This study provides a concise history of the developments of Tanzania’s visual arts from 1961, when Tanzania achieved its independence, to 2015. It investigated the influences behind visual art developments in Tanzania and ideologies that informed the arts that are manifested in each period. The study found that visual arts in Tanzania developed in three periods that were essentially shaped by socio-cultural, political and economic events. The first phase was that of the Independence Period which lasted for only six years from 1961 to 1967, with the visual arts developing under the strong influence of President Julius Nyerere’s steadfast drive towards cultural decolonisation in Tanzania. Nyerere, ambitiously engineered a campaign to revive and promote precolonial traditions and customs in a bid to redefine and construct national cultural identity of the newly independent Tanzania through the arts. The study has established that Nyerere’s ideas received positive support from many Makerere-trained Tanzanian artists and art educators such as Sam Ntiro, Sefanie Tunginie, Elimo Njau, Kiure Msangi, Elias Jengo, Fatma Abdallah and Louis Mbughuni, whose contributions helped realise modern art education systems and institutions in the country. Nyerere was also instrumental in the formation of majority of the public and private patronage agencies that were involved in the production and promotion of the visual arts throughout his 23 years’ reign. Moreover, during the Independence period, the production and promotion of visual arts were encouraged to establish media of a novel African cultural identity and symbols of national political independence. The second period was that of Ujamaa which lasted from 1967 to 1984 and saw the promotion of visual arts as tools for political propaganda and “economic goods” to help incept and consolidate the socialist state and its ethos. The state was then the chief patron of the visual arts produced and promoted in specialised parastatals and co-operative unions. Yet, some parastatals that were not specialised in the arts business commissioned artistic productions as advertising mediums for their activities whereas those established as art enterprises or companies administered visual art production and promotion for business purposes. Finally, in the third period, the neo-liberal economic era, which began in 1985, allowed visual arts to develop under the auspices and patronage of the Western cultural promotion organisations such as the Danish Centre for Culture and Development, Goethe Institut, Alliance Française, British Council and SIDA. This study found out that these foreign cultural agencies were largely responsible for the inception and promotion of contemporary art practices that apply new media technologies and the internet in production and display. Of the local influences, only a few private enterprises such as the private press and publishing companies which emerged after the collapse of the Ujamaa policies promoted visual arts besides their activities. During this period, there were changes in the country’s leadership and governance coupled with the adoption of free market economy and new political system which significantly changed the dynamics of the nation’s visual arts scene and development. In short, this phase created the necessary conditions that revolutionised visual art production and promotion practices in Tanzania from 1985 onwards. However, the study also found that in Tanzania, visual art developments were highly influenced by the activities of public and private institutions instead of state cultural policy. Generally, there were huge successes in the production and promotion of visual arts that reflected Tanzanian national culture during the Independence and Ujamaa phases but not so much during the neo-liberal economic period influenced by liberal, commercial and even hybrid factors.
