Marafiki Festival: Dar’s October arts festival

If you plan to use the BRT, ferries and daladalas, the city centre around Posta and Kivukoni is the most connected place to stay. The BRT terminal at Kivukoni and the ferry to Kigamboni are close together, Posta is the main daladala hub, and the National Museum and St Joseph’s Cathedral are within walking distance…

The Slow Leopard is a bar, restaurant and hostel on Chole Road that hosts live music most weekends and shows live sport on a big screen. In early 2025 it staged a Marafiki Night, a showcase of acoustic and electric Tanzanian acts for a mixed crowd of locals and international residents. Arrive after dark, expect the…

Swahili Fashion Week is a three-day show of African designers held in Dar es Salaam in early December, usually at the Parthenon Hall in the Greek Hellenic Club on Ali Hassan Mwinyi Road. The 2025 edition brought together more than forty designers from several countries and ran an awards night. Look for the programme…

Nafasi is a contemporary arts centre in an industrial area of Mikocheni B, founded by Tanzanian artists in 2008. It has more than twenty studios, several galleries and performance spaces, and it hosts exhibitions, film screenings, concerts and art talks. Check the Upcoming Events page on its website before you go, and…

The National Museum and House of Culture on Shaaban Robert Street is open every day, including weekends. Its human origins section holds Paranthropus boisei skull bones found by Mary and Louis Leakey at Olduvai, and other displays cover Kilwa, German and British rule and the Arusha Declaration. A car that belonged to…

The Tingatinga Arts Cooperative Society, on the Msasani side of Oyster Bay, is a working school and studio with around a hundred artists. You can watch them paint and compare styles, from traditional bold animals on small boards to newer experiments. Size and quality vary a lot, so look at several painters before you…

Roughly an hour and a half from downtown, the Pugu Kazimzumbwi nature reserve gives Dar a green escape on foot. You register at the entry point, then walk from Lake Minaki through bamboo and forest to a viewpoint over the city and caves used locally for prayer. Plan four to five hours for the full loop and bring water…

Mbudya is a marine-reserve island reached by a short motorboat ride from the Kunduchi beach area, not from downtown. Boats usually leave once four people are aboard, so arrive with a group or join one early. Go in the dry months from June to October for calm seas, because rough waves often cancel boats in April and…