Dar es Salaam’s Beaches

By Mghase Imanuel

Dar es Salaam city is the largest urban center in Tanzania with a population exceeding 3million. The city is found on the Indian Ocean's coast in the East African region. It has more than 30km coastline consisting of natural beaches, mangrove patches, and bays. Fishing and recreation are among the daily activities characterizing the coastal environment in the city. However, for many years, the quality of the coastal waters and beaches has been deteriorating, particularly due to never-ending discharge of liquid discharge and solid wastes. The results lead to pollutants in the coastal waters, strong pungent smells of rotting algae, filthy beaches, acute erosion and loss of biological habitats.

Dar es Salaam’s beaches are among the jewels of East Africa; the golden sands, swaying palms, turquoise waves rolling in from the Indian Ocean. For generations, they have been places of rest, play, and livelihood. Beaches include the fishers who mend their nets on the shore, to the vendors who sell food and crafts, to the families who gather on weekends for a taste of sea air. Nevertheless today, a walk along Coco Beach, Msasani, or parts of Kigamboni tells a harsher story. What should be a scene of beauty is instead marred by plastic bottles, tattered bags, discarded fishing gear, and household refuse. This is not just litter, but a slow-motion crisis that threatens our city’s image, our economy, and most of all, our ocean life. Recent statistics indicate that around 2.01 billion metric tons of solid waste are produced globally and this number is expected to rise to 3.4 billion metric tons by 2050. Tanzania, home to some of the fastest-growing urban centers in East Africa, produces 12-17 million tons of solid waste every year and only 50% of this is collected and sent to dumpsites.

Solid waste, particularly plastic, has become one of the gravest threats to marine ecosystems worldwide, and Dar es Salaam is unexceptional. Approximately 4 to 12 million metric tons of post-use plastic enter the ocean annually with land-based plastic debris being the primary source of microplastics in the marine environment. Major sources are industrial development, coastal infrastructure development, expansion of international business, and population growth. Microplastics fragments are the most abundant type and they consist of polyethylene and polypropylene as dominant polymers. These tiny fragments, invisible to the casual beachgoer, are swallowed by fish and other marine animals. They enter the food chain, traveling from the sea to our plates, carrying toxic chemicals along with them. Larger debris does visible damage; turtles and seabirds caught in abandoned nets, corals, and seagrass beds, smothered under heaps of waste, fish habitats degraded beyond repair.

Solid waste disposal at Kurasini Beach, Dar es Salaam

To solve this, Dar es Salaam needs better waste collection, stronger laws against dumping, and public awareness campaigns. Community clean-ups and reduced use of plastics can also help protect marine life and restore the beauty of the beaches. Clean beaches mean healthier oceans and better livelihoods for everyone.

To be very clear; this is not just about nature, it is about livelihoods, tourism, a sector with enormous potential for Tanzania’s economic growth, depends on clean, attractive coastlines. Every plastic-strewn shoreline turns away visitors who might otherwise bring revenue to local hotels, restaurants, and small businesses. The waste continues to obstruct our beaches, we lose income, jobs, and opportunities. Solutions can be easily reached because this crisis is not caused by a lack of knowledge but it is caused by inaction. We know that Dar es Salaam’s waste collection systems are incomplete, especially in fast-growing informal neighborhoods. We know that much of the city’s garbage ends up in rivers and storm drains, carried to the ocean with every rain. And we know that plastic production continues unchecked, with single-use items flooding markets faster than they can be collected or recycled.

So, what should be done? Firstly, we must demand accountability from our leaders. Dar es Salaam city (Ilala, Kinondoni and Temeke) municipalities must expand waste collection services, strengthen landfill management, and invest in proper recycling facilities. It is unacceptable for a city of this size and economic importance to leave half its waste unmanaged. Environmental policies that look good on paper must be enforced in reality. Maintaining the capacity of the coastal and marine environment to provide food, livelihoods and other life support services requires appropriate policies, relevant knowledge and management actions using the appropriate tools and concepts such as Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) and Blue Economy (BE), which are fairly recent tools/concepts being embraced by the country. The policies, institutional and management frameworks have to be enhanced to be able to deal with the multiple and interacting pressures undermining the sustainability of marine ecosystems including climate- related changes and pollution.

Secondly, we must push for corporate responsibility; manufacturers and retailers profiting from single use plastics cannot continue business as usual while our beaches drown in their products. Extended Producer Responsibility should be introduced, whereby companies take financial and logistical responsibility for the waste their products create, and must be implemented and enforced. If global brands can clean up their waste streams elsewhere, they can do it here too, unless we do.

Thirdly, as citizens, we cannot wait for the government and corporations alone; each of us has a role to play and we must reduce our dependence on single-use plastics saying no to unnecessary bags, straws, and bottles. We must dispose of our waste properly and call out those who dump irresponsibly. We must support community cleanups, because every piece of plastic we remove from the beach is one less hazard for marine life.

There are already inspiring examples across Dar es Salaam; Youth-led groups such as Limitless Mind organize regular beach cleanups. Innovators are building businesses around recycling plastics into useful products. River-trap projects catch floating debris before it reaches the sea. These efforts prove what is possible when people care and act. But they cannot succeed alone, they need citywide coordination, stronger policies, and broad public support. The fight for our beaches is, at its core, a fight for our future. It is about whether we will pass on to our children a coastline worth celebrating or one we are ashamed of. It is about protecting the fish stocks that feed families and sustain livelihoods. It is about preserving the natural beauty that makes Dar es Salaam not just a city by the sea, but a city of the sea. We must stop treating the ocean as a dumping ground. We must start treating it as the living, life-giving system that it is. Every tide brings in new waves of waste so every delay will allow more plastics to break down into invisible, toxic fragments that we may never recover.

Limitless Mind youth carry out regular cleanups at Coco Beach, Dar es Salaam

Let this be our uniting cry: Dar es Salaam deserves better. Our beaches deserve better. The ocean that sustains us deserves better. Together, through bold leadership, corporate accountability, and citizen action, we can turn the tide. We can reclaim the beauty of our shores and ensure that life, not litter, thrives in our seas.

Environmental and Social Sciences Research Foundation-ESSRF imanuelmghase@gmail.com