Tanzania

Tanzania runs from the shores of Lake Victoria to the Indian Ocean, with Kilimanjaro, Africa’s highest mountain, rising alone from the plains in the north-east. Between them the Serengeti and the Ngorongoro Crater carry the great seasonal migration of wildebeest and zebra. Lake Tanganyika, on the western border, is the second-deepest lake on earth. Offshore lie the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba; the coast is hot and humid, the interior plateau drier and cooler.

Olduvai Gorge, where Mary and Louis Leakey dug for decades, holds some of the earliest traces of human ancestors. From around the tenth century Swahili trading towns such as Kilwa sent gold and ivory across the Indian Ocean, and in the nineteenth century the Sultan of Oman moved his court to Zanzibar, which grew rich on cloves and the slave trade. The mainland became German East Africa and then British Tanganyika, which won independence in 1961 and joined Zanzibar in 1964 to form Tanzania under Julius Nyerere.

Nyerere’s promotion of Swahili helped bind together well over a hundred ethnic groups. Taarab, the sung poetry of Zanzibar, bongo flava from Dar es Salaam and the bright tinga tinga paintings are Tanzanian inventions, and ugali, a stiff maize porridge, is the everyday staple. Gold from Geita, cashews from the south, coffee and tea from the highlands and cloves from Zanzibar are the main exports, and the northern parks draw safari visitors.