Haya people

The Haya are an ethnic and linguistic group based in the Bukoba District, Muleba District and Karagwe District of Kagera Region in northwestern Tanzania, East Africa. In 1991 the Haya population was estimated to number 1,200,000. They speak the Haya language.

The Haya are said to have settled in the Kagera Region of north western Tanzania during the time of the Bantu expansion. They are believed to be some of the earliest inhabitants in the area to practice metal work which allowed them to create various new forms of pottery.

They were organized into small groups which were loosely affiliated with one another and organized in a system similar to feudalism with commoners and nobles as the main participants. With the arrival of the Europeans and christianity the region became famous for yielding the first African Roman Catholic Cardinal the late Cardinal Laurian Rugambwa also they valued formal education early compared to other tribes.

In 1978, the ancestral region to which the Haya belong was subject to an attempted annexation by the former Ugandan president Idi Amin Dada whose invasion of the Kagera region eventually lead to the toppling of his government by the Army of Tanzania.

The Basimba living among the Haya tribe are part of the Basimba people living in Uganda, Zambia and Congo

Archaeologist Peter Schmidt discovered through a literalist combination of archaeology and oral tradition that the Haya had been forging steel for around 2000 years.

This discovery was made accidentally while Schmidt was learning about the history of the Haya via their oral tradition. He was led to a tree which was said to rest on the spot of an ancestral furnace used to forge steel. A group of elders were later tasked with the challenge of recreating the forges.

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