Mwanza has a population of 1,104,521, making it the 2nd largest place we list in Tanzania.
Mwanza holds 1.5% of Tanzania's 72,563,780 people. Dar es Salaam, the largest place we list there, is 4.9 times its size. Twenty years earlier the World Gazetteer recorded 436,801, a rise of 153%.
The 2005 figure comes from the World Gazetteer archive restored on this site. The two sources may draw the settlement's boundary differently, so treat the change as indicative rather than exact. Why figures differ.
Nearby in size
| Place | Region | Population |
|---|---|---|
| Dar es Salaam | Dar es Salaam Region | 5,383,728 |
| Dodoma | Dodoma | 765,179 |
| Zanzibar | Zanzibar Urban/West | 709,809 |
| Arusha | Arusha | 617,631 |
Figures are the latest available in GeoNames (CC BY 4.0), which draws on national censuses of varying dates — treat them as recent, not same-year. Country totals are UN World Population Prospects 2024 (medium variant) where the UN lists the country separately; the handful it reports under a parent state keep a GeoNames figure and are marked as such. Sources & method.