Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"Territorially, Tanzania (its name being a hybrid derived from the 1964 union of Tanganyika and offshore Zanzibar) is the largest East African state. Its 55.2 million people are drawn from more than 100 ethnic groups. No single ethnic group is large enough to dominate the state; moreover, Muslims constitute 35 percent of the population, highly concentrated on the coast within the southern, tail end of the African Transition Zone. This is also a country without a core because its clusters of population and zones of productive capacity lie dispersed--mostly on its margins along the Indian Ocean coast, near the shores of Lake Victoria in the northwest, adjoining Lake Tanganyika in the far west, and facing Lake Malawi in the interior south. . . . Since 1990, the government has pursued a different course, and prospects have improved. Tanzania today is a leading gold exporter, an emerging oil and natural gas producer, an increasingly popular safari destination (led by well-managed Serengeti National Park in the central north), and its economy has grown at a rate of around 7 percent a year for the past decade." [Geography: Realms, Regions, and Concepts, 17th Edition, p. 308]