Baba wa Taifa

Julius Kambarage Nyerere, considered to be the ‘Father’ of Tanzania, is one of Africa’s most renowned statesmen. A son of the chief of the small Zanaki tribe, he was born in 1922 in the village of Butiama, just few miles west of Lake Victoria.

After attending primary school in Musoma and mission schools in Tabora and Pugu, Nyerere studied at Makerere College in Uganda. He then taught for several years.

Between 1949 and 1952, he pursued graduate studies in history and economics at Edinburgh University in Scotland, before returning to Tanganyika to begin teaching.

It wasn’t Iong before Nyerere was drawn into politics. As president of the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU), Nyerere travelled within Tanzania and abroad, advocating peaceful change, social equality and racial harmony.

Soon his oratorical skills and political savvy earned him distinction as Tanganyika’s pre-eminent nationalist spokesman.
By 1962 he was president of the independent United Republic of Tanganyika, later renamed the United Republic of Tanzania, a position which he held until his resignation in 1985.

Nyerere is well known internationally for his philosophy of socialism and self-reliance, which was embodied in the Arusha Declaration of 1967. Many of the ideas contained in this program had been inspired by his studies of Karl Marx, his reading of the Bible and his observations of the Chinese communist system.

Baba wa Taifa

- Father of the Nation