Current Time in Songea, Tanzania

Songea is the capital of Ruvuma Region in the far south of Tanzania, standing on a high plateau about a thousand metres above sea level between Lake Nyasa to the west and the Ruvuma River, which forms the border with Mozambique, to the south. The surrounding country is a mixture of miombo woodland, grassland and cultivated hillsides, and the altitude gives the town a pleasant climate with warm days, cool nights and a single rainy season from November to April.

Around two hundred thousand people live in Songea, which serves as the administrative, commercial and educational centre for a large and relatively remote region. Its economy rests on agriculture. Maize, beans, sunflowers, cashew nuts and above all tobacco are grown in the district, and the highlands around Mbinga to the west produce some of Tanzania's finest arabica coffee. Timber, small scale mining and trade with Mozambique and Malawi add to local activity.

The town takes its name from Chief Songea Mbano, a leader of the Ngoni people, who had migrated northwards from southern Africa in the nineteenth century and established themselves in this region. When the Maji Maji rebellion against German colonial rule swept across southern Tanganyika between 1905 and 1907, the Ngoni joined the uprising, and after its suppression Chief Songea and a large number of other leaders were executed here in 1906. The site is now the Maji Maji Memorial Museum, with a monument, a mass grave and exhibits on the rebellion, and it is one of the most significant places of national memory in Tanzania.

Ngoni culture remains strong in the district, expressed in dance, drumming, praise poetry and the traditions of the chiefly families, and it mixes with the customs of the Matengo, Ndendeule and Yao peoples who also live in the region. Markets in the town sell produce, pottery, baskets and printed cloth, and Swahili is the common language alongside local tongues.

Visitors to the area come for the memorial sites, the coffee country around Mbinga with its terraced Matengo pit fields, an indigenous farming system admired by agronomists, and the shore of Lake Nyasa at Mbamba Bay, where clear water, sandy coves and forested hills make one of the least visited but most beautiful lakeshores in East Africa. The Selous ecosystem and the Nyerere National Park lie to the northeast, and the Unity Bridge over the Ruvuma has opened a road link into northern Mozambique.

Songea is reached by a tarmac road from Mbeya and from the coast at Mtwara, and by a small airport with flights to Dar es Salaam. Buses provide long distance transport, while minibuses and motorcycle taxis serve the town.

Education is represented by teacher training colleges, technical institutes and secondary schools with regional reputations, and by university campuses that have opened in recent years.

Songea is important as the heart of the Ngoni country, as a centre of Tanzanian historical memory and as a gateway to the coffee highlands and lake shores of the southern part of the country.