Current time in Zanzibar, Tanzania
The current local time in Zanzibar is shown below. Zanzibar observes EAT.
What's the daylight saving status?
Zanzibar does not observe daylight saving time. The local offset is fixed year-round.
When are sunrise & sunset today?
What are the timezone facts?
- Timezone
- Africa/Dar_es_Salaam
- Standard abbreviation
- EAT
- Observes daylight saving
- No
- Country
- 🇹🇿 Tanzania
- Business hours
- 09:00 – 17:00 local
What's the timezone history of Zanzibar?
The islands keep Tanzania's UTC+3, but their history runs through a different orbit: ruled from Oman until the nineteenth century and a sultanate in their own right until 1964, they long looked north across the Indian Ocean to a region that today also sits on or near the same offset. The Swahili practice of counting the daylight hours from dawn remains common in speech. The equatorial position keeps the days even, near twelve hours, across the whole year.
What are the working hours in Zanzibar?
Tourism and the spice trade for which the islands have been famed for centuries anchor the economy, alongside fishing and a busy port. The working day runs broadly 08:00 to 16:00 from Monday to Friday, but the visitor economy of Stone Town and the beach resorts runs on guests' hours. The overwhelmingly Muslim population observes the Friday prayers and the two Eid festivals as the principal closures, and Ramadan noticeably quietens daytime commerce across the islands. The spice farms and the dhow harbours keep to their own older daily rhythm.
Where is Zanzibar?
Zanzibar is an archipelago in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Tanzania, its main island, Unguja, lying around 40 kilometres offshore. Together the islands hold close to 2 million people, the largest town being Zanzibar City with its historic quarter of Stone Town. Though part of Tanzania, the archipelago is semi-autonomous, with its own president and government, a legacy of its history as the seat of an Omani sultanate that once controlled much of the East African coast.