Tanzania, East Africa’s most populous country, has roughly 1,424 kilometers of coastline along the Indian Ocean. Tanzania has a mostly tropical climate and experiences erratic annual rainfall patterns influenced by the El Niño - Southern Oscillation phenomenon, making it prone to flood and drought events. Tanzania’s largest city, Dar es Salaam, rests on the Swahili Coast and has been urbanizing rapidly, attributed in part to internal rural-to-urban and refugee migration from the Great Lakes region over the past fifty years. It is projected that Dar es Salaam will become a mega-city by 2030.

Ramani Huria is a community-based mapping project, training university students and local community members to create highly accurate maps of the most flood-prone areas of the city. As the maps have taken shape, their benefits have multiplied and their potential magnified, now serving as foundational tools for development within all socio-economic spheres beyond flood resilience. Ramani Huria is managed under the Tanzania Resilience Academy and operates in collaboration with Open Cities Africa.