Mara Region

Mara Region is one of the 31 administrative regions of Tanzania, in the north of the mainland on the eastern shore of Lake Victoria, and its regional capital is the municipality of Musoma. It covers an area of 21,760 square kilometres, comparable to El Salvador, and borders Kenya to the north-east, with Mwanza, Simiyu and Arusha regions as its neighbours. It is home to Serengeti National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site, and is the birthplace of Tanzania's founding father Julius Nyerere. Under British rule the area was a district called the Lake Province, which became the Lake Region after independence in 1961. The region has two rainy seasons and two dry seasons each year, and about 15 percent of Lake Victoria's water body lies within it.