Qualla: Askari Monument

Askari Monument: Introduction

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kipala, CC BY-SA 4.0. There is a roundabout at the junction of Samora Avenue, Maktaba Street, and Azikiwe Street that reportedly marks the exact center of downtown Dar es Salaam. In 1911, a statue stood there of Hermann Wissmann, a German explorer and army major who had governed German East Africa in the late nineteenth century. The bronze depicted Wissmann with one hand on his hip and the other on his sword, gazing toward the harbor, while at his feet an African soldier draped a dead lion with a German flag. When British forces entered Dar es Salaam in 1916, they removed Wissmann, along with statues of Karl Peters and Otto von Bismarck. In 1927, something very different took the same spot.

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Image: Kipala | CC BY-SA 4.0

Askari Monument: The Soldier on the Pedestal

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Adam Jones, Ph.D., CC BY-SA 3.0. The Askari Monument -- formally the Dar es Salaam African Memorial -- honors the askari, the African soldiers who fought for the British in the East African campaign of World War I. The word askari comes from Arabic, meaning soldier, and the men it commemorates served in the King...

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Image: Adam Jones, Ph.D. | CC BY-SA 3.0

Askari Monument: Words in Three Scripts

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Adam Jones, Ph.D., CC BY-SA 3.0. The stone pedestal carries inscriptions that reflect the cultural complexity of the place. On the narrow sides are plaques with dedications in Swahili, written in both Arabic and Latin script, and in English. The English inscription includes a line attributed to Rudyard Kipling: ...

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Image: Adam Jones, Ph.D. | CC BY-SA 3.0

Askari Monument: A Statue Replacing a Statue

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Moongateclimber, Public domain. The layered history of this single roundabout tells the story of colonial East Africa in miniature. Wissmann's statue, with its imagery of a European standing tall while an African crouched at his feet, embodied one version of power. Its removal in 1916 marked the end of German r...

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Image: Moongateclimber | Public domain

Askari Monument: The Wider Reckoning

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User:Digr, CC BY-SA 3.0. A separate memorial stands nearby in Dar es Salaam War Cemetery: the British and Indian Memorial, which commemorates by name more than 1,500 British and Indian officers and men who died in East Africa during and after January 1917 and who have no known grave. The existence of bot...

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Image: User:Digr | CC BY-SA 3.0