The building above the bay
The Old Boma is the German colonial administrative building at Mikindani, standing above the town on the slope behind the bay. It is the most conspicuous structure in the place and the one that appears in every photograph of it — a heavy, arcaded, castellated block with a tower, built for administration in a climate it was not designed for.
The National Museum of Tanzania, which runs Mikindani as one of its historical centres, names the German Governor’s Residence among the town’s significant buildings, alongside the Custom House, the Sultanate Palace, the slave market, the Mikindani Mosque, an Indian temple, Indian Street, stone-built homes, historical graves, churches and historical water wells. The museum’s Swahili-language signage for the site names the Kasri la Mjerumani — the German castle or palace — which is what the boma is locally called.
What is not published
No authority reachable online gives a construction date for the building, names its architect, or describes what it was used for after the German administration ended. Accounts in circulation give a date in the 1890s and a subsequent career as a hotel; neither can be confirmed here, so neither is asserted. What the national museum does publish for Mikindani is a different and better-evidenced structure: the first German bank building in the country, put up in 1895 to hold gold, copper, diamonds and silver, later used to store arms, since restored and back in use. If a guide gives you a date for the boma, it is worth asking whether the date belongs to the bank.
What it tells you if you look at it properly
A boma of this size, on a bay this small, in a town of this population, is out of proportion to what Mikindani ever was — and that is the point. It was built when the harbour was the outlet for the whole southern interior, and it was made redundant when the Port of Mtwara was relocated away from Mikindani in 1948. The building outlasted its reason for existing by nearly eighty years, which is why it is still there and why nothing has been built over it.
The view from the boma over the near-enclosed bay is the best in the town and explains the harbour’s geography in a way no plaque would. See historical walking tours for how to approach a town like this, and Swahili cultural tours for the wider coastal context.
Visiting
It is a short, steep walk up from the old town and takes fifteen or twenty minutes to look at, longer if the view holds you. What access is available to the interior depends on the building’s current use, which is not published; ask in the town or through the museum’s site office. The National Museum publishes contact details for Mikindani Historic Town and no opening hours for any part of it.
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, so the word alone does not identify a particular building.
Is it the same as the boma at Bagamoyo?
No. Bagamoyo has its own German administrative building, which is a separate structure and considerably less well documented than this one, because Bagamoyo is not a National Museum historical centre and Mikindani is.
How old is it?
Not established here. No reachable authority publishes a construction date, and the 1895 date that circulates belongs, in the national museum’s own record, to the German bank building rather than to the boma.