By Godson S. Maanga
Dear AK,
In your interesting essay entitled “The 10 most well-known countries in Africa” (The Guardian, Thursday 14 July 2016, p. 8) you excluded Tanzania which should have come first in your list of 10 best countries in Africa. In a list of ten, if not five, most important countries in Africa Tanzania should be included due to the following undeniable facts:
- Tanzania has the famous Olduvai Gorge, the historical site where the couple paleontologists, Louis and Mary Leakey, excavated some of the oldest fossils in human history – the Zinjanthropus boisei and Homo Habilis, hominids dated between 1.75 and 2 million years ago.
- Tanzania has Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa and the second highest in the world, after Everest.
- Tanzania has Ngorongoro Crater, one of the world’s wonders and the only wild game habitat with tree-climbing lions.
- Tanzania, at Kihansi, has species of frogs that are not found anywhere else in the world.
- Tanzania has some of the best national parks and game reserves in the world, including Serengeti which way back in 1959 compelled Bernhard Grzimek (the stunned German Zoologist) to declare to the world that “Serengeti will not die” and to date, Serengeti is still alive.
- Tanzania produces Tanzanite, the only country in the world that contains these precious stones.
- Tanzania’s western territorial boundary goes through Lake Tanganyika (the lake that bears the country’s former name), the longest and the deepest lake in Africa and the second deepest in the world, after Lake Baikal in Russia.
- The legendary Rift Valley divides into two branches in southern Tanzania, at the northern tip of Lake Nyasa.
- Tanzania has Oldonyo Lengai, one of the awesome active volcanoes in the world.
- Tanzania has streams and rivers that pour their waters into Lake Victoria, the beginning of the legendary River Nile, the river without which even the Egypt you have ranked first would be a mere desert.
- Tanzania has produced Mr. Bert Shenkland, one of the best car rally drivers during the East African Safari and it has also produced Mr. Philbert Bayi, one of the best athletes in the world.
- Compared to most of her neighbors, Tanzania is a very peaceful country, nicknamed ‘The Island of Peace’, characterized by her ‘Harbor of Peace’ (Dar- es- Salaam).
- Tanzania is the only country in Africa with a stable political union (i.e. the Tanzania Mainland-Zanzibar Union) which completes 52 years in 2016.
- Tanzania is the home country for two international figures (Dr. Salim Ahmed Salim and Dr. Asha-Rose Migiro) who in different capacities have worked with UN very successfully.
- Tanzania has contributed enormously to the liberation of many countries in Africa, including South Africa that you have ranked second in your list. Most liberation movements had bases of operation in Tanzania.
- To crown everything, Tanzania was first led by Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere, one of the best statesmen in the world, historically remembered as the Ujamaa architect and politically revered as the ‘Father of the Nation’.
