Tanzania has identified and digitized 274 new historical sites in the east African nation in a bid to boost the national coffers through tourism industry due to their national and international recognition, a senior official said on Monday.

Harrison Mwakyembe, Tanzanian Minister for Information, Culture, Arts, and Sports, said that the sites include pre-colonial chiefdoms and independence resistance heroes as well as graves of post-colonial chiefs, freedom fighters and colonizers from Germany and later the United Kingdom.

Others include the historic Majimaji war fighters and the source of water they used for ritual cleansing during the war."

All these have been stored using the information and communication technology for future research activities and use by the coming generations," he said in an interview.

He added this is part of the Tanzanian government's move to achieve the 2-million-tourist target by 2020. He added that identification and registration of statistics from the regional and district culture and heritage officers in the mainland was done to improve the regulations at the respective levels.

The minister also noted that Tanzania is the coordinator of heritage and liberation programme in Africa aimed at identifying, collecting and documenting the history of the continental liberation movements.

The minister revealed that Tanzania will in September 2019 host the regional East African Community Arts and Culture Festival, which aims to provide a platform to showcase culture as a primary catalyst to regional integration and sustainable development.

Xinhua