The consortium developed from the National Museum of Dar es Salaam, established in 1934 by Tanganyika governor Harold MacMichael.

Its functions are the acquisition, research, documentation, preservation and presentation of objects pertaining to Tanzania's cultural and natural heritage.

[2] The Dar es Salaam National Museum is located in Shaaban Robert Street, next to the botanical gardens in Kivukoni ward in Ilala District.

Its most famous exhibits include skull bones of Paranthropus boisei that were among the findings of Mary and Louis Leakey at Olduvai.

They belong to a specimen of the extinct genus Paranthropus from the evolutionary line of the Hominini that lived in East Africa around two million years ago.

It displays documents on the colonial history of Tanzania, the fight for independence, and the Arusha Declaration where the first Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere outlined his political vision.

[11] This museum in Songea is dedicated to the first Prime Minister of the United Republic of Tanzania, Rashid Mfaume Kawawa.