Kenya - Tanzania - Uganda - Geometric rock art in Lake Victoria Region

Rock art, whether painted or engraved, serves as windows into the past, offering us insights into the lives of people who lived within specific landscapes. Research over many decades has taught us that these paintings and engravings were not simply for decorative purposes. Rather, these images were representations of spiritually important experiences (Lewis-Williams 1981; Smith 1997; Namono 2010; Ndlovu 2013). Such findings were a significant move from the days when interpretations of rock art were highly simplistic – anchored on the belief that authors of paintings and engravings were not human enough. The African continent is characterized by various kind of rock art, dotted throughout the continent. These vary at many levels and beyond simple stylistic analyses. For instance, the southern African region is well known for the many fine-line paintings made largely along the coastal areas. As a result, there are several rock art landscapes that have been inscribed as World Heritage Sites. Among these are the (i) Maloti Drakensberg Park, a transboundary site covering Lesotho and South Africa, (ii) Matopo Hills in Zimbabwe, (iii) Tsodilo Hills in Botswana, and Twyfelfontein in Namibia. The dominance of rock art among the inscribed sites of southern Africa is not replicated in East Africa. Kondoa rock art landscape stands tall as the only one that has been inscribed into the list of World Heritage Sites (Bwasiri 2016).

Tanzania - Tendaguru Paleontological Site (TPS)

'Tendaguru Palaeontological Site (TPS) is a world-famous palaeontological property situated almost 60 kilometres from the Indian Ocean over a hill elevated at about 310 metres above sea level in Lindi District, Lindi Region. In 1908, a mining engineer from Germany, Bernard Wilhelm Sattler, serendipitously discovered the Tendaguru dinosaur locality while exploring garnet-bearing rocks. Information about dinosaur remains was reported to Berlin Naturkundemuseum, later on, it was followed by palaeontological excavations under the rubric “Tendaguru Expedition”. The undertakings were carried out from 1909 to 1913 (Zils et al., 1995a; Bushozi and Saanane 2020). Such scientific expeditions yielded invertebrates, fish remains, and dinosaur remains of the Late Jurassic (See also Bushozi and Saanane 2020). Recovered dinosaur remains included the following groups such as theropods, ornithischians, and sauropods. Among famous finds include the biggest ever that lived in Africa, named Brachiosaurus brancaiwhich was later reclassified (renamed) by Taylor (2009) to be Giraffatitan brancai (Zils et al., 1995 and Bushozi and Saanane 2020). The said specimens are in a special dome constructed in Berlin to house and display their remains, about 12 metres high and 23.5 metres long. Other fossil materials recovered by Germans are stored in Berlin Naturkundemuseum, Humbolt University, where there are superbly displayed. Almost 400 fossil remains, including 80 articulated skeletons that were recovered from Tendaguru, are stored in Berlin Naturkundemuseum (Zils et al., 1995b). All fossil vertebrates and invertebrates were recovered from Tendaguru Formation or Tendaguru Beds, an area that accounts for more than 10,000 specimens (Bushozi and Saanane 2020). The property was Gazetted (Government Proclamation No. 186) as the National Heritage Site on 12th October 1937."

Source: UNESCO WHS Tentative List

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Tanzania - The Central Slave and Ivory Trade Route

Until, not even 150 years ago, millions of Africans had to bear a cruel fate. They were captured by slave hunters, chained together and forced to walk some times hundred of kilometers to be sold for example to planters who used them as cheap labour in their fields. Central and East Africa was one of the main areas where the slave hunters and traders, most of them Arabs made their shade deals. They caught their victims e.g. in some areas which is today parts of Democratic Republic of Congo and in the Western and Central parts of what is today Tanzania. The Slaves were brought to the coast and from there to the spice island of Zanzibar and many were sold further to the Arab countries, Persia, and India, Mauritania and Reunion. Officially, the slave trade was forbidden in 1873 under British pressure, but it went on secretly for several years. One of the routes that were used by the traders’ caravan started in Ujiji at the shore of Lake Tanganyika. It went over 1200 kilometers and ended in Bagamoyo just opposite of Zanzibar on main land Tanzania. Many experts view this as the main route of mainly three that were documented for East Africa. By now the list includes the Ujiji-Bagamoyo route as a whole. The idea is not only to protect the still visible reminds of the dark past like Arab Forts and other historic buildings or parts of the route that are existing, but also to intensify the research around the topic, to document the memories about the era and to preserve the culture and the traditions of the communities living along the route. In this regard, there are possibilities of Trans-national Nomination with neighbouring countries like Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Kenya and Mozambique. This possibility will be investigated during the nomination process. Six centres have been identified along the central slave route to include Bagamoyo, Mamboya, Mpwapwa, Kilimatinde, Kwihara and Ujiji Bagamoyo Due to its location along the Indian Ocean and being a major harbor and town along the coast of Tanzania that played a key role in the East Africa Slave trade; Bagamoyo is a “place of memory” for human suffering and humiliation caused by Slavery and the Slave trade and the imposition of European colonialism.

Tanzania - Oldonyo Murwak

"This property is a hill connected to a corridor within the Sanya Plains to the Plains to the North ogf Kilimanjaro International Airport, in Hai District, on the Moshi-Arusha Road. The property is a religions - ritual site for the Maasai speaking people of Kenya and Tanzania. It is on his hill that once that once every twelve to fourteen years all Maasai age sets receive their name and through the ritual change into elders within the society."

Source: UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List

Tanzania - Gombe National Park

"Gombe National Park is mountainous 52 sq.km. of the western rift escarpment on lake Tanganyika. The valleys support Guinea - Congolean forests, while the driar upper slopes are clothed with miombo (Brachystegia) woodland of Zambezian type. These two floras mingle as semi-decidous forests on the valley - sides. this productive mosaic provides a rich habitata for forest mammale especially primates (cereopithecus, colubus), but Gombe is chiefly known and valued for ots chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes achwernfurthii) and the results of Dr Jane Goodall's study of them over thirty years. Present hazards to this population include disease and the pressure of a dense local human population now - increased by influx of refugees."

Source: UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List

Tanzania - Eastern Arc Mountains Forests of Tanzania

"The term ‘Eastern Arc’ was introduced in 1985 to describe the forest-capped ancient crystalline mountains of eastern Tanzania and south-east Kenya, which are under the influence of the Indian Ocean climatic regime, and therefore contain predictable local climates (Lovett 1985). The area has been identified in all the major analyses of global biological priority. Starting in the 1970s, the ‘Eastern Arc Mountains’ were identified as a component of the Afromontane archipelago-like regional centre of endemism by White (1983). The Eastern Arc Mountains are also a Global 200 Ecoregion of WWF (Olson and Dinerstein 1998), part of a biodiversity hotspot of Conservation International (Mittermeier et al., 1998; 2004) and an Endemic Bird Area of BirdLife International (ICBP 1992; Stattersfield et al., 1998). It is also one of the regions of the world facing the most urgent threat in terms of potential species extinctions (Brooks et al., 2002; Ricketts et al., 2005). These studies all indicate the extreme biological importance of the area in global terms. The Eastern Arc is mentioned in the WCMC review of the coverage of World Heritage Sites as an ecoregion where there is no current World Heritage property (Magin and Chape, 2004). Thirteen separate mountain blocks comprise the Eastern Arc."

Source: UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List