Dodoma

Dodoma began as a stop on the central caravan route across the plateau, in country the Gogo had settled with their herds, and the modern town was founded in 1907 by German colonists during construction of the central railway from Dar es Salaam. The name comes from a Gogo phrase meaning 'it has sunk'. Under British rule it stayed a modest administrative and railway town on the dry highway between the coast and Tabora, remembered in the region mostly for famine years and for the missions and schools established around it.

The change came after independence. Julius Nyerere's government decided in the mid-1970s to move the national capital inland to Dodoma, a decision in keeping with Ujamaa's emphasis on the rural interior and intended to shift attention away from the coastal city. A master plan was drawn up and parliament began meeting here, but money was short, ministries stayed in Dar es Salaam, and for four decades Dodoma was a capital in name with a small-town reality.

The move was pushed through in the 2010s: civil servants were ordered to relocate, a new government quarter was laid out at Mtumba, and in October 2019 the president's office and the ministry headquarters completed the transfer to it. A new State House was unveiled in 2023. The University of Dodoma, opened in 2007, had already brought tens of thousands of students. The standard-gauge railway from the coast, new roads and a building boom followed, and the city's population has multiplied within a generation.

The plateau around Dodoma is the country of the Gogo, cattle-keepers and cultivators whose music is among the best known in Tanzania — a tradition of massed voices, drums and the ilimba, the large lamellophone played by Hukwe Zawose, the best-known Gogo musician, and is still performed in the region. Gogo songs and dances appear at weddings, harvest celebrations and national events held in the capital.

Dodoma is also, more than most Tanzanian cities, a place of institutions. Church and mosque both have deep local roots: Anglican and Catholic missions were established here during the colonial period, leaving cathedrals, schools and a university, while Islam arrived earlier along the caravan route, and the city's main mosque is a prominent landmark. The rhythm of the working week is set by offices, parliament and the academic terms of a very large student population.

Because the ministries moved, much of the city is made up of people from elsewhere in Tanzania, speaking Swahili as the common tongue and keeping ties to home regions. That gives Dodoma a mixed, somewhat transient character: busy when parliament sits and quieter when it rises. Manners are formal by Tanzanian standards, greetings are unhurried, and elders and officials are addressed with care.

About 765,000 people lived in the city at the 2022 census, several times the population it had when the capital project began. Government is the largest employer, followed by the universities, trade, transport and construction, and the skyline of cranes and half-finished blocks reflects how fast the city has been building.

The surrounding countryside is dry and farming is a gamble on a single rainy season: sorghum, millet, groundnuts, sunflowers and maize, with cattle, goats and sunflower-oil pressing important across the region. Grapes are the local speciality, grown on red soils around the city and turned into the wine for which Dodoma is known nationally. Water supply has long been a constraint on both farms and the growing city.

Daily life runs early. Markets and bus stands fill before the heat, offices work through the morning, and the late afternoon brings students, football and the grills along the roadsides. Housing has spread quickly into what was open bush, and rents have risen with the influx of civil servants. Current concerns are practical ones: water, transport across a city built at low density, drought on the plateau, and services keeping pace with growth.

Dodoma eats the food of the dry centre. Ugali is the staple, made from maize or, in leaner years and drier districts, from sorghum and millet, and eaten with beans, cowpeas, greens, groundnut sauce or goat stew. Groundnuts appear in sauces and roasted as a snack, and sunflower oil pressed in the region is the everyday cooking fat.

Grilled meat is the sociable meal. Nyama choma — goat or beef roasted slowly over charcoal, chopped on a board and eaten with kachumbari, a raw salad of tomato and onion — is the fixture of the city's open-air bars, often with grilled bananas or chips. Rice dishes such as pilau appear on holidays and at weddings, and chapati, mandazi and strong sweet chai are the standard breakfast.

What sets Dodoma apart is wine. Catholic missionaries planted vines on the plateau, and growers take two harvests a year, in March and again in August or September. Tanzanian red and sweet white wines are made around the city and sold across the country, and fresh grapes and grape juice are sold from roadside stalls in season.

Markets carry the plateau's other produce — dried fish brought inland, honey, sesame, sunflower seed, tamarind and baobab fruit, whose powdery pulp is sold as a sharp sweet and mixed into drinks.