The Faculty of Pharmacy started as a Department of Pharmacy under the then Faculty of Medicine in July 1974 with the assistance of a grant from the British Council.

The first intake of 16 students had to take most of their first year basic science courses at the Main Campus together with B. Sc. General, B. Sc. Education and B. Sc. Geology students. Out of these, 15 graduated three years later in 1977.

The present building housing the Faculty was completed in 1977. Most of the Lecturers who started course off were expatriates drawn from Countries such as Britain (3), Kenya (1) and Malawi (1).

Today in 2003 the Faculty boasts of 22 instructors, all of whom are Tanzanians and have postgraduate qualifications (13 Ph.D. and 8 M. Sc. 1 B.Pharm) from various international universities.

The program now attracts students from many countries including Zambia, India, Uganda, Lesotho, Sudan, Kenya, Mozambique, Malawi and Namibia. Furthermore, the popularity of the course has improved tremendously with a total of 35 local candidates with the required minimum qualifications vying for the 25 existing places in the 1998/99 admission short listing. In previous years the Faculty had problems in getting adequate candidates.

Regarding the marketability of the graduating pharmacist, the faculty is one of the few whose products are, at the moment, assured of employment. Prior to the government policy changes that introduced liberalization of trade and health sector reforms most of the graduates B.Pharm course were employed in the public sector to work as hospital, industrial, or procurement and distribution pharmacists. There was no urgent need for course expansion because there was only one consumer, namely the government.

However, the situation is now dramatically different with the above mentioned policy changes. Most of pharmacy graduates are employed in the private sector as community and industrial pharmacists, some of whom were recruited from government Institutions as a result of more attractive salary packages.

Meanwhile vacancies in the government institutions in the regions and districts remain unfilled despite an urgent need. On the other hand the rapidly expanding private pharmaceutical sector keeps demanding more pharmacists at a rate that the old intake cannot cope with.

In terms of providing equal opportunities to candidates of both sexes in enrollment, pharmacy has the highest index (43% of students in 2003 were females) in the whole university.

The Faculty had links with several Institutions, including
British Council-supported links with the Universities of Aston, Manchester, Bradford and Sunderland. These links expired in the late eighties and were not renewed. Close ties also existed with the Universities of Chicago and Iowa in the United States, the University of Tuebingen in Germany and the Universities of Bergen, and Leuven in Belgium but these were limited to postgraduate training.

With the establishment of Muhimbili Medical Center (M.M.C) in 1977, the department of Pharmacy was accorded a status of a Division with three departments:

• Department of Medicinal Chemistry,
• Department of Pharmaceutics and Pharmaceutical Microbiology,
• Department of Pharmacognosy.

Following the elevation of the Faculty of Medicine by the act of Parliament to a constituent University College of the University of Dar-Es-Salaam in July 1991, the Division of Pharmaceutical Sciences was accorded a Faculty status.
In July 1986 the duration of the Bachelor of Pharmacy course was increased to four years in order to fulfill the following objectives:

1. Allow more time to inculcate the professional values to the students.
2. Relax the pace of teaching in the hope of reducing the attrition rate which was at 35%.
3. Introduce management courses and consolidate other aspects of the course.
4. Harmonize with the Eastern Africa regional set up.