New Delhi, Oct. 27 -- Tanzania's governing party has been in charge for 64 years, for much of that time without any serious opposition.

That looks set to be extended when Tanzanians go to the polls Wednesday in an election widely expected to be won by President Samia Suluhu Hassan, a former vice president who rose automatically to the presidency in 2021 after the death of her predecessor.

Although Tanzania is a multiparty democracy, a version of one party - Hassan's Chama cha Mapinduzi, or Party of the Revolution - has been in power since the country's independence from Britain in 1961.

The country, with annual per capita income of roughly $1,200, is an outlier in a region where liberation parties have been going out of fashion and you...