Tanzam Highway

The Tanzam Highway leads from Lusaka in Zambia to Dar es Salaam in Tanzania.

The road leads largely through very mountainous areas to an altitude of over 2000 m. It starts in Dar es Salaam, the largest city of Tanzania, and passes through the regions of Coast, Morogoro, Iringa, Njombe, Mbeya and Songwe.

The entire Zambian section of the route is named the Great North Road and is marked T2; in Tanzania it bears the label T1.

In the vicinity of Iringa, the highway passes by the site of a battle near Ilula-Lugalo, where a monument commemorates the defeat of the German colonial troops on the Hehe on 17 August 1891.

During the apartheid era in South Africa and the civil wars in Angola and Mozambique, this highway, together with the TAZARA Railway, provided Zambia's only safe access to a seaport (Dar Es Salaam), which was a prerequisite for the survival of the Zambian economy.