Biography

Botanical research station founded by the colonial government of German East Africa, later under British and Tanzanian administration. The region was subject to a series of treaties with European states after 1886. After overcoming African resistance to their rule, the Germans invested heavily in their colony with the objective of creating profitable plantations including coffee and tea in the northern part of the region. The colonial government founded Das Kaiserliche Biologisch-Landwirtschaftliche Institut Amani in the Usambara Mountains, the name 'amani' being the Swahili word for peace.

The mandate for the station was mainly concerned with economic botany, but also to study the flora and fauna of German East Africa. Experimental plantations and gardens were established mainly between 1902 and 1913 and the institute was officially opened on 4 June 1904 by the governor of German East Africa, G.A. Graf von Götzen (1866-1910). During the First World War, the Institute was used for the local manufacture of medical and other supplies (1914-1918), and most of the remaining buildings were occupied as a refugee camp for German women.

After the war the region known as Tanganyika became a mandate of the League of Nations under British control (1918). The institute was renamed the East African Agricultural Research Station, later the Amani Botanical Research Institution. Much of the original plantations now form the Amani Forest Nature Reserve and the best plantings became the Amani Botanical Gardens, the second largest botanical garden in the world.

Albrecht Zimmerman was one of the earliest collectors for Amani, becoming director of the institute (1911-1920). Adolf Engler stayed at Amani (1902, 1905) and gathered material later used in the Flora of Tropical East Africa. Between the world wars the plantations were surveyed by P.J. Greenway who was the resident botanist at the station (1928-1933). By the time the botanical collections were moved to Nairobi (EA) in 1948, approximately 62,000 botanical specimens had been deposited in the herbarium.