Dodoma, city in central Tanzania, the capital of Dodoma Region, designated the future national capital. Dodoma is a marketplace for the surrounding region's production of coffee, peanuts, and other crops, and has a small industrial base. It has always been more important as an administration and transportation center than as an economic hub as the region is relatively dry (average rainfall less than 800 mm [30 in] per year) and historically impoverished. The city is on the central Tanzanian railway from Dar es Salaam to Lake Tanganyika, on the Great North Road, a highway linking southern Africa to Egypt, and has an airport.
Dodoma was founded in 1907 during construction of the central railroad under German colonial rule. During British colonial rule, between World War I (1914-1918) and the independence of Tanganyika (now part of Tanzania) in 1961, it served as a district and provincial headquarters. In 1974 the Tanzanian government announced a decision to transfer the national capital from Dar es Salaam to Dodoma by the 1990s. The National Assembly, the Tanzanian legislative body, was immediately relocated to Dodoma permanently, but due to insufficiency of funds the construction of the rest of the government buildings fell behind schedule. Currently the building program and government transfer are scheduled to be completed by 2005. Population (1988) 203,833.
