Lusinga Iwa Ng'ombe (c. 1840–1884) was a slave trader in the region to the west of Lake Tanganyika in the 1870s and early 1880s.
[2] At some time Lusinga seems to have visited Unyanyembe, near Tabora in modern Tanzania, where he realized the value that was attached to slaves and ivory.
With this superior weaponry he quickly defeated the chiefs in the region of Cape Tembwe, a key point for the trade crossing Lake Tanganyika, and settled there in a fortified village.
After reducing the local population by his slaving activity, and under pressure from other slavers, he moved to a new base two days walk from Lubanda in the Mugandja mountains, on the Muswe tributary of the Lufuko River.
They managed to bluff their way into Lusinga's fortress, where they shot him and took his head, which is held in the Museum of Natural Sciences of Belgium.