Tanzania 's 100 or more different tribal groups are mostly of Bantu origin. The Sukuma tribe from Lake Victoria is the largest with a population of over three million. Other large tribes include the Haya from western Lake Victoria, the Chaga who occupy the fertile Kilimanjaro slopes, the Nyamwezi and Gogo in central Tanzania, and the Hehe, Ngoni and Nyakyusya from the southern highlands. Perhaps most famous is the Masai tribe, which dispersed across the northern plains and beyond into Kenya.

Tanzania was the scene of many immigrations by African ethnic races. Contacts through war, trade and migration in search of new land caused these various peoples to intermingle and form tribes. Today Tanzania, as the home of four major African language families, boasts the greatest linguistic diversity in the whole of the African continent. In the northern central area of the country, one can find the Bantu, the Khoisan or "click" language, the Cushitic and the Nilotic languages.