Tanzania–Zambia border

British and German spheres

The border was first drawn in an Anglo-German agreement of 1890 dividing British and German spheres in East Africa between Lake Tanganyika and Lake Malawi. A joint commission worked out the exact line in 1898, and Britain and Germany approved it in an agreement of 1901. After World War I British administrations ran both sides until Tanganyika’s independence in 1961; Northern Rhodesia became independent as Zambia on 24 October 1964.^[1]

From the Malawi tripoint on Nakungulu hill, the line follows watersheds, streams and straight stretches marked by pillars, then the Kalambo river down to Lake Tanganyika. On the way the Kalambo drops 704 feet in a single fall. In the lake the line was set only by practice, and its end at the Congo tripoint has never been fixed by treaty.^[1]

“…this it follows down-stream until it runs into the Kalambo and then the latter down-stream to its mouth in the Tanganyika Lake.”^[1]

The TAZARA railway

In 1965 two main roads crossed the border, one between Nakonde and Tunduma, and no railway did.^[1] In the 1970s China built the TAZARA railway, when Western governments would not, running 1,860 km from Dar es Salaam across the border to Kapiri Mposhi in Zambia. Its main job is linking Zambia’s Copperbelt to Dar es Salaam’s port.^[2]

The railway marked its 50th anniversary in 2025. That year the Chinese state-owned China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation pledged $1.4 billion to refurbish the line over three years, in return for a 30-year concession to run it.^[2]