Bukoba

Bukoba is a town on the south-western shore of Lake Victoria in north-western Tanzania, about one degree south of the Equator and close to the border with Uganda. It is the capital of the Kagera Region and the seat of Bukoba Urban District, and the 2022 census recorded 144,938 people. Emin Pasha founded the town in 1890 as the first German military station on the lake, in the territory of the Lesser Kyamutwara chiefdom, and it grew into a port for grain, hides and ivory. British forces raided it in June 1915 during the First World War, and Ugandan aircraft bombed it in 1978. A magnitude 5.9 earthquake in September 2016 destroyed 840 houses there. Bukoba has an upland tropical monsoon climate, an airport, a port about three kilometres from the centre, and ferries to Mwanza.