The history of the College of Natural and Applied Sciences (CoNAS) starts from the time the Faculty of Science was established as an academic unit of the former University College Dar es Salaam.

The former University College Dar es Salaam was one of 3 constituent colleges of the former University of East Africa. The other two constituent colleges were: Makerere University College in Kampala/Uganda and Nairobi University College in Nairobi/KenyaThe University College Dar es Salaam was inaugurated on 25th October 1961 by
Mwalimu Julius K. Nyerere, who was then the Prime Minister of Tanganyika.

The University College Dar es Salaam was initially housed in the TANU Building along Lumumba Street in Dar es Salaam City Centre. It consisted of a single faculty, the Faculty of Law.

In July 1965, almost five years after its establishment in 1961, the University College moved to the current premises at the “Hill” and established two more faculties to make a total of three:

•  Faculty of Law (FoL)
• Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) and
• Faculty of Science (FoS)
• Faculty of Science

The newly established Faculty of Science (FoS) started off with five departments namely:

• Botany
• Chemistry
• Mathematics
• Physics, and
• Zoology

From Faculty to College
In April 2009, UDSM upgraded 4 of its faculties into campus colleges. In that process, the Faculty of Science was merged with the Faculty of Aquatic Sciences and
Technologies (FAST) and transformed into a campus college which assumed its current name “College of Natural and Applied Sciences (CoNAS).”

In 2015, the Department of Aquatic Science and Fisheries moved out of CoNAS to be a department with the same name of the newly formed campus College of Agricultural Sciences and Fisheries Technology (CoASFT). Therefore, the number of departments in the college now stands at 7, which are:
 Botany
 Chemistry
 Geology
 Mathematics
 Molecular Biology and Biotechnology
 Physics
 Zoology and Wildlife Conservation

LEADERSHIP HISTORY