Flag of Tanzania, Bendera ya Tanzania – Colors, Meaning, History
The flag of Tanzania consists of a black diagonal stripe with yellow edges, divided diagonally from the lower corner of the crane side, with a green upper triangle and a light blue lower triangle. Adopted in 1964 to replace the individual flags of Tanganyika and Zanzibar, it has been the flag of the United Republic of Tanzania since the two nations merged that year. The current flag design incorporates elements from the two previous flags. It is one of relatively few national flags to include a diagonal streak, with other examples including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Namibia, Trinidad and Tobago, and Brunei.
History
The United Kingdom—along with its hegemony South Africa and Allied Belgium—occupied the majority of German East Africa in 1916 during the East African Campaign. Three years later, the British were tasked with administering Tanganyika territory as a League of Nations mandate. It was converted into a United Nations territory after World War II, when the LN was dissolved in 1946 and the United Nations was formed. In 1954, the Tanganyika African Assembly – which spoke out against British colonial rule – became the Tanganyika African National Union under Julius Nyerere and Oscar Kambona. The goal of the political party was to gain the independence of the territory; [2] Its tricolor flag consisted of three green, black, and yellow horizontal stripes. Shortly before independence in 1961, elections were held in Tanganyika. After TANU’s overall victory, British colonial leaders advised them to use their party’s flag design as inspiration for a new national flag. As a result, yellow stripes were added, and Tanganyika became independent on December 9, 1961
The Sultanate of Zanzibar, which was a British protectorate until 1963, used the red flag during its rule over the island. The last sultan was overthrown in the Zanzibar Revolution on January 12, 1964, and the Afro-Shirazi – the ruling political party of the Zanzibar People’s Republic and Pemba – adopted a national flag the following month inspired by his party. Science. This is made of three colors with three horizontal bars of blue, black and green.
In April 1964, Tanganyika and Zanzibar united to form a single state – the United Republic of Tanzania. Thus, the designs of the flag of the two countries were combined to create a new national flag. The green and black of the Tanganyika flag have been retained along with the blue of the Zanzibar flag, with a diagonal design used to “stand out”. This combined design was adopted on June 30, 1964. It appeared on the first set of stamps issued by the newly unified country.
The flag’s colors and symbols carry cultural, political and regional meanings. Green indicates the natural vegetation and the country’s “rich agricultural resources”, while black represents the Swahili people who are from Tanzania. The blue color represents the Indian Ocean, as well as the country’s many lakes and rivers. The thin lines represent Tanzania’s mineral wealth derived from the Earth’s “rich deposits”. While Whitney Smith in Encyclopædia Britannica and Dorling Kindersley’s Complete Flags of the World describe the fiftieth as yellow, other sources—such as The World Factbook and Simon Clarke in Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa—confirm that it is in fact gold.