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Machame, 
Tanzania
The UN expects Machame to count as a city from 2030, with 184,548 people. This is a projection: in 2025 it did not yet meet the UN's rule for a city.
This is the UN's built-up area, drawn from satellite pictures and census maps rather than from the city limits, and the two can be a long way apart. The rule behind it.
Verified 2026-09-30 · 73 canaries
People · every five years · 1975 to 2050
How Machame grew
Where Machame had 10 people in 2030, it had 21.1 in 2050.
On the UN's projection it will have 389,708 people in 2050. On the UN's projection it passes 250,000 people between 2035 and 2040. The UN first counts it as a city in 2030, when it passed 50,000 people.
projected (after 2025) · how sure the UN is: high moderate low
How to read this: each column is one of the UN's five-yearly estimates, 1975 through 2050, and taller means more people. Where a column is hatched the year has not happened yet. The strip under the columns is the UN's own confidence in each figure, palest where it is least sure; where it is blank the city was not on the list at all.
People · your family's years · 1975 to 2050
Machame through your family’s years
Put in the years your family were born. You’ll see how many people lived in Machame in each of those years, and when each of them turned 30.
Tanzania · every city · 2025
Where it is
How to read this: every dot is one of the 45 cities in Tanzania in 2025, and a dot's area is how many people live there, the biggest being Dar es Salaam. The ringed dot in colour is Machame, at its 2030 size; the grey dots are the rest. The outlines around them are neighbouring countries.
Area and built-up land · km²
How much land it covers
In 2050, Machame covered 167 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 26 km² of it. That is 66 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 8 by 8 metres. Since 2030, its built-up land has grown to 2.4 times its size, and its people are 2.1 times as many.
How to read this: each pale square is the city's whole area, the strong square inside it the part that is built on; one scale for all three, so a bigger square is more land. Hatched is the UN's projection.
Of every 100 people in Tanzania
Its share of Tanzania
Of every 1,000 people in Tanzania in 2050, 3 lived in Machame, which is 389,708 people.
How to read this: shrink Tanzania to 1,000 people and this is what you get. The coloured squares are the ones who would live in Machame; the grey ones are everybody else, in other cities, in towns and out in the country.
Ranked by people · 2025
Cities of a similar size
In Tanzania, 2025
- 42 Dar es Salaam7,795,114
- 538 Zanzibar City966,642
- 544 Mwanza954,104
- 665 Arusha795,744
- 1025 Mbeya539,248
- 1205 Morogoro461,634
- 1677 Kigoma340,483
- 1861 Moshi309,202
- 1956 Tanga296,202
How to read this: names are in order of size, the leading number being each city's rank among all 12,138 in 2025; the bars share a scale within a list. A jump in the ranks means a city under 300,000 people, which is not given a page here.
Apparatus
Sources and method
The figures for Machame are the UN's own, at five-year steps, every one of them projection, because the UN does not expect it to count as a city until 2030. Projected years are drawn hatched, and the UN publishes no range of uncertainty for a city. What a city means here, how the UN measures one, and why that number can differ from the one Machame publishes about itself: how the figures here are put together.
Sources: UN WUP 2025 · Natural Earth · flag-icons. Every source, its licence and how to cite it →
Verified 2026-09-30 · 73 canaries