Finding data online for Tanzania has proved to be a bit of a challenge. This article provides an overview of publicly available sources. We are sure more exists, so just post comments to this message and we will keep updating the table.
Ideally data should be provided by its owners with appropriate meta data. We have decided to minimize our provisions of data because of this. You will find the sources not to be the original ones, but the files might still be useful.
Your input to this process is desired. Please use the commenting system to point us in the right direction for our effort to make an initial meta database for spatial data in Tanzania.
While using the data please please read through the following articles on this webiste which might be of particular interest for you:
| Source | Link | comment |
| OpenStreetMap | tanzania.shp.zip | Links to the most updated shape file containing OpenStreetMap data for Tanzania |
| Maplibrary | Website | Admin borders, Satellite imagery, simple baseman etc. |
| DivaGIS (collection of data from other sources) | Website | Admin areas, roads, inland water, railroads, elevation, land cover, population, population, climate and gazetteer |
| OpenMicroData | Website | Villages, districts, region and EACs as provided by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) in Tanzania in 2002. |
| TZGISUG | Article on this website | Hillshades for Tanzania with styling and some meta data. |
| Africover | Website | Roads, rivers, boundaries and more. |
| IRA at USDM | email website | Hunting TS maps? |
| FAO | website | Geonetwork for Tanzania data with roads, tsetse flie suitaility, geomorphology, land cover, towns, rivers, ariculture, forest and more. |
| World Database on Protected areas | website | Protected areas database with global collection of protected areas, also Tanzanian protected areas. |
| Mapstor | website | Tanzanian topo maps of Russian origin, scanned and georegistered. (pay to download) |
| ILRI | website | Roads, Wards, forests and more |
Ideally there should also be a national coordinating office for spatial data on a national level. We are hoping that this list can be the start for a process towards a proper system. We have written about this on the page GIS in Tanzania on this website.
Thanks for the list. Suggest you could add in Africover to that. It isn’t fully open, but is an incredibly important source of spatial data for Tanzania. Also a link to email IRA at UDSM to get the Hunting TS maps. (Don’t think there is a website.)
Thanks for feedback Steve! Added them, but I am still missing link and email address (which should be masked to stop spam).I can give you editor priviliges so you can add changes directly to this article if you want.
Africover: http://www.africover.org/system/area.php?place=7
Suggest an email to the list to get the official contact email for IRA/TanRIC.
Keep up the good work! ILRI also has some very useful shapefiles available on their website:
http://192.156.137.110/gis/
I would recommend using “search” near the top of the page, and selecting “Tanzania” in the country drop-down. For some reason, if you click on “browse by geographic location” Tanzania does not show up, but they do have layers for TZ.