Flags and Tanzania

At the end of the month I am off to the Serengeti so I started reading up on the flag of Tanzania. I think the current flag is pretty straightforward, but I managed to get sidetracked into Google and became interested in other flags that contribute to tell a long story of regional history.

The area is rich in resources, so travelers and merchants from the Persian Gulf and Western India had visited the East African coast since early in the first millennium AD, and the area was generally under Islamic Arab control for much of the time. It's easy to forget that there was a lot going on in the world before the Europeans got involved, but that didn't last long.


Vasco da Gama (remember him?) then visited the region on his first voyage in 1498 and began a period of Portuguese control that lasted until the mid 1800's. The region didn't merit its own flag, but the flag of King Manuel I of Portugal flew during the time of the Vasco da Gama's voyages.

In 1885, Germany moved in and established the trading colony of German East Africa which flew a flag that depicted a slightly skewed version of the Southern Cross while still looking totally northern and Germanic, from 1885 until 1919.

With Germany’s defeat in World War I, control of the region transferred to the British and the new state of Tanganyika, which had a pretty cool flag in the vein of other British colonies, but with an African twist.

The region gained independence from Great Britian, but  prior to today’s Tanzania, the nation of Tanganyika adopted a new flag from 1961 until 1964.

While all this was going on, the offshore islands of Zanzibar and Pemba were ruled by a sultan. Originally under rule from Oman, and later locally ruled. From 1896 until 1963 the flag of the Sultanate of Zanzibar was about as simple as can be.

Upon gaining independence through revolution in 1963, Zanzibar briefly adopted a new flag, based on the island’s Afro-Shirazi Party banner.

Then, in 1964, the independent country of Tanzania was created from the merging of Tanganyika and Zanzibar. The new flag, in use today, adopted the elements of their separate flags, but struck a diagonal to create a flag that attempted not to show dominance of one over the other.
The green is symbolic of the fertile lands of Tanzania, while yellow is for the country's mineral deposits, and blue is for the waters of Tanzania, including the Indian Ocean. The black in the center represents the people of Tanzania. Nicely done.

However... There is a bit more to the story. Zanzibar, which maintains a degree self-governance, decided they were not entirely happy with things as they were, and in 2005 the island adopted a separate flag. I understand that it's their flag and they are happy to have their own, but what's up with this?