Moshi is a municipality and the capital of Kilimanjaro Region in the Northeastern Tanzania. As of 2017, the municipality has an estimated population of 201,150 and a population density of 3,409 persons per km2 . In the last official census of 2022, the municipality had a population of 221,733.Citypopulation.de Population of Moshi municipality The municipality is situated on the lower slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro, a dormant volcano that is the highest mountain in Africa. The name Moshi has been reported to refer to the smoke that emanates from the nearby mountain. The municipality covers about and is the smallest municipality in Tanzania by area.
History and administration
Prior to German conquest, the area that the town currenlty occupies was part of the Chagga states's Moshi Kingdom and Mbokomu Kingdom with extensive history spanning centuries.
Colonial era The German colonizers established a military camp in lower Moshi after their victory at the Battle of Moshi naming it (Neumoschi) in August 1892. Father Schneider, a missionary active in East Africa during the period, noted that by 1906, Moshi had developed into an important politico-military and commercial center. The town hosted German colonial authorities as well as Greek and Indian traders. The northern line railroad reached Moshi in 1912, and Moshi was connected to Tanga via Usambara Railway.
Beginning in the 1920s, after Tanganyika became a British mandate, Moshi experienced significant urban population growth. By 1920, the town's population had reached 3,000 inhabitants. This number increased to 29,423 by 1967 and further rose to 96,631 by 1988. In 2012, Moshi was home to 184,292 residents, and by 2017, the population had exceeded 200,000.
Moshi attained the status of a town in 1956. In 1988, it became a municipality under Tanzanian law, but as of 31 October 2014, the process for submitting its application to become a city was in its final stages. Moshi is administratively divided into 21 wards and then subdivided into 60 hamlets.
Economy As the capital of the region, it is the center of government activities, trade, finance, and tourism. In the first half of the 20th century, Moshi was traditionally an important railway town, center of banana agriculture, and commercial producer of pyrethrum.
Tourism Moshi is one of tourism centers in the northern safari circuit of Tanzania. The closest tourism spots include Kilimanjaro National Park, Mkomazi National Park, Lake Jipe, and Lake Chala. There are also several waterfalls, natural springs, and tropical forests. Tours can also be arranged from Moshi to other areas such as Serengeti National Park, Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Arusha National Park, Lake Manyara National Park, and Tarangire National Park. The city has several hotels and recreation centers.
There is annual fair, KiliFair, organized to be an international tourism & industry fair, promoting and presenting companies based in the Kilimanjaro region. The fair has the character of a business networking event for the tourism industry, in combination with a community fair to attract local people, families & expats. Recently, Karibu Fair (TATO) and Kilifair, both well-known tourism fairs decided to join into one and create by far the largest and most important Tourism Trade Fair in East Africa. The newly formed “Karibu/KiliFair” is expecting to host 350+ exhibitors from East and Central Africa, 300+ international hosted and semi-hosted buyers, as well as approximately 4000 trade visitors during the days of the fair. The fair will annually alternate between Moshi and Arusha starting 2018 event.
Timing: At the beginning of June every year (from 2015). Venue(s): Ushirika Stadium in Moshi and Friedkin Recreation Center – TGT in Arusha Coming Event: 2019, June 7 – 9 (to be held in Arusha)
Manufacturing Moshi is the home to one of the three Coca-Cola bottlers in Tanzania, Bonite Botters Ltd. Serengeti Breweries, an East African Breweries company, also has a manufacturing plant in Moshi. Just south of the city, there is a sugar production facility by TPC Ltd which owns one of the largest and oldest sugar cane plantation in the country. There are several small and medium scale manufacturing facilities in dairy and food packaging sector.
Agriculture Moshi's lower altitude and dry climate mean that the main crops grown on the higher slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro, coffee and bananas, do not thrive there. The surrounding areas in Moshi district are known for extensive farms of maize and beans, grown once per year during the long rainy season (known as "masika" in Kiswahili). In addition, the Tanganyika Planting Company operates a very large sugar cane plantation and company town south of Moshi.
Roman Catholic missionaries introduced Arabica coffee cultivation to the Moshi region in 1893. The Kilimanjaro Native Co-operative Union was established in 1929 by the district commissioner, Charles Cecil Farquharson Dundas. Its purpose was to enable Chagga coffee growers to compete on equal terms in world markets with European growers. KNCU collects coffee from 96 village societies, representing over 150,000 small-scale farmers. KNCU handles between 50 and 70 percent of the coffee grown in the area and trades over 5,250 tons of Arabica coffee, or about 11 percent of the national production.
In recent years, efforts have been made to diversify Moshi's agricultural economy beyond traditional coffee production. In 2019, a dairy cooperative located on the eastern slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro partnered with the Poland-East Africa Economic Foundation and Polish Aid to boost dairy farming in the region. The cooperative expanded significantly, benefiting over 900 local farmers and establishing new facilities to support milk production and processing other support banana plantation which is one of key production in Moshi.
