🇿🇼 Zimbabwe
Harare
Harare is the capital and largest city of Zimbabwe — 1.5 million people on a high granite plateau at 1,490 metres altitude (higher than Nairobi, giving it a mild climate despite being in the tropics: the temperature rarely exceeds 30°C in any month). The city was founded in 1890 as Fort Salisbury by the British South Africa Company's Pioneer Column, renamed Harare in 1982 after independence. Zimbabwe's economic collapse (hyperinflation peaking at 231 million percent in 2008, the abandonment of the Zimbabwean dollar in 2009, the dollarisation of the economy) is visible in Harare's infrastructure — peeling buildings next to new Chinese-funded construction, fuel queues, power cuts — but the city's cultural life has survived and in some ways intensified: the National Gallery of Zimbabwe (the most important gallery of African contemporary art in southern Africa), the Chapungu Sculpture Park (the definitive collection of Shona stone sculpture — a contemporary art form developed in Zimbabwe in the 1950s–1980s that became internationally recognised, with works in the collections of the Tate Modern, the British Museum, and MoMA), and the Mbare Musika market (the largest traditional market in Zimbabwe, a sensory experience unlike any in southern Africa). The main reason to visit Harare is as a base for Zimbabwe's extraordinary natural and cultural sites: Great Zimbabwe (280km south — the largest pre-colonial stone structure in sub-Saharan Africa, UNESCO), Victoria Falls (435km northwest), Matobo National Park, and the Chimanimani mountains. Best months: April–June (the dry, cool season at elevation).