History of Tabora

A short timeline


1830s	Traders from the Swahili coast settle in Unyanyembe, the Nyamwezi kingdom around today’s Tabora.
1850s	Omani and Swahili merchants found Kazeh as the inland capital of the ivory and slave caravan route from Bagamoyo to Ujiji.
1857	Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke reach Kazeh on 7 November.
1858	Speke, travelling north from Kazeh, becomes the first European to see Lake Victoria (30 July).
1871	David Livingstone lives at Kwihara; Henry Stanley waits there while Mirambo’s war closes the road west.
1872	Livingstone and Stanley return to Kwihara together; they part there for good.
1884	Mirambo, ruler of Urambo and the most powerful of the Nyamwezi chiefs, dies.
1891	Germany takes control of Tabora.
1893	Chief Isike of Unyanyembe, defeated, blows himself up in his fort’s armoury (12 January).
1912	The Central Railway from Dar es Salaam reaches Tabora.
1916	Belgian troops capture Tabora on 19 September after ten days’ fighting.
1922	Tabora Boys School opens; Julius Nyerere will study there.
1928	Tabora Girls School opens; the Tabora–Mwanza railway is completed.
1958	Igombe Dam is built.
1961	Tanganyika becomes independent; five of its eight ministers are Tabora Boys alumni.
2019	Ugalla River and Kigosi become national parks.
2026	Construction of the Tabora–Kigoma standard-gauge railway begins.