Education
Like all of Tanzania, Moshi has universal primary education. According to the Tanzania Demographic and Health Survey 2010, the Kilimanjaro Region, which includes Moshi, had the second highest female literacy rate and the third highest male literacy rate among Tanzania's then-existing 26 regions. According to the Tanzania Poverty and Human Development Report 2005, the Moshi urban district had the highest literacy rate for persons over 15 years of age when compared to any of the 128 other districts in Tanzania.
Moshi hosts a number of higher education facilities, which include the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical College (KCMCo), the Stefano Moshi Memorial University College (SMMUCo), the Mwenge Catholic University (MWECAU), the Moshi Co-operative University (MoCU), the College of African Wildlife Management (CAWM), the Kilimanjaro School of Pharmacy (KSP), and the Tanzania Training Centre for Orthopaedic Technologists (TATCOT).
KCMCo is a campus of Tumaini University. It was started in 1997 and offers a number of medical courses. The college is located within the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre complex, about from Moshi. SMMUCo is also a campus of Tumaini University. It was developed from the Masoka Management Training Institute and the Mwika Lutheran Bible College. It belongs to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania - Northern Diocese, and it is a multi-campus university college. Currently, SMMUCo has campuses in Masoka, Mwika and Moshi, with future campuses planned for Machame, Siha, and Karatu. MWECAU formerly a constituent college of the Saint Augustine University of Tanzania. MWECAU is located north of Moshi. Since May 2004, the Moshi Co-operative University has been a constituent college of the Sokoine University of Agriculture. Formerly known as the Ushirika College, it is the oldest training institution in Tanzania and is located along Sokoine Road in Moshi. Moshi Co-operative University has accumulated 43 years' experience in the fields of co-operative accounting, co-operative management and rural development has of recently turned into other expertise in accounting, management, marketing, auditing and cooperative development employed in different institutions within and outside Tanzania. Moshi Co-operative University grew from a college enrolling only 150 students, conducting tailored courses, to a university college with a capacity of 1500 students. CAWM is commonly known as Mweka College. It was established in 1963 following the Arusha Manifesto (1961) as a pioneer institution for the training of African wildlife managers. The majority of the CAWM's students come from the SADC region, although the College opens its doors to all students with an interest in African Wildlife Management. KSP is owned by the Saint Luke Foundation, a registered trust founded to provide broad spectrum services to an African population that faces serious deficiencies in pharmaceutical and health systems. KSP is currently the only pharmacy school providing competence based training for different levels of pharmaceuticals cadres to a diploma level.
The Tanzania Training Centre for Orthopaedic Technologists (TATCOT) was founded in Moshi with the material, financial and human resource support of the governments of Tanzania and the Federal Republic of Germany in June 1981. TATCOT is a supra-regional training centre providing courses in the field of orthopaedic technology in Africa and enrols students from all English speaking African countries as well as other interested countries. The reason for establishing these courses was to educate the professionals who are required to provide technical services to people with amputations and other neuromuscular disorders such as poliomyelitis, paralysis, cerebral palsy, clubfoot and trauma. In order to do this the professionals are provided with the knowledge and skills to provide prostheses, orthoses, wheelchairs and supportive seating to people with disabilities.
Moshi also has several secondary schools. The government schools are Mawenzi Secondary School, Moshi Technical School, Moshi Secondary School, and J. K. Nyerere Secondary School. The private schools are Majengo Secondary School, Northern Highland Secondary School, United World College East Africa, and Kibo Secondary School. In addition, each ward of Moshi has a community-established secondary school, such as Rau Secondary School and Kiboriloni Secondary School.
Mawenzi Secondary School started as the Indian School of Moshi in 1956. It is now a thriving school of 1,100 pupils. All A-Level students are female boarders and come from all over Tanzania. The school specialises at A-Level in Kiswahili, geography, history, and English. The school operates a double shift system for junior pupils (Form 1–4). All subjects are taught in English, apart from Kiswahili and French. Mawenzi School has had a link with Buckie High School in Scotland since 1987. Pupils and teachers have travelled between Tanzania and Scotland many times. The United World College East Africa, formerly known as the International School Moshi (ISM), was established in 1969 to serve the needs of the expatriate and local communities. The school has about 600 students from nearly 40 different nationalities on two campuses in Moshi and Arusha. The Moshi campus has about 190 students, including 90 boarders, from 25 nationalities and offers a full range of courses from early childhood to the International Baccalaureate Diploma. The school has been an International Baccalaureate World School since 1977, and was the first school to offer the IB in Africa. ISM is one of only two world schools in Tanzania to offer the primary years, middle years, and diploma programmes. In August 2019 ISM became the 18th United World College in the world, adopting the name UWC East Africa.
There are also various English medium schools with pre-primary, primary, and secondary education, such as the Eden Garden schools.
Medical care