History
Songea was a great Ngoni warrior of Shona ancestry, hanged in 1906 during the time of German repression of the Maji Maji rebellion. Songea had been spared the death sentence because he had surrendered. However he demanded to be hanged along with the other Ngoni leaders. The Germans complied.
After the Second World War the area was marked for rapid agricultural development linked to the ultimately disastrous groundnut scheme. A railway had been planned from the coast to Songea and actually appeared in 1950s high school geography text books. During the liberation war with Mozambique the Songea area was a restricted zone and occasionally suffered aerial attacks by Portuguese forces. Its remoteness made it vulnerable to ivory poaching, and communications remained unreliable until 1985 when a new British funded road was opened linking it northwards to the road and rail hub of Makambako.
Songea became a municipality in 2006.
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