Tanzania is East Africa's largest country and home to some of the continent's most iconic landscapes and wildlife. Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa's highest peak, the Serengeti's annual wildebeest migration, and the Ngorongoro Crater are all within its borders. The semi-autonomous archipelago of Zanzibar, once a powerful independent sultanate and centre of the Indian Ocean spice trade, merged with mainland Tanganyika to form Tanzania in 1964.
Population and area are rounded.
Green represents the land and its vegetation, yellow the mineral wealth, black the people, and blue the many lakes and rivers and the Indian Ocean. The diagonal design combines the flags of Tanganyika and Zanzibar, which united in 1964 to form Tanzania.
Tanganyika became independent from Britain in 1961 with a green flag crossed by a black band edged in gold. Zanzibar's revolutionary flag of 1964 was blue, black and green. When the two united on 26 April 1964, the new flag combined them diagonally. Tanzania is home to Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa's highest mountain, and to the Serengeti.
Diagonal black stripe with yellow borders going from lower left to upper right; green top left, blue bottom right.
Tanzania is home to Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest peak in Africa at 5,895 metres.
Tanzania's flag is often mixed up with these. Learn to tell them apart:
Every flag that has flown over Tanzania, from today back through time.
After Tanganyika and Zanzibar united in 1964, a new flag merged Tanganyika's green and black with Zanzibar's blue into a yellow-edged black diagonal. Green is land, blue sea, black the people, yellow mineral wealth.
Independent Tanganyika flew a green field with a central black, yellow-edged stripe — colors that carried directly into the union flag.
Zanzibar, which united with Tanganyika to form Tanzania:
Zanzibar gained independence from Britain as a constitutional sultanate in December 1963, flying a plain red flag (the historic colour of its Omani-descended dynasty). It lasted barely a month before being overthrown.
The January 1964 revolution overthrew the sultan and raised a blue-black-green flag. In April 1964 it merged with Tanganyika to form Tanzania — the "Tan" + "Zan" of the new name.
A fabulously wealthy Swahili-coast sultanate on an island off Tanzania, controlling the medieval gold trade from Great Zimbabwe.
Empires, kingdoms and republics that once covered part of Tanzania.
The plain red banner derives from the Sultanate of Oman, whose Busaidi dynasty ruled Zanzibar until the 1964 revolution that led to union with Tanganyika as Tanzania.
Newly independent Tanganyika flew a green-black-green flag before merging with Zanzibar in 1964; the union's name, Tanzania, fused 'Tan-' from Tanganyika with 'Zan-' from Zanzibar.
Tanzania shares a land border with 8 countries: Burundi, the DR Congo, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Uganda and Zambia.
Play Globalio and learn Tanzania's flag
Zambia
Mozambique
Burundi
DR Congo
Kenya
Malawi
Rwanda
Uganda