TANZANIA, FLAG OF

national flag consisting of triangles of green and blue separated by a black diagonal stripe with yellow fimbriations (narrow borders). The flag's width-to-length ratio is 2 to 3. The liberation struggle in Tanganyika was led by the Tanganyika African National Union, whose flag was a horizontal tricolour of green-black-green. Elections confirmed the overwhelming popular support for the organization, and British authorities suggested modifying the party flag for use as a national flag subsequent to independence on December 9, 1961. Yellow fimbriations were added at that time. Under Arab rule Zanzibar had long flown a red flag, but a black African regime came to power on January 12, 1964, under a flag of black, yellow, and blue. The following month the ruling Afro-Shirazi Party introduced a new national flag similar to its own. The horizontal blue-black-green stripes stood for the sea, the people, and the land, respectively, while a narrow white vertical stripe at the hoist was for peace. In April 1964 the countries of Tanganyika and Zanzibar united, and in early July their flag traditions were melded to create the new national flag of Tanzania. The flag colours were incorporated diagonally for distinctiveness. The majority population of the country is symbolized by the black stripe, while green suggests the rich agricultural resources of the land. Mineral wealth is reflected in the narrow yellow borders, while the Indian Ocean is symbolized by blue. After Zanzibar united with Tanganyika, the Zanzibar flag nevertheless continued to be used locally on those islands. Whitney Smith History Tanganyika Early exploration Most of the known history of Tanganyika before the 19th century concerns the coastal area, although the interior has a number of important prehistoric sites, including the Olduvai Gorge. Trading contacts between Arabia and the East African coast existed by the 1st century AD, and there are indications of connections with India. The coastal trading centres were mainly Arab settlements, and relations between the Arabs and their African neighbours appear to have been fairly friendly. After the arrival of the Portuguese in the late 15th century, the position of the Arabs was gradually undermined, but the Portuguese made little attempt to penetrate into the interior. They lost their foothold north of the Ruvuma River early in the 18th century as a result of an alliance between the coastal Arabs and the ruler of Muscat on the Arabian Peninsula. This link remained extremely tenuous, however, until French interest in the slave trade from the ancient town of Kilwa, on the Tanganyikan coast, revived the trade in 1776. Attention by the French also aroused the sultan of Muscat's interest in the economic possibilities of the East African coast, and a new Omani governor was appointed at Kilwa. For some time most of the slaves came from the Kilwa hinterland, and until the 19th century such contacts as existed between the coast and the interior were due mainly to African caravans from the interior. Major states, peoples, and trade routes of eastern Africa, c. 1850. In their constant search for slaves, Arab traders began to penetrate farther into the interior, more particularly in the southeast toward Lake Nyasa. Farther north two merchants from India followed the tribal trade routes to reach the country of the Nyamwezi about 1825. Along this route ivory appears to have been as great an attraction as slaves, and Sa'id ibn Sultan himself, after the transfer of his capital from Muscat to Zanzibar, gave every encouragement to the Arabs to pursue these trading possibilities. From the Nyamwezi country the Arabs pressed on to Lake Tanganyika in the early 1840s. Tabora (or Kaz, as it was then called) and Ujiji, on Lake Tanganyika, became important trading centres, and a number of Arabs made their homes there. They did not annex these territories but occasionally ejected hostile chieftains. Mirambo, an African chief who built for himself a temporary empire to the west of Tabora in the 1860s and '70s, effectively blocked the Arab trade routes when they refused to pay him tribute. His empire was purely a personal one, however, and collapsed on his death in 1884. The first Europeans to show an interest in Tanganyika in the 19th century were missionaries of the Church Missionary Society, Johann Ludwig Krapf and Johannes Rebmann, who in the late 1840s reached Kilimanjaro. It was a fellow missionary, Jakob Erhardt, whose famous slug map (showing, on Arab information, a vast, shapeless, inland lake) helped stimulate the interest of the British explorers Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke. They traveled from Bagamoyo to Lake Tanganyika in 185758, and Speke also saw Lake Victoria. This expedition was followed by Speke's second journey, in 1860, in the company of J.A. Grant, to justify the former's claim that the Nile rose in Lake Victoria. These primarily geographic explorations were followed by the activities of David Livingstone, who in 1866 set out on his last journey for Lake Nyasa. Livingstone's object was to expose the horrors of the slave trade and, by opening up legitimate trade with the interior, to destroy the slave trade at its roots. Livingstone's journey led to the later expeditions of H.M. Stanley and V.L. Cameron. Spurred on by Livingstone's work and example, a number of missionary societies began to take an interest in East Africa after 1860. German East Africa Eastern Africa as partitioned by the imperial powers, c. 1914. It was left to Germany, with its newly awakened interest in colonial expansion, to open up the country to European influences. The first agent of German imperialism was Carl Peters, who, with Joachim, Count Pfeil and Karl Juhlke, evaded the sultan of Zanzibar late in 1884 to land on the mainland. He made a number of contracts in the Usambara area by which several chiefs were said to have surrendered their territory to him. Peters' activities were confirmed by Bismarck. By the Anglo-German Agreement of 1886 the sultan of Zanzibar's vaguely substantiated claims to dominion on the mainland were limited to a 10-mile-wide coastal strip, and Britain and Germany divided the hinterland between them as spheres of influence, the region to the south becoming known as German East Africa. Following the example