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Founding
Founding of Dar es Salaam
largest city in Tanzania and capital of Dar es Salaam Region
- 1862
- Sub-Saharan Africa
Founding
largest city in Tanzania and capital of Dar es Salaam Region
Fetching the article from Wikipedia…
Dar es Salaam (, Swahili: [ɗɑr‿ɛs‿sɑˈlɑːm] ⓘ; from Arabic: دَار السَّلَام, romanised: Dār as-Salām, lit. 'Abode of Peace') is the largest city and financial hub of Tanzania and capital of the Dar es Salaam Region. It is located on the Swahili coast. With a population of over 7 million people, Dar es Salaam is the largest city in East Africa by population and the fifth-largest in Africa. Dar es Salaam remains an important economic centre and one of the fastest-growing cities in the world. Experts predict that the city's population will grow to over 10 million before 2030.
The city was founded in the mid-19th century and served as the main administrative and commercial centre of German East Africa, Tanganyika and Tanzania. The decision was made in 1974 to move the capital to Dodoma which was officially completed in 1996.
Dar es Salaam is Tanzania's most prominent city for arts, fashion, media, film, television and finance. It is the capital of the co-extensive Dar es Salaam Region, one of Tanzania's 31 administrative regions and consists of five districts: Kinondoni in the north; Ilala in the centre; Ubungo and Temeke in the south; and Kigamboni in the east across the Kurasini estuary.
In the 19th century, 'Mzizima (Swahili for "healthy town") was a coastal fishing village on the periphery of Indian Ocean trade routes. In 1865 or 1866, Sultan Majid bin Said of Zanzibar began building a new city very close to Mzizima and named it Dar es Salaam. The name is commonly translated from Arabic as "abode (home) of peace", from dar ("house"), and es salaam ("of peace"). Dar es Salaam fell into decline after Majid's death in 1870, but was revived in 1887 when the German East Africa Company established a station there. The town's growth was facilitated by its role as the administrative and commercial centre of German East Africa and industrial expansion following the construction of the Central Railway Line in the early 1900s.
In the East African campaign of World War I, British and Empire forces captured German East Africa. The Royal Navy bombarded the city with the monitor Mersey on 21 July 1916 and battleship HMS Vengeance on 21 August. The German colonial authorities surrendered the city on 3 September. German East Africa became the British Tanganyika Territory.
Dar es Salaam remained the administrative and commercial centre. Under British indirect rule, European areas such as Oyster Bay and African areas (e.g., Kariakoo and Ilala) developed separately from the city centre. The city's population also included a large number of workers from British India, many of whom came to take advantage of trade and commercial opportunities. After World War II, Dar es Salaam experienced a period of rapid growth.
Political developments, including the formation and growth of the Tanganyika African National Union, led to Tanganyika's independence from colonial rule in December 1961. Dar es Salaam continued to serve as its capital, even when Tanganyika and the People's Republic of Zanzibar merged to form Tanzania in 1964. In 1973, provisions were made to relocate the capital to Dodoma, a more centrally located city in the interior. The relocation process to Dodoma was completed, although Dar es Salaam continued to be the location of most government offices.
In 1967, the Tanzanian government declared the ujamaa policy, which made Tanzania lean towards socialism. The move hampered the potential growth of the city as the government encouraged people not to move into cities and instead remain in Ujamaa socialist villages. By the 1980s, the policy failed to combat the increasing poverty and hunger that Tanzania faced, and had delayed necessary development. This situation led to the liberalisation policy of the 1980s that essentially ended socialism and silenced its proponents within Tanzania's government through political repression.
Until the late 1990s, Dar es Salaam was not regarded in the same echelon as Africa's leading cities like Cairo, Nairobi, Johannesburg, Lagos, or Addis Ababa. During the 2000s, businesses opened and prospered; growth expanded in the construction sector, with new multi-storey buildings, bridges and roads; Tanzanian banks headquartered in the city became better regulated; and the Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange expanded. The port is prominent for entrepot trade with landlocked countries like Rwanda, Burundi, Zambia, and the eastern portion of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The city's skyline features tall buildings, among them the 35-storey PSPF Tower (finished in 2015) and the Tanzania Ports Authority (TPA) Tower, the tallest in the country (completed in 2016).
