Dar es Salaam

Dar es Salaam has expanded rapidly across a low-lying coastal metropolitan area where infrastructure has often lagged behind urban growth. The World Bank identifies limited formal planning, large areas of informal development and recurrent flooding as persistent constraints, particularly around the Msimbazi basin and neighbourhoods with inadequate drainage and services.

Recent investment has concentrated on the systems that hold the metropolis together: roads, sidewalks, street lighting, markets and major drainage works. The Dar es Salaam Metropolitan Development Project added more than 200 kilometres of roads and substantial trunk and secondary drainage, while later resilience programmes focus on flood-prone areas. The city’s physical development is therefore shaped as much by water management and everyday mobility as by the outward expansion of its built-up area.