Tanzania has been ​taken off the 2025 African Rally Championship​. The country won’t be featuring in the ARC.
​The African Rally Championship is the prestigious motor sporting fixture taking place four-times annually in various countries on the continent.
As an international automobile rally championship, the ARC runs under the auspices of the International Automobile Federation (Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile) or FIA.
Normally, the African rally championship motor racing events take place in Kenya, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia and the recently proposed Ivory Coast.
But according to the just released, African Rally Championship 2025 calendar, the four rounds of the FIA event will be held in only four African countries, Kenya, Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda.
These are all East African Community Member States, just like Tanzania, but the latter is being snubbed.
From the 20th to the 23rd of March, 2025 the first round of ARC will race through the Safari Rally of Kenya.
The second round of the ARC races between 15 and 17 of August, 2025 in the Pearl of Africa Rally in Uganda.
Bujumbura will host the third round of the African Rally Championship through the Rallye International du Burundi from the 15th to the 17th of August, 2025.
Rwanda, on the other hand, gets to stage the fourth and final round of the African Rally Championship in the Mountain Gorilla Rally to be held between 12 and 14 of September 2025.
The African Rally Championship was usually held in Dar-es-salaam as part of ‘The Rally of Tanzania.’
The National Motor Sporting race is an international rallying event organised by the Automobile Association of Tanzania (AAT).
While most of the time the African Rally Championship races are staged in Dar-es-salaam region, in 2022 the ARC event took place in Arusha through the Tanzania Atlantic Rally held in remote parts of Monduli District.
However, the African Rally Championship in the Ivory Coast was left off the 2024 calendar due to what was described as ‘very low cross-border entry.’
According to the FIA, that was mostly due to the cost and the vast distances competitors have to travel to attend the event, on that logistical challenges are also adding a huge cost to participation.
But why Tanzania is missing from the African Rally Championship (ARC) calendar of 2025 is something which an explanation is yet to be given.