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US$50M
Urambo District's tobacco earnings, 2024/25 season
Tobacco
Grown by smallholders and sold through AMCOS cooperatives to the big leaf companies and to Tabora-based traders such as Agribora.
Tabora Region, Tanzania
The town at the heart of Tanzania
Caravan crossroads, railway junction, tobacco and honey country. A guide to visiting Tabora, its history, its economy and the businesses that make it work.
3.39MPeople in Tabora Region, 2022 census
7Districts, from Igunga to Kaliua
1912The Central Railway reaches Tabora
No. 1Tanzania's tobacco and honey region
Visit
Places to see
A town of mango-shaded avenues, German-era buildings and the house where Livingstone and Stanley rested. Most of it is within a short boda-boda ride.
Museum
Livingstone's Tembe
The flat-roofed Arab trader's house at Kwihara where David Livingstone lived in 1871 and Henry Morton Stanley waited out a war.
Heritage
Tabora Hotel (the Kaiserhof)
Built in German times as a guesthouse fit for the Kaiser, and still a hotel today: the Orion Tabora Hotel.
Old town
Gongoni Mosque and the old Swahili quarter
The Friday mosque at the centre of the oldest part of town, among the Arab houses, carved doors and mango trees the coastal traders left behind.
Family
Tabora Zoo
A small zoo under old trees in Kitete, run by the Tanzania Wildlife Management Authority: an easy afternoon out in town.
History
Where the caravans stopped
Before there was a Tanzania, there was Kazeh: the Nyamwezi heartland where Zanzibar's traders built their inland capital, and where every explorer of the 19th century passed through.
- 1850sOmani and Swahili traders found Kazeh on the Bagamoyo–Ujiji caravan route
- 1857Burton and Speke arrive; Speke goes on to sight Lake Victoria
- 1871Livingstone at Kwihara; Stanley waits out Mirambo's war
- 1893Chief Isike of Unyanyembe falls to the Germans
- 1912The Central Railway reaches Tabora
- 1916Belgian troops take the town in the First World War
- 1922Tabora Boys School opens; Julius Nyerere will study here
Economy & invest
What Tabora grows and moves
Tanzania is Africa's second-largest tobacco producer and Tabora is its main growing region. Add half the country's honey and a new standard-gauge railway, and the case for investing here makes itself.
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½
Of Tanzania's honey comes from Tabora's miombo woodland
Honey and forests
Forest reserves cover close to half the region, and its miombo woodland makes Tabora the country's largest honey producer.
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2030
Target for the Tabora–Kigoma standard-gauge line, started July 2026
Railway and logistics
Tabora is the junction of the Central Line to Dar es Salaam, Mwanza, Kigoma and Mpanda. Road hauliers such as Supreme Trucking carry the region's crops to port and border.
For Tabora businesses
Your business, on its own tabora.co.tz website
A hotel, a shop, a garage, a farm. We build you a clean one-page website at yourname.tabora.co.tz with your photos, opening hours, map and WhatsApp button, and list you in the Tabora directory.
- 1Send your business name, a few lines about it, your photos and contact details.
- 2We build the page and send you a preview link.
- 3You approve, and it's live the same day.
Mama Asha Lodge
Quiet rooms near the railway station · Breakfast included · Open 24 hours
WhatsAppCommunity
The Tabora directory
Who to call in Tabora: hotels, transport, garages, banks, health and buyers, plus every church and every school in the region.
