Sena

The Sena were Bantu-speaking communities of the Zambezi valley, between the Shona and the Nyanja-Chewa. Swahili Muslim traders used Sena on the river as an outpost for exchanging Indian Ocean goods for gold.

In 1531 the Portuguese trader Vicente Pegado founded a fair at Sena, which grew into a trading and missionary centre. Portuguese estates used African labour in the valley, while the eighteenth-century slave trade brought further violence to its inhabitants.