A number of historical buildings and elements of urban planning, such as parts of the harbour and streets going back to colonial times, still exist. The Old Boma, one of the city's oldest buildings, was built in 1866–67 by Majid bin Said, sultan of Zanzibar, and enlarged under German rule. The Botanical Gardens now are close to the National Museum of Tanzania. The present-day State House goes back to Majid bin Said, and were the seat of the German and later the British colonial governments. Along with the Azania Front Lutheran Church, built between 1899 and 1902, and the Roman Catholic St. Joseph's Cathedral, constructed around the same period, Ocean Road Hospital are early historical buildings in Dar es Salaam.
Dar es Salaam is located at 6°48' S, 39°17' E (−6.8000, 39.2833), on a natural harbour on the coast of East Africa, with sandy beaches in some areas.
Dar es Salaam Region is divided into five administrative districts, four of which are governed by municipal councils that are affiliated with the city's suburbs or wards.
Kinondoni is the most populated of the districts. It houses half of the city's population and several high-income suburbs.
The administrative district of Ilala contains almost all government offices, ministries, and the Central Business District. It is the transportation hub of the city, as the Julius Nyerere International Airport, Central Railway Station and Tazara Railway Station are all within the district's boundaries. The residential areas are mainly middle- to high-income, among them:
Temeke is the main industrial district of the city, where manufacturing (both heavy and light industry) is located. To the east is the Port of Dar es Salaam, the largest port in the country. Temeke is believed to have the largest concentration of low-income residents due to industry. It is home to military and police officers as well as port officials.
The Ubungo terminal serves as a transportation link to most large Dar es Salaam urban nodes. The narrow-gauge commuter rail runs from there to the city centre, with ten level crossings along the route.
This district is characterised with a lot of potential social and economic centres such as industries i.e. Urafiki textile industry, bus station and various institutes and universities such as National Institute of Transport(NIT)
Kigamboni (also known as South Beach), a beachfront suburb on a peninsula, is home to an economically diverse population. Access to the suburb is mainly by ferry, although the Kigamboni Bridge provides an alternative.
Dar es Salaam experiences tropical climatic conditions, typified by hot and humid weather throughout much of the year due to its proximity to the equator and the warm Indian Ocean. It has a tropical savanna climate (Köppen: Aw/As). Annual rainfall is approximately 1,150 millimetres or 45 inches, and in a normal year there are two rainy seasons: the "long rains" in April and May, and the "short rains" in November and December.
A 2019 paper published in PLOS One estimated that under Representative Concentration Pathway 4.5, a "moderate" scenario of climate change where global warming reaches ~2.5–3 °C (4.5–5.4 °F) by 2100, the climate of Dar es Salaam in the year 2050 would most closely resemble the current climate of Barquisimeto in Venezuela. The annual temperature and temperatures of the warmest month would increase by 1.3 °C (2.3 °F), while the temperature of the coldest month would go down by 0.1 °C (0.18 °F). According to Climate Action Tracker, the current warming trajectory appears consistent with 2.7 °C (4.9 °F), which closely matches RCP 4.5.
Moreover, according to the 2022 IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, Dar es Salaam is one of 12 major African cities (Abidjan, Alexandria, Algiers, Cape Town, Casablanca, Dakar, Dar es Salaam, Durban, Lagos, Lomé, Luanda and Maputo) which would be the most severely affected by the future sea level rise. It estimates that they would collectively sustain cumulative damages of US$65 billion under RCP 4.5 and US$86.5 billion for the high-emission scenario RCP 8.5 by the year 2050. Additionally, RCP 8.5 combined with the hypothetical impact from marine ice sheet instability at high levels of warming would involve up to US$137.5 billion in damages, while the additional accounting for the "low-probability, high-damage events" may increase aggregate risks to US$187 billion for the "moderate" RCP4.5, US$206 billion for RCP8.5 and US$397 billion under the high-end ice sheet instability scenario. Since sea level rise would continue for about 10,000 years under every scenario of climate change, future costs of sea level rise would only increase, especially without adaptation measures.
In his 1979 journal A Modern History of Tanganyika, historian John Iliffe wrote, "In 1949 the town became a municipality...[with] four honourable nominated Town Councillors who elected a Mayor." According to Associational Life in African Cities: Popular Responses to the Urban Crisis, published in 2001: "Until June 1996, Dar es Salaam was managed by the Dar es Salaam City Council...the highest policy-making body in the city." As of 2017, Paul Makonda serves as the commissioner of Dar es Salaam Region.
Dar es Salaam is the most populous city in Tanzania and the fifth most populous in Africa. In 2020, the population was estimated to be 8 million. Muslims make up 70% of the population in Dar es Salaam.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Dar es Salaam”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.