A name with less behind it than you would expect
The Old German Boma appears on every list of things to see in Bagamoyo — the administrative building of the German district, on the seafront, the largest colonial structure in the town. It is genuinely there and it is genuinely conspicuous. What is missing is any authority that documents it.
What the official inventories do and do not name
Tanzania Forest Services, promoting Bagamoyo stone town as a heritage destination, names the buildings it considers significant: the Old Fort, Liku House, which it says served as the German administrative headquarters, the first multiracial school, the old slave market, the German customs house and a slave house prison. It does not use the word boma. Tanzania’s tentative World Heritage submission for the Central Slave and Ivory Trade Route names the Caravan Serai, the Von Wissmann block, the Old Market, the Customs House and the Old Fort. It does not use the word either. The National Museum of Tanzania runs historical centres at nine sites around the country and Bagamoyo is not among them.
So the German administrative building at Bagamoyo is on the official record — as Liku House, and possibly as the Von Wissmann block, which is named without description — but not under the name most itineraries use for it. That is not a trivial point if you are trying to arrange a visit or ask directions.
The 1897 problem
TFS dates the Old Fort to 1897. That year is the one usually attached in circulation to the German administrative building rather than to the fort, and TFS’s same paragraph places German use of the town’s buildings in “the 18th to 19th century”, which is a century early for any German presence in East Africa. The most likely reading is that dates have been transposed between two buildings in the source material. No reachable authority resolves it, so this page gives no construction date for either.
The sensible practical response is not to worry about it. Look at the building, note that it is European civil architecture adapted for a hot coast — deep verandas, high rooms, a plan built around shade — and treat any date offered on the ground as a claim rather than a fact. That posture is the right one throughout Bagamoyo, for reasons the town guide explains at length.
Visiting
It is on the seafront within the old quarter and takes a few minutes as part of a walk. Whether any part of the interior is accessible depends on what the building is currently used for and on restoration work, neither of which is published. Ask in the town. See historical walking tours for how to approach the quarter as a whole.
Common questions
What does boma mean?
In Swahili it covers a fortified enclosure and, by extension, the seat of a district administration. Colonial-era administrative buildings across Tanzania are called bomas, which is why the word alone is not enough to identify a building.
Is it the same as Liku House?
TFS identifies Liku House as the German administrative headquarters at Bagamoyo. Whether that is the building generally called the boma is not something any reachable source states outright.
Is it the same as the boma at Mikindani?
No. Mikindani in the far south has its own German boma, a separate building, and that one is documented by the National Museum of Tanzania because Mikindani is one of its historical centres.