According to the UN population forecasts, Tanzania’s urbanization process is occurring faster than in other East African countries with an average annual urban growth of 5.4% (UN, 2018). In 2018, the estimated population of Dar es Salaam was about 5 million. By 2030, the city will achieve the ‘megacity’ status (+10 million), possibly reaching a population of 21.4 million people by 2052 (UN, 2016) due to high birth rates and increasing migration to Dar es Salaam. This increase will have profound implications in terms of labour markets, housing, service infrastructures, environmental management and city-wide spatial planning.

Reality shows that urbanization patterns in African cities, including Dar es Salaam, are linked with complex challenges, such as: informal economies coupled with low rates of economic growth; expensive and low-grade housing; inadequate and insufficiently managed urban sanitation and infrastructures; and poorly planned and inadequately connected cities, which are vulnerable to climate and health disaster risks; inadequate utilisation of data infrastructure in supporting governance of the city in the aspects of optimal allocation of re-sources and effective delivery of services. Furthermore, green spaces are diminishing fast and vegetated surfaces are increasingly being sealed by rapidly built-up areas (Lindley et al. 2015). These challenges attenuate the city and its ecosystems, thereby increasing their vulnerability to climate change linked to sea level rise, flash floods, typhoons and storms (Kebede and Nicholls, 2011). The widespread proliferation of scattered neighbourhoods that lack planned transport and infrastructure undermine the city's ability to offer competitive advantages in cost effectiveness and job creation from investments. Consequently, the challenges negatively impact city residents especially the vulnerable groups such as the low-income earners, disabled, children and the elderly in accessing the services that ought to be offered by cities to all, thereby compromising SDG 11 and its targets.