Tanzania travel guide

Tanzania may be well known for its epic wildlife migrations, but for thousands of years people, too, have migrated across the continent of Africa to settle in this land – Nilotic and Cushtic people from the north, and Bantu tribes from the west. Indigenous hunter-gatherer communities can be traced back 10,000 years. Their modern descendants are the Hadzabe and Sandawe people, who speak an unusual language using click consonants, and some still lead a hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

The African tribes were later joined by Arab and Persian traders – who brought their religion as well as their merchandise – and European colonisers. The region changed hands between the Portuguese, Omanis, Germans and British – until finally gaining independence as Tanganyika in 1961.

Zanzibar’s history took quite a different turn to Tanganyika’s. Portuguese for almost two centuries, it then became the capital of the Oman Empire. Its wealth came from its lucrative clove plantations and its pivotal position in the Indian Ocean – between Africa, Arabia and India – as one of the “Spice Islands”. However, it was not only goods that were traded here, but also ivory – and millions of slaves, who worked on the plantations. Slavery was finally abolished in 1876 and Zanzibar was handed over to the British. It gained independence in 1963, and a subsequent and bloody revolution killed and expelled many of the Arabs and Indians, before the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba were incorporated into Tanzania.