Tanzanian Museums, International Audiences, and the Politics of Heritage in an Autocratic State

Since 2020, Tanzania’s state museums have reoriented toward two overlapping constituencies: international tourists whose spending underwrites heritage diplomacy, and a domestic audience whose identification with CCM’s conservative nationalism the regime actively cultivates. These purposes converge in the museums’ depiction of women’s history, particularly in exhibits centered on Emily Ruete, a nineteenth-century Zanzibari princess whose narrative of oppression echoes post-9/11 imperial feminist discourse and positions President Samia Suluhu Hassan as a historical culmination of Tanzanian women’s liberation.