United Republic of Tanzania (Swahili: Jamhuri ya Muungano wa Tanzania)

Officially the United Republic of Tanzania (Swahili: Jamhuri ya Muungano wa Tanzania), is a country in East Africa in the African Great Lakes region. It is bordered by Kenya and Uganda to the north; Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west; and Zambia, Malawi and Mozambique to the south. The country's eastern border is formed by the Indian Ocean. Kilimanjaro, Africa's highest mountain, is in northeastern Tanzania.

The country is divided into 30 administrative regions: five on the semi-autonomous islands of Zanzibar and 25 on the mainland in the former Tanganyika. The head of state is President Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete, elected in 2005. Since 1996, the official capital of Tanzania has been Dodoma, where the National Assembly and some government offices are located. Between independence and 1996, the main coastal city of Dar es Salaam served as the country's political capital. It remains Tanzania's principal commercial city and is the main location of most government institutions. It is also the principal port of the country. 

Tanganyika and Zanzibar merged on 26 April 1964 to form the United Republic of Tanganyika and Zanzibar.^[7] On 29 October of the same year, the country was renamed United Republic of Tanzania ('Tan' comes from Tanganyika and 'Zan' from Zanzibar).^[7] The Articles of Union are the main foundation of Tanzania.

 . The regional capital is Iringa. Prior to 2012 the total area was 58,936 square kilometers (22,755 sq mi), of which land area was 56,864 km sq (21,955 mi sq) and water area was 2,070 km² (800 mi sq) however Iringa lost its three southern districts and considerable area in the creation of Njombe Region.

The former Iringa Region had a population of 1,495,333, according to the 2002 census. The currently sized Iringa, the four old northern districts, had a combined population of 840,404 in the 2002 census.

Iringa Region is home to Ruaha National Park, Tanzania's second largest park, which has an abundance of wildlife and approximately 7,500 visitors per year. A second park, Udzungwa Mountains National Park in Iringa Rural District, is less visited. 

THE REGIONAL COMMISSIONER OF THE IRINGA REGION IS HALIMA Y. KASUNGU.

Human settlement in what is now Tanzania began around 8,000 B.C., when hunter-gatherers speaking Khoisan languages settled along the Gregory Rift south of Olduvai Gorge.Around 1,000 B.C., herders speaking Cushitic languages migrated to Tanzania from what is now Ethiopia. A third group, of iron-working agriculturalists that spoke Bantu languages, migrated to Tanzania from what is now Nigeria and Cameroon about 1,000 years later. 

Eastern Nilotes peoples, including the Maasai, represent a more recent migration from present day South Sudan within the past 1,500 to 500 years. 

The people of Tanzania have been associated with the production of iron and steel. The Pare was the main producers of highly demanded iron for peoples who occupied the mountain regions of northeastern 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 western India have visited the Southeast African coast since early in the first millennium AD. Islam was practised on the Swahili Coast as early as the eighth or ninth century AD. In 1498, the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama visited Tanzanian coast. Later, in 1506, the Portuguese succeeded in controlling most of the Southeast African littoral. In 1699, the Portuguese were ousted from Zanzibar by Omani Arabs.

Claiming the coastal strip, Omani Sultan Seyyid Said moved his capital to Zanzibar City in 1840. During this time, Zanzibar became the centre for the Arab slave trade. Between 65 and 90% of the population of Arab-Swahili Zanzibar was enslaved.

GENERAL LETTOW-VORBECK IN DAR ES SALAAM WITH A BRITISH OFFICER (LEFT) AND GERMAN OFFICER (RIGHT), MARCH 1919

In the late 19th century, Imperial Germany conquered the regions that are now Tanzania (minus Zanzibar) and incorporated them into German East Africa. The post–World War I accords and the League of Nations charter designated the area a British Mandate, except for the Kionga Triangle, a small area in the southeast that was incorporated into Portuguese East Africa (later Mozambique).

British rule came to an end in 1961 after a relatively peaceful (compared with neighboring Kenya, for instance) transition to independence. In 1954, Julius Nyerere transformed an organization into the politically oriented Tanganyika African National Union (TANU). TANU's main objective was to achieve national sovereignty for Tanganyika. A campaign to register new members was launched, and within a year TANU had become the leading political organization in the country.

Nyerere became Minister of British-administered Tanganyika in 1960 and continued as Prime Minister when Tanganyika became independent in 1961. In 1967, Nyerere's first presidency took a turn to the left after the Arusha Declaration, which codified a commitment to socialism in Pan-African fashion. After the declaration, banks and many large industries were nationalized.

After the Zanzibar Revolution overthrew the Arab dynasty in neighboring Zanzibar which had become independent in 1963, the archipelago merged with mainland Tanganyika on 26 April 1964. The union of the two, hitherto separate, regions was controversial among many Zanzibar is (even those sympathetic to the revolution) but was accepted by both the Nyerere government and the Revolutionary Government of Zanzibar owing to shared political values and goals.

From the late 1970s, Tanzania's economy took a turn for the worse. Tanzania was also aligned with China, which from 1970 to 1975 financed and helped build the 1,860-kilometre-long (1,160 mi) TAZARA Railway from Dar es Salaam to Zambia.  From the mid-1980s, the regime financed itself by borrowing from the International Monetary Fund and underwent some reforms. Since then, Tanzania's gross domestic product per capita has grown, and poverty has been reduced. 

In 1992, the Constitution of Tanzania was amended to allow multiple political parties. In Tanzania's first multi-party elections, held in 1995, the CCM won 186 of the 232 elected seats in the National Assembly, and Benjamin Mkapa was elected as president. Mkapa was reelected as president in 2000. 

GOVERNMENT

MAIN ARTICLE: POLITICS OF TANZANIA

UNION AND MAINLAND GOVERNMENT

The executive and legislative branches of the Tanzanian government are respectively: the president and the National Assembly.

The president and the members of the National Assembly are elected concurrently by direct popular vote for five-year terms. The vice-president is elected for a five-year term at the same time as the president and on the same ticket.

Neither the president nor the vice-president may be a member of the National Assembly. The president appoints a prime minister to serve as the government's leader in the assembly. The president selects his or her cabinet from assembly members.

All legislative power relating to mainland Tanzania and union matters is vested in the National Assembly, which is unicameral and has a maximum of 357 members.  These include members elected to represent constituencies, the attorney general, five members elected by the Zanzibar house of representatives from among its own members, the special women's seats that constitute at least 30% of the seats that any party has in the assembly, the speaker of the assembly (if not otherwise a member of the assembly), and the persons (not more than ten) appointed by the president. The Tanzania Electoral Commission demarcates the mainland into constituencies in the number determined by the commission with the consent of the president.