Dodoma, Tabora & the West

The hills of Kondoa hold some of the oldest human traces in the region: rock shelters painted with animals, people and abstract figures, some very old and others made by later farming peoples. Hunter-gatherers such as the ancestors of the Sandawe, whose click language suggests a long presence, were joined by Bantu-speaking farmers, among them the Gogo of the Dodoma plains, the Nyaturu around Singida, the Nyamwezi of Tabora and the Ha of Kigoma.

In the 19th century this was the corridor of the central caravan route between the coast and Lake Tanganyika. The Gogo charged tolls on passing caravans, and the Nyamwezi became famous as long-distance porters and traders. Arab and Swahili merchants founded Tabora, then called Kazeh, as their inland base, while Nyamwezi leaders such as Mirambo built powerful states and fought the traders for control of the route. Burton and Speke passed through in 1857, and at Ujiji, the lake port, Henry Morton Stanley found David Livingstone in 1871.

The Germans pushed the central railway west, reaching Kigoma in 1914, and Belgian forces from the Congo took Tabora in 1916. Under British rule the failed groundnut scheme of the late 1940s cleared huge areas around Kongwa. After independence Dodoma was chosen as the new capital in 1974, but the move was slow, and only in the late 2010s did the government move its ministries in earnest. Kigoma has repeatedly received refugees from conflicts in Burundi and the DR Congo.

The Nyamwezi, the country's second-largest people, dominate Tabora, and their history as porters, traders and chiefs gave them wide influence; Nyerere himself taught in Tabora, whose schools educated many of the country's early leaders. The Gogo of Dodoma are cattle-keepers with a strong musical tradition, and the Nyaturu and Iramba farm the Singida plains. In Kondoa and its surrounding hills live the Rangi and the Sandawe.

Kigoma's Ha share language and culture with Burundi across the border, and the town has a busier, more mixed feel, shaped by the lake trade with Burundi, the DR Congo and Zambia and by decades of refugee arrivals. Congolese music has long been popular here.

Religion is mixed: Christianity predominates in much of the region, while Islam has deep roots in Ujiji and Tabora from the caravan era, when coastal Swahili culture spread inland with the traders. Dodoma, as the capital, draws people from across the country, and Swahili is the everyday common tongue everywhere.

Dodoma has grown fast since the government's move, to about 750,000 people in its city, with new ministry buildings, a government quarter at Mtumba, the parliament and the large University of Dodoma. Tabora, Kigoma, Singida and smaller towns such as Manyoni and Kondoa are quieter and slower paced, market centres for their farming districts.

Most people live by farming and herding. The dry centre grows sorghum, millet, sunflowers and groundnuts and keeps cattle, goats and sheep; Singida is known for sunflower oil and Dodoma for grapes. Tabora grows tobacco, rice and honey from its woodlands, and Kigoma lives from fishing on the lake, oil palms, cassava and beans, and cross-border trade.

Life in the smaller towns follows the market day, the train and the season. Current issues include drought and water shortages on the central plateau, deforestation in the Tabora and Kigoma woodlands, the long-term hosting of refugees in Kigoma's camps, and the pace of Dodoma's growth as the capital.

The central plateau eats simply. Ugali made from maize, or from sorghum and millet in the drier areas, comes with beans, greens, groundnut sauce or goat stew, and roasted goat and beef fill the nyama choma grills of Dodoma's bars. Sunflower oil from Singida is the everyday cooking oil across much of the country, and honey from Tabora's woodlands is sold at roadsides and markets.

Dodoma is the heart of Tanzania's small wine industry, begun by Catholic missionaries; the dry climate allows grapes to be harvested more than once a year, and local red and sweet wines are sold across the country.

Kigoma's food comes from Lake Tanganyika. Dagaa, tiny silver fish dried on the shore, are fried with tomatoes and onions and eaten with ugali, often made from cassava here. Red palm oil pressed in the villages around Kigoma gives local stews their colour and flavour, and Congolese-style dishes appear in the town's small restaurants.

The west's great draw is the chimpanzees of Lake Tanganyika. Gombe Stream National Park, a narrow strip of steep, forested valleys north of Kigoma, is where Jane Goodall began her study of wild chimpanzees in 1960, and visitors can follow habituated groups along forest trails and swim from its pebble beaches. Much further south, Mahale Mountains National Park rises steeply from the lake, with Japanese-led research on its chimpanzees dating from the 1960s, forest camps on sandy beaches and Mount Nkungwe above.

Kigoma itself is a lake port with a railway station built by the Germans, and at nearby Ujiji a memorial and small museum mark where Stanley met Livingstone. The MV Liemba, built by the Germans in 1913 as the Graf von Götzen, has sailed from Kigoma for a century, and renovation of the ship began in 2024.

In the centre, Dodoma has the parliament building, the Gaddafi Mosque and vineyards around the city, and the Kondoa rock-art sites lie to the north. Tabora, shaded by old mango trees, keeps the site of Livingstone's house at Kwihara nearby, and the Singida plains lie further west.