Heligoland-Zanzibar Treaty

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The Heligoland-Zanzibar Treaty (German: Helgoland-Sansibar-Vertrag) was an 1890 agreement between the United Kingdom and Imperial Germany - hence also Anglo-German Agreement of 1890 - concerning mainly territorial interests in Africa.

A common erroneous assumption is that Germany traded possession of East African Zanzibar for the North Sea island of Heligoland.

Rather, Germany gained Heligoland (Helgoland in German, originally part of Danish Holstein) in the North Sea, the Caprivi Strip (Fwe chieftainship in Namibia), and a free hand to control and acquire the coast of Dar es Salaam that would form the core of German East Africa (later Tanganyika, now the mainland component of Tanzania).

In exchange, Germany handed over to the UK the protectorate over the small sultanate of Wituland (Deutsch-Witu, on the Kenyan coast), parts of East-Africa (critical for the UK to build a railway to Lake Victoria), and pledged not to interfere in the actions of the UK vis-à-vis the Sultanate of Zanzibar. The UK declared a protectorate over the insular sultanate of Zanzibar (the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba) and, in the subsequent 1896 Anglo-Zanzibar War, gained full control of the state.

In addition, the treaty established the German sphere of interest in German South-West Africa (now Namibia) and settled the borders between German Togoland and the British Gold Coast Colony and German Cameroon and British Nigeria.