Rukwa Region
The Mambwe are an ethnic and linguistic group from Rukwa Region, Tanzania and northeastern Zambia. Like the Namwanga and other regional ethnic tribes, the Mambwe are said to have migrated from North East Africa. In 1987 the Mambwe population in Tanzania was estimated to number 63,000 . The number of Mambwe in Zambia has not been independently estimated, though the combined number of Mambwe and Lungu in Zambia was estimated to be 262,800 in 1993 . The mambwe people of Zambia are known to be great businessmen owing to their interaction to their close cousins; the Namwanga, Swahili and Arabs traders. They also distinguish the last names for males and females, like the Namwanga people, by applying prefixes "Si" and "Na" to be the first two letters of the last name e.g.