Mirambo (died 1884, Tanganyika [now Tanzania]) was a Nyamwezi warlord of central Africa whose ability to unite the many hitherto separate Nyamwezi clans into a powerful kingdom by the 1870s gave him strategic control of Swahili-Arab trade routes and threatened the preeminence of the Swahili-Arabs’ colony in Unyanyembe (near present Tabora, Tanz.). His capital, Urambo (now in Tanzania), became a major rival trading centre and attracted traders, many of whom were primarily interested in the ivory so abundant in the interior of East Africa.
Mirambo’s success lay partly in his ability to get large supplies of firearms (often from Swahili-Arab traders) and in his skillful use of the ruga-ruga (Ngoni mercenary warriors from the south). Between 1876 and 1880 he gained control of the major routes northwest to Buganda and west to Ujiji, on Lake Tanganyika. According to one source, in 1880 the Arabs asked for peace and even agreed to pay tribute.
In the 1870s Mirambo received support from the Arab sultan of Zanzibar, Barghash, who was then trying to extend his influence into the interior. In 1880, however, when two members of an expedition sponsored by the Belgian king Leopold II were killed by one of Mirambo’s client chiefs, the sultan, already in a precarious position with Europeans, dropped the alliance. After Mirambo’s death his kingdom rapidly disintegrated.