Arusha aims for city status

Arusha may finally get its long-awaited official upgrade from municipal town to city, which has been in the administrative pipeline for over five years. Deputy minister for local governments and regional administration, Aggrey Mwanri, has called on the leadership of...

Tanzania's new postal system launched in Arusha

A new system of addresses and postal codes covering the whole of Tanzania was officially launched on 18 January to replace the old PO box system centred on local post offices. Within the next five years businesses and private residences...

Poaching in the Serengeti

The number of arrests for poaching in the Serengeti national park increased from 959 cases in 2002 to 1028 in 2009, according to an article in the Arusha Times. During a recent visit of a parliamentary committee to Tanzania’s most...

Arusha lacks secondary school places

Secondary schools in Arusha are so short of places that about 7,000 children may be left out of the Form One intake in 2010. This is partly because of a lack of classrooms but also because a large number of...

Floods hit Arusha-Babati road

Just before Christmas the local Arusha Times was wondering what might have happened to the 400 or so hippos that inhabited Lake Babati, a small lake about two hours travel south of the north Tanzanian city. It quoted local inhabitants...

Ngorongoro cattle killed by drought

According to estimates by local government officers over 100,000 cattle out of a total of about 380,00 had died by the end of November 2009 in the Ngorongoro region as a result of the prolonged drought. The heavy rains that...

Arusha gets new hotels

Tourist figures in Tanzania may have been down by ten per cent in the first ten months of 2009, but new hotels are going up all over Arusha, the centre of the northern safari circuit, the gateway to the Serengeti...

Air Tanzania introduces daily Dar-Arusha flights

State-owned Air Tanzania has introduced a daily flight from Dar es Salaam to Arusha airport to boost revenue for the struggling airline. The move puts the carrier in direct competition with private company Precision Air, which already operates daily flights...

Tanzanian farmers to get help from FAO

Farmers in Tanzania are to benefit from a project of the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) to improve production and get their produce to market. The German-sponsored scheme intends to help Tanzania move from subsistence to commercial agriculture...