Africa For A Weekend 5: Tanzania🇹🇿

I went to Tanzania🇹🇿 for the first time!

Tanzania is actually made up of two self-governing states.

Zanzibar & Tanganyika (Mainland Tanzania).

I spent the first weekend in Zanzibar, which is a honeymoon paradise with crystal clear blue ocean waters, pure white sandy beaches, and tropical warm weather. No wonder it's a tourist hotspot, there's nowhere else like it!

One thing that stood out to me was the fact that Zanzibar looks EXACTLY how it does in pictures online.

I enjoyed the first few days in Nungwi which has great ocean-front resorts and nightlife (sidenote: I lost my phone during the nightlife, beware). I then moved over to Kendwa beach, also known as the best beach in Zanzibar - and this is no lie.

Overall my time in Zanzibar was amazing, I can honestly say it looked and felt like heaven-on-earth (until I lost my phone).

For the next weekend, the real work began, I travelled to Dar es Salaam, in Tanganyika (Mainland). And on my very first day I decided to go to the Sahara Ventures offices unannounced - but this didn't matter! Because, when I asked the reception if I could speak to the main man himself: Jumanne Mtambalike, he welcomed me with open arms.

I was fortunate to catch Jumanne at the right time, long before he had a meeting, so we sat down for half an hour and he gave me some serious game on Africa.

The main lessons I gained from him were that: in the African tech ecosystem, we all have our roles to play, not everyone needs to be a builder (as I thought), rather, I can be an investor, advisor and connector. This insight was valuable as I thought he was going to tell me to quit my job and build a startup, but he didn't! He said that having a job, is a valuable asset, especially at BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager.

To add the icing on the cake, Jumanne also giften me a free physical copy of his book "Diary of an African Hub Manager" of which I had already read the kindle version cover-to-cover prior to our impromptu meeting in Tanzania.

One interesting thing about Dar es Salaam, is that they have really good roads in certain places, especially a road called Toure Drive in Oyster Bay. The roads are so good that people bring their cars there to do street racing at night, and also do general performance testing of vehicles. It makes for a great show!

One final takeaway from my time in Tanzania, is that a lot of people don't speak English (as they do in Kenya), instead they typically speak Swahili only. This means that I'll have to learn Swahili, since it's such a popular language in East Africa (my favourite part of Africa).