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| Country | Tanzania | | | Flag |  | | | Capital | name: Dar es Salaam geographic coordinates: 6 48 S, 39 17 E time difference: UTC+3 (8 hours ahead of Washington, DC during Standard Time) note: legislative offices have been transferred to Dodoma, which is planned as the new national capital; the National Assembly now meets there on a regular basis | | | Population | 39,384,223 note: estimates for this country explicitly take into account the effects of excess mortality due to AIDS; this can result in lower life expectancy, higher infant mortality and death rates, lower population and growth rates, and changes in the distribution of population by age and sex than would otherwise be expected (July 2007 est.) | | | GMT | +3 | | | Location | Eastern Africa, bordering the Indian Ocean, between Kenya and Mozambique
see map | | | Area | total: 945,087 sq km land: 886,037 sq km water: 59,050 sq km note: includes the islands of Mafia, Pemba, and Zanzibar | | | Ethnic groups | mainland - African 99% (of which 95% are Bantu consisting of more than 130 tribes), other 1% (consisting of Asian, European, and Arab); Zanzibar - Arab, African, mixed Arab and African | | | Religions | mainland - Christian 30%, Muslim 35%, indigenous beliefs 35%; Zanzibar - more than 99% Muslim | | | Languages | Kiswahili or Swahili (official), Kiunguja (name for Swahili in Zanzibar), English (official, primary language of commerce, administration, and higher education), Arabic (widely spoken in Zanzibar), many local languages note: Kiswahili (Swahili) is the mother tongue of the Bantu people living in Zanzibar and nearby coastal Tanzania; although Kiswahili is Bantu in structure and origin, its vocabulary draws on a variety of sources including Arabic and English; it has become the lingua franca of central and eastern Africa; the first language of most people is one of the local languages | | | Government type | republic | | | National holiday | Union Day (Tanganyika and Zanzibar), 26 April (1964) | | | Constitution | 25 April 1977; major revisions October 1984 | | | Legal system | based on English common law; judicial review of legislative acts limited to matters of interpretation; has not accepted compulsory ICJ jurisdiction | | | Background | Shortly after achieving independence from Britain in the early 1960s, Tanganyika and Zanzibar merged to form the nation of Tanzania in 1964. One-party rule came to an end in 1995 with the first democratic elections held in the country since the 1970s. Zanzibar's semi-autonomous status and popular opposition have led to two contentious elections since 1995, which the ruling party won despite international observers' claims of voting irregularities. | | Internet country code | .tz | |
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