The Kami people are one of the individual groups in the Zaramo cluster of the Northeast Bantu-speaking people of East Africa.
They live in the coastal lowlands of Tanzania, in rural Morogoro District on rolling hills and mountain slopes mixed with the neighboring Luguru or Rugulu people.. The Kami of Tanzania are numbering 30,000, (Peoplegroups.org, 2023)
During the nine- teenth century, the Kamis were victimized by the East African slave trade, and, in response, they built fortified villages protected by stockades. In the twentieth century, those settlement patterns gave way to the homestead system in which rural Kamis scattered out more widely.
The Kami live in areas where there is an active aqua culture (commercial fish farms) program run by the Tanzanian government and a Swedish development group. They grow tobacco in this area. There is a new effort to replace this with commercial duck and chicken (poultry) farms. There appears to be an interest in adult literacy and primary schools in this area. One school has developed a "green" charcoal made out of vegetable waste which is helping to counter the deforestation of the area caused by the need for fuel sources. This group appears ready for the Scriptures in their own language which the Harveys hope to facilitate in partnership with the other groups focusing on the Kami.
They live in mud-and-wattle homes characterized by high, thatched, cone-shaped roofs (those thatched roofs are giving way today to tin roofs).
The vast majority of Kamis are Muslims, al- though they are considered to be only marginally loyal, confining their religious observances to fasting at Ramadan, taking on Arab names, and wearing the white skull cap.
Like many other Tanzanian rural groups, they have been af- fected by government relocation policies.
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