The Chagga tribe : a collection of Bantu speakers

The Chagga tribe is a collection of Bantu speakers. They moved to the slopes of Kilimanjaro about 300 years ago. During the 17th and 18th centuries, they were nomadic pastoralists. However, between the 18th and 19th centuries the Chagga began permanent settlements and slowly developed modern agriculture, on both small and large scale.

With their long term experience in farming, the Chagga have a unique style that helps conserve the land. They use terrace farming on steep slopes, growing tall tress and under them, planting Arabic coffee, bananas and many small crops like maize, beans and garden vegetables. Thus they can grom a cash and a food crop on the same plot of land. The Chagga have developed an extensive irrigation system using the large amounts of rainfall high on the mountain to irrigate their extensive farms.

Missionaries arrived in Chagga land in the 1800s and were accepted mostly because they brought schools, health centers and Christianity. With the first missionaries accepted, more and more Europeans wanted to visit the Kilimanjaro area. Since then thousands of tourists from all over the world have come to climb Kilimanjaro using Chaggas as guides, porters and cooks. Tourism on Kilimanjaro also provides a market for the agricultural products (food for climbers) that are produced by the local Chaggas. Many hotels have been built on the slopes of Kilimanjaro to accommodate tourists, and most of these hotels employ many Chagga.

Thus Kilimanjaro has shaped the history, economy, language and religion of the Chagga people living on the slopes of the mountain.