Tanzania, officially the United Republic of Tanzania, is a country in East Africa within the African Great Lakes region. It is bordered by Uganda to the northwest, Kenya to the northeast, the Indian Ocean to the east, Mozambique and Malawi to the south, Zambia to the southwest, and Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west. According to a 2024 estimate, Tanzania has a population of around 67.5 million, making it the most populous African country located entirely south of the equator.
Many important hominid fossils have been found in Tanzania. In the Stone and Bronze Age, prehistoric migrations into Tanzania included Southern Cushitic speakers similar to modern day Iraqw people, who moved south from present-day Ethiopia; Eastern Cushitic people who moved into Tanzania from north of Lake Turkana about 2,000 and 4,000 years ago; and the Southern Nilotes, including the Datoog, who originated from the present-day South Sudan–Ethiopia border region between 2,900 and 2,400 years ago. These movements took place at about the same time as the settlement of the Mashariki Bantu from West Africa in the Lake Victoria and Lake Tanganyika areas. In the late 19th century, the mainland came under German rule as German East Africa. This was followed by British rule after World War I when it was governed as Tanganyika, with the Zanzibar Archipelago remaining a separate colonial jurisdiction. Following their gaining respective independence in 1961 and 1963, the two entities merged in 1964 to form the United Republic of Tanzania.
Tanganyika joined the British Commonwealth, and Tanzania remains a Commonwealth country as a unified republic. Today, the country is a presidential constitutional republic with the federal capital located in Government City (Dodoma); the former capital, Dar es Salaam, retains most government offices and is the country's largest city, principal port, and leading commercial centre. For decades, Tanzania has been ruled by the Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) as a de facto one-party state.
Tanzania's population comprises about 120 ethnic, linguistic, and religious groups. Christianity is the largest religion in Tanzania, with substantial Muslim and Animist minorities. Over 100 languages are spoken in Tanzania, making it the most linguistically diverse country in East Africa. The country does not have a de jure official language, although the national language is Swahili. English is used in foreign trade, in diplomacy, in higher courts, and as a medium of instruction in secondary and higher education. Arabic is widely spoken in Zanzibar, reflecting its history as a trading center dominated by Arabs.
Tanzania is mountainous and densely forested in the north-east, where Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa and the highest single free-standing mountain above sea level in the world, is located. Three of the African Great Lakes are partly within Tanzania. To the north and west lie Lake Victoria, Africa's largest lake, and Lake Tanganyika, the continent's deepest lake, known for its unique species of fish. To the south lies Lake Malawi. The eastern shore is hot and humid, with the Zanzibar Archipelago just offshore. The Menai Bay Conservation Area is Zanzibar's largest marine protected area. The Kalambo Falls, located on the Kalambo River at the Zambian border, is the second-highest uninterrupted waterfall in Africa. Tanzania is one of the most visited tourist destinations for safaris. The country is an official member of the United Nations, Group of 77, African Union, East African Community, and the Non-Aligned Movement.
The name "Tanzania" was created as a clipped compound of the names of the two states that unified to create the country: Tanganyika and Zanzibar in 1964. When Zanzibar and Tanganyika were uniting, national newspaper The Standard ran a contest for a new name, which was won by Mohammed Iqbal Dar. Iqbal claimed that he formulated the name by taking "Tan" and "zan" from the uniting states, "i" from his own name, and adding "a" as a reference to Ahmadiyya.
The name Tanganyika derives from the Swahili words tanga "sail" and nyika "uninhabited plain, wilderness", creating the phrase "sail in the wilderness". It is sometimes understood as a reference to Lake Tanganyika.
The name "Zanzibar" derives from Zanj, the name of a local people, and Arabic barr "coast" or "shore." Zanj comes from Al-Zanjia, the Arabic name for the East African coast. This word is related to Azania, the Greek name (possibly from a Sabaic name) for the same coast, mentioned in Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, a book written in the first-century CE. Azania is described as ruled by the Mapharitis - an ethnic group residing (at the time) in what is today southwest Yemen.
The earliest indigenous writing in Tanzania dates to the medieval period. In 1106 or 1107 CE (year 500 AH), Shaykh Abū ʽImrān Mūsā al-Ḥasan ibn Muḥammad founded the Friday Mosque in Kizimkazi as recorded by a dedicatory inscription in the miḥrāb of the mosque. The mint in Kilwa struck coins which record information about local sultans in rhyming couplets, something which has no parallel in earlier Islamic coinage. The example below is from c. 1300 CE (c. 700 AH):
Trusts in the Lord of the Kingdom [of Heaven]
The sequence of rulers arrived at by studying contemporary coins supplements and corroborates the oral traditions recorded in the Kilwa Chronicle as well as descriptions by outsiders. The Moroccan traveller Ibn Baṭṭūṭa reports that 14th-century CE (8th-century AH) sultan al-Ḥasan ibn Sulaimān was called Abuʼl-Mawāhib (Father of Gifts), and that he personally witnessed the sultan give away his own clothes to a poor man who requested them when the sultan was on his way home from the mosque. The same epithet is preserved on the sultan's gold coins and in the oral tradition.
The indigenous populations of eastern Africa are thought to be the linguistically isolated Hadza and Sandawe hunter-gatherers of Tanzania.
The first wave of migration was by Southern Cushitic speakers who moved south from Ethiopia and Somalia into Tanzania. They are ancestral to the Iraqw, Gorowa, and Burunge. Based on linguistic evidence, there may also have been two movements into Tanzania of Eastern Cushitic people at about 4,000 and 2,000 years ago, originating from north of Lake Turkana.
Archaeological evidence supports the conclusion that Southern Nilotes, including the Datoog, moved south from the present-day South Sudan / Ethiopia border region into central northern Tanzania between 2,900 and 2,400 years ago.
These movements took place at approximately the same time as the settlement of the iron-making Mashariki (Eastern) Bantu from West Africa in the Lake Victoria and Lake Tanganyika areas, as part of the centuries-long Bantu expansion. The Bantu peoples brought with them the west African planting tradition and the primary staple of yams. They subsequently migrated out of these regions across the rest of Tanzania between 2,300 and 1,700 years ago.
Eastern Nilotic peoples, including the Maasai, represent a more recent migration from present-day South Sudan within the past 500 to 1,500 years.
The people of Tanzania have been associated with the production of iron and steel. The Pare people were the main producers of sought-after iron for peoples who occupied the mountain regions of north-eastern Tanzania. The Haya people on the western shores of Lake Victoria invented a type of high-heat blast furnace, which allowed them to forge carbon steel at temperatures exceeding 1,820 °C (3,310 °F) more than 1,500 years ago.
Travellers and merchants from the Persian Gulf and India have visited the east African coast since early in the first millennium AD. Islam was practiced by some on the Swahili Coast as early as the eighth or ninth century AD.