Tanzania. Nyerere, a famous 'African socialist', served as president until 1985, and is still very much revered among the Tanzanian people for his role in their struggle for independence; he was named "World Hero of Social Justice" by the United Nations General Assembly in 2009.
Economy:
The economy of Tanzania is primarily agricultural. About 80 percent of the economically active population is engaged in farming, and agricultural products account for about 85 percent of annual exports. The country is the world’s largest producer of cloves. Other products include tea, coffee, cashew nuts, sisal, timber, and cotton. In recent years, the mining industry has developed significantly, with gold, tanzanite, and diamonds providing jobs and income. The manufacturing sector is small and growing slowly. With its dozens of beautiful national parks, like the world famous Serengeti and the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Tanzania's tourism sector also plays a vital part in the economy.
With per capita income at an estimated $270 a year in 2002, Tanzania is one of the poorest countries in the world. Government programs once called for a form of socialism that kept people poor but relatively equal. Nyerere's policies (most notably, organizing rural farmers into collective farms) ultimately failed and were abandoned in the mid-1980s in favor of a free-enterprise system, which has generated more wealth, but also more disparity of income.
Geography and Climate:
At 947,300 km², Tanzania is the world's 31st-largest country. The landscape of mainland Tanzania is generally flat along the coast, but a plateau with an average altitude of about 4,000 feet constitutes the majority of the country. Isolated mountain groups rise in the northeast and southwest. The volcanic Kilimanjaro (the highest mountain in Africa at 19,340 feet) is located near the northeastern border. Three of the great lakes of Africa lie on the Tanzanian border: Lake Victoria in the northwest (Africa's largest lake), Lake Nyasa (also called Lake Malawi) in the southwest, and Lake Tanganyika (Africa's deepest lake, known for its unique species of fish) in the west. Located near the southern tip of Lake Tanganyika, the Kalambo Falls is the second highest waterfall in Africa. Lake Nyasa and Lake Tanginyika lie in the Great Rift Valley, a tremendous geological fault system that extends from the Middle East to Mozambique.
Tanzania also 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.
Because Tanzania is in the southern hemisphere, it has the opposite seasons as the US and Europe (May-Aug winter, Nov-Feb summer). Elevation and distance from the sea control the climate of Tanzania. The mainland coast along the Indian Ocean is warm and tropical, with temperatures averaging 80 degrees Fahrenheit and annual rainfall ranging from 30 to 55 inches. The inland plateau is hot and dry, with annual rainfall averaging as little as 20 inches. The semi-temperate highlands in the northeast and southwest receive more water and can get quite chilly. The southern, south-west, central and western parts of the country experience a unimodal rainfall season (Dec-Apr), while the north and northern coastal regions experience a bimodal rainfall season (Oct-Dec and Mar-May).
Source: Wikipedia, Peace Corps Welcome Booklet: Tanzania
