Michenzani is a large neighbourhood of Ng'ambo

Ng'ambo

Ng'ambo is one of the two main parts comprising Zanzibar City, the capital of Zanzibar, the other being the historical Stone Town. Ng'ambo is much larger and more modern than Stone Town, with office buildings and large apartment blocks, as well as slum areas...

, the more modern part of Zanzibar City

Zanzibar City

Zanzibar City is the capital and largest city of Zanzibar, in Tanzania. It is located on the west coast of Unguja, the main island of the Zanzibar Archipelago, roughly opposite to Dar es Salaam across the Zanzibar Channel...

. It is located just across Creek Road, that separates the historical part of the city, Stone Town

Stone Town

Stone Town also known as Mji Mkongwe is the old part of Zanzibar City, the main city of Zanzibar, in Tanzania, as opposed to Ng'ambo . It is located on the western coast of Unguja, the main island of the Zanzibar Archipelago...

 (to the west) and Ng'ambo (to the east). The place is mostly known for the Plattenbau

Plattenbau

Plattenbau is the German word for a building whose structure is constructed of large, prefabricated concrete slabs. The word is a compound of Platte and Bau...

ten, i.e., the large apartment blocks that have been built here in the late 1960s and early 1970s with the aid of East Germany.

History

The Michenzani neighbourhood gained its fame during the 1970s, when an urban renewal

Urban renewal

Urban renewal is a program of land redevelopment in areas of moderate to high density urban land use. Renewal has had both successes and failures. Its modern incarnation began in the late 19th century in developed nations and experienced an intense phase in the late 1940s – under the rubric of...

 plan was started in Ng'ambo by Zanzibari revolutionary government, with the aid of East Germany. A complex of "Plattenbau

Plattenbau

Plattenbau is the German word for a building whose structure is constructed of large, prefabricated concrete slabs. The word is a compound of Platte and Bau...

ten" (apartment blocks constructed from large, prefabricated concrete slabs) was built in Michenzani as well as other areas of suburban and rural Zanzibar.

The buildings are different sizes, with the tallest having seven floors and the shortest four floors. As a consequence of the construction process, some buildings comprise different parts with a different number of floors each: for example, block #7 is partly five floors and partly seven floors high. Despite being the tallest public buildings in Zanzibar, no lifts were installed and all the flats are only accessible by stairs.

The Michenzani apartment blocks used to be the pride of revolutionary Zanzibar

Zanzibar

Zanzibar ,Persian: زنگبار, from suffix bār: "coast" and Zangi: "bruin" ; is a semi-autonomous part of Tanzania, in East Africa. It comprises the Zanzibar Archipelago in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of the mainland, and consists of numerous small islands and two large ones: Unguja , and Pemba...

; despite this, virtually no maintenance has been made after the 1970s, so the buildings are now in a state of decay. Lack of water pressure makes water services unavailable from the second floors up. As a result many residents have installed their own water pumps, which are not in keeping with the original style of the buildings.