Ebrahim Hussein (born 1943) is a Tanzanian writer, the best known Swahili playwright, and Tanzania's most complex literary personality. Known first and foremost as a dramatist, he is also a theorist whose dissertation on the theatre in Tanzania remains the standard reference work. His plays are a corpus of theatrical material with great significance to an understanding of Tanzania's political and social development in relation to the Swahili/Islamic coastal culture, of which he is a part.
His first play, Kinjeketile (1969), written in Swahili is considered "a landmark of Tanzanian theater." The play soon became one of the standard subjects for Kiswahili exams in Tanzania and Kenya. By 1981, it had already been reprinted six times.
Other plays written by Hussein include: Mashetani (1971), an overtly political play; Jogo Kijijini(1976), an experiment in dramatic performance; and Arusi (1980), in which Hussein expresses disillusionment with the Tanzanian