Description : Dodoma (literally "It has sunk" in Gogo), officially Dodoma City, is the national capital of Tanzania and the capital of Dodoma Region, with a population of 410,956. Originally a small market town known as Idodomya, the modern Dodoma was founded in 1907 by German colonists during construction of the Tanzanian central railway. The layout followed the typical colonial planning of the time with a European quarter segregated from a native village. In 1967, following independence, the government invited Canadian firm Project Planning Associates Ltd to draw up a master plan to help control and organise the then capital of the country, Dar es Salaam, which was undergoing rapid urbanisation and population growth. The plan was cancelled in 1972, in part due to its failure to adequately address the historical and social problems associated with the city. In 1974, after a nationwide party referendum, the Tanzanian government announced that the capital would be moved from Dar es Salaam to a more central location to create significant social and economic improvements for the central region and to centralise the capital within the country. The cost was estimated at £186 million and envisaged to take 10 years. The site, the Dodoma region, had been looked at as a potential new capital as early as 1915 by the then colonial power Germany, in 1932 by the British as a League of Nations mandate and again in the post-independence National Assembly in 1961 and 1966.
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