Fipa people
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| 195,000 | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
 Tanzania
|
195,000 |
| Languages | |
| Fipa, Mambwe | |
| Religion | |
| Christian(70%), Muslim (5%) | |
The Fipa (or Wafipa) are an ethnic and linguistic group based in the Sumbawanga Rural and Nkasi districts of Rukwa Region in southwestern Tanzania speaking the Fipa and Mambwe languages. In 1992, the Fipa population was estimated to number 200,000, reduced to 195,000 in the 2002 census.
Historically, the Fipa lived on a largely treeless plateau looking down on Lake Tanganyika, appearing as a bridge joining east to central Africa and the Congo. They were a mixed population – Fipa, Wanda, and Nyika – with roughly 20,000 people in the 1890s. Many had come from the Congo, with chiefdoms dominating a number of clans. Since iron was a precious commodity, and iron smelting required technical knowledge, it was jealously guarded, resulting in a number of clans being subject to ironsmiths. The central chiefdom, Milanzi ("the eternal village"), was headed by a dynasty of ironsmiths, which exchanged its products for woven cloth.
These clans and dynasties were later taken over by an even newer immigrant group, the Twa, possibly the Tutsi from the north, who were organized as a single clan and dominated others by force and cunning. While the Twa established themselves as an , the older Milansi dynasty retained ritual power and the right to install the Twa chief. It was, however, the Twa (after splitting into two chiefdoms) who exercised territorial and administrative authority through their appointed officials, with orders then transmitted to elected village headmen. The Fipa had now finally become more stratified, had even more precise borders, and were governed in a more strictly supervised manner. It had become a real state.
Nkansi (Nkasi), on the Ufipa Plateau, was a chiefdom with a particularly extreme and elaborate form of political organization, even having a prime minister, and according to some, had a life comparable to peasantry in the richest of European countries. It became traditional to have hereditary chiefs who were surrounded by a court of at least nine titled officials and others to administer specific areas of the chiefdom.
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Wikipedia