In 1998, Tanzania was a nation located in East Africa with a population of around 30 million people. The official language was Swahili and the currency was the Tanzanian Shilling. The government was a semi-presidential republic headed by President Benjamin Mkapa, who had been in office since 1995. Tanzania’s economy in 1998 relied heavily on agricultural exports, with its main exports being coffee and tea. Tourism also played an important role; Tanzania had many natural attractions such as mountains, lakes and wildlife reserves which attracted visitors from all over the world. Education was highly valued in Tanzania; literacy rates were higher than average for African countries at around 72%. Despite economic difficulties due to its small size and limited resources, Tanzania had managed to maintain its unique culture and traditions which provided hope for a brighter future. See dentistrymyth for Tanzania in the year of 2015.
Yearbook 1998
Tanzania. According to Countryaah, the capital of Tanzania is DDodoma. Eleven people were killed and 72 injured in a blast attack on the US embassy in Dar es-Salaam on August 7. An Egyptian and a Tanzanian were indicted in September for the act. Five other suspects were also arrested. The Egyptian was reported to be linked to Saudi Usama bin Laden, who held the United States responsible for the attack.
A long political stalemate on the Zanzibar archipelago appeared near a settlement in the fall after the opposition party CUF (Civic United Front) expressed its willingness to cancel the boycott of the local parliament. The crisis erupted after the election of CCM’s (Chama Cha Mapinduzi; Revolutionary Party of Tanzania) candidate Salmin Amour to Zanzibar’s president in 1995, which the opposition claimed was done by cheating.
- Abbreviationfinder: What does TZA stand for in geography? Here, this 3 letter acronym refers to the country of Tanzania.
Tanzania played a major role as a supplier of troops for UN peacekeeping missions. By October 2014, the country had posted 2,253 soldiers on missions in Congo, Lebanon and no less than 3 missions in the Sudan/South Sudan area.
The country’s electricity supply has historically been fluctuating, as it was largely based on hydropower, and periods of drought could reduce electricity generation. It caused rolling outages across the country to the detriment of economic development. With the extraction of gas from the fields in the Indian Ocean, the country agreed to increasingly produce electricity from gas, which increased security of supply. New gas pipelines were built from 2010 onwards.
In 2015, the government adopted 4 laws restricting freedom of speech. A law against «Cyber Crime» prohibits the dissemination of «false or misleading» information online. A new statistics law prohibited the dissemination of “false or misleading” statistics.
Kikwete could only sit for 2 presidential terms. In July 2015, the ruling CCM therefore appointed John Pombe Magufuli as the party’s presidential candidate at the October elections. Another prominent CCM politician, Edward Lowassa, therefore chose to change the party and went to the opposition, CHADEMA, who nominated him as their candidate. Lowassa was previously prime minister, but had to resign in 2008 due to corruption. Still, he was a worthy opponent for Magufuli, who, however, won the election with 58.5% of the vote. He was inducted as president in November. Parallel to the presidential election, elections to parliament were held. CCM gained 55.0% of the votes against 31.8% for CHADEMA.
The elections in Zanzibar ended up being canceled due to excessive irregularities. The Civic United Front (CUF) criticized the cancellation, declaring that it alone intended to waive the party’s electoral victory. The re-election was carried out in March 2016, but this time the boycott of the opposition was gathered in the CUF. The incumbent President, Ali Mohamed Shein of the Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party therefore won with 98% of the votes cast. The voting percentage was 68%. Over 200 people were injured during the riots in the months leading up to the election.
To curb the number of murders of albinos up to the election, in January 2015, the government imposed a ban on witchcraft. Still, 50 were killed in connection with witchcraft in the months of January-June. The practitioners of witchcraft believe that the bones of the killed give special powers.
After his accession, President Magufuli marked himself as a strong opponent of corruption and overuse in the state administration. He canceled the otherwise traditionally pompous (and expensive) Independence Day and instead urged the people to clean the roads and streets. He himself went for the cleaning. First-class travel was banned, delegations to attend international conferences were cut dramatically. The saved funds were to be used instead in hospitals and road works.
Environment
The vegetation cover of Tanzania is very varied, as are the rainfall and general environmental conditions from area to area. The coastal strip and the islands were once covered by humid tropical forest, now almost everywhere replaced by plantation crops, including the coconut palm that forms lush palm groves near the sea; Forest strips exist, for example, at the mouths of rivers, often with typical mangrove aspects. Even in the islands, especially in Zanzibar and Pemba, the ancient and profound anthropization of the territory has radically transformed the natural landscapes, destroying the original forest in favor of planting crops, here above all represented by essential plants typical of the humid tropical belts, native or import; comes from the Moluccas, for example, that clove plant (Eugenia caryophyllata) which made Zanzibar’s wealth. Overall, however, Tanzania, a relatively sparsely populated country, is still largely covered by spontaneous plant associations, which have the most widespread and typical expression in the savannah. In fact, it dominates the plateaus, starting from the immediate coastal hinterland, assuming, according to the variation of the soils and rainfall, different forms: the arborate savannah, sparse, rather arid, spread over much of the country; the shrubby savannah, dominant in the central section; the grassy savannah with Graminaceae, in the depressions less sprinkled by the rains; the “park” savannah, on the other hand, present in the more humid belts, especially near watercourses, where there are gallery forest formations. The vegetation on the great volcanic hills, and in particular on Kilimanjaro, takes on peculiar aspects, with its altitudinal successions, which begin, above the savannas, with the dense equatorial forest up to 3000 m, rich in junipers, podocarps, cedars and other precious essences, bamboo (up to 2400 m); around 3000 m the arborescent moors begin and between 3600 and 4600 m there is an alpine prairie with grasses between which rise seneci and giant lobelias. The fauna of Tanzania is equally rich in its flora: there are numerous large mammals, such as antelopes, zebras, elephants, hippos, rhinos, giraffes, leopards, buffaloes and chimpanzees. The exceptional variety of animals that populate this territory is mainly due to the presence of 14 national parks and numerous natural and marine reserves. Overall, the protected areas are 37.8% and include four sites declared world heritage of humanity by UNESCO: the Ngorongoro Nature Reserve (1979), the Serengeti National Park (1981), the Selous Game Reserve (1982) and the Kilimanjaro National Park (1987). The deforestation caused by the continuous demand for land to be cultivated and wood for combustion has produced in recent years the increase in soil erosion and the advance of desertification. In addition, dynamite fishing is seriously endangering coral reefs and marine habitats.