of the British to the north, the Germans obtained a lease of the coastal strip from the sultan in 1888, but their tactlessness and fear of commercial competition led to a Muslim rising in August 1888. The rebellion was put down only after the intervention of the imperial German government and with the assistance of the British navy. Recognizing the administrative inability of the German East Africa Company, which had theretofore ruled the country, the German government declared a protectorate over its sphere of influence in 1891 and over the coastal strip, where the company had bought out the sultan's rights. Germany was anxious to exploit the resources of its new dependency, but lack of communications at first restricted development to the coastal area. The introduction of sisal from Florida in 1892 by the German agronomist Richard Hindorff marked the beginning of the territory's most valuable industry, which was encouraged by the development of a railway from the new capital of Dar es Salaam to Lake Tanganyika. In 1896 work began on the construction of a railway running northeastward from Tanga to Moshi, which it reached in 1912. This successfully encouraged the pioneer coffee-growing activities on the slopes of Kilimanjaro. Wild rubber tapped by Africans, together with plantation-grown rubber, helped swell the country's economy. The government also supplied good-quality cottonseed free to African growers and sold it cheaply to European planters. The administration tried to make good the lack of clerks and minor craftsmen by encouraging the development of schools, an activity in which various missionary societies were already engaged. The enforcement of German overlordship was strongly resisted, but control was established by the beginning of the 20th century. Almost at once came a reaction to German methods of administration, the outbreak of the Maji Maji rising in 1905. Although there was little organization behind it, the rising spread over a considerable portion of southeastern Tanganyika and was not finally suppressed until 1907. It led to a reappraisal of German policy in East Africa. The imperial government had attempted to protect African land rights in 1895 but had failed in its objective in the Kilimanjaro area. Similarly, liberal labour legislation had not been properly implemented. The German government set up a separate Colonial Department in 1907, and more money was invested in East Africa. A more liberal form of administration rapidly replaced the previous semimilitary system. World War I put an end to all German experiments. Blockaded by the British navy, the country could neither export produce nor get help from Germany. The British advance into German territory continued steadily from 1916 until the whole country was eventually occupied. The effects of the war upon Germany's achievements in East Africa were disastrous; the administration and economy were completely disrupted. In these circumstances the Africans reverted to their old social systems and their old form of subsistence farming. Under the Treaty of Versailles (1919), Britain received a League of Nations mandate to administer the territory except for Ruanda-Urundi, which came under Belgian administration, and the Kionga triangle, which went to Portugal. The economy The Tanzanian economy is overwhelmingly agrarian in nature and reflects the leadership's political commitment to socialist development and central planning. Agriculture constitutes over half of the gross domestic product (GDP) and some 80 percent of export earnings, and it provides a livelihood for about nine-tenths of the economically active population. Industry accounts for less than 10 percent of the GDP, and mining less than 1 percent, whereas services, including public administration, produce approximately one-third of the GDP. A number of industries and public services were nationalized at the time of the Arusha Declaration in 1967, when the intention to build a socialist state was announced. Beginning in 1979 and continuing throughout the 1980s, the international oil price rise, the country's declining terms of trade, and the sluggishness of the domestic economy brought about rapid inflation, the emergence of an unofficial market (consisting of the smuggling of goods abroad in order to avoid taxes and price controls), and a government fiscal crisis. Despite attempts to cut imports to the barest minimum, the trade deficit widened to an unprecedented level, and the balance-of-payments problem became so acute that development projects had to be suspended. This economic crisis forced the government to secure a loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 1986. The loan's conditions required the elimination of subsidies and price controls as well as some social services and staff positions in state-run enterprises. Thereafter, the government continued to implement measures intended to create a mixed economy and reduce the extent of the untaxable unofficial markets. Agriculture The major food crops are corn, rice, sorghum, millet, bananas, cassava, sweet potatoes, barley, potatoes, and wheat. Corn and rice are the preferred cereals, whereas cassava and sweet potatoes are used as famine-prevention crops owing to their drought-resistant qualities. In some areas food crops are sold as cash crops. Peasants in the Ruvuma and Rukwa regions, for example, have specialized in commercial corn production, and in riverine areas, especially along the Rufiji, rice is sold. Export cash crops provide the major source of foreign exchange for the country. Coffee and cotton are by far the most important in this respect, but exports of tea, cashew nuts, tobacco, and sisal are also substantial. Cloves are Zanzibar's main export. Once the source of over 90 percent of the world's cloves, Zanzibar now produces only about 10 percent of the international supply. The villagization program of the mid-1970s was followed by government efforts to distribute improved seed corn and fertilizers through the new village administrations, but timely distribution of such agricultural inputs was largely thwarted by the logistical problems of transporting them to the villages. Nevertheless, increased yields, attributed to the use of chemical fertilizers, have been achieved in peasant corn production in the south and southwestern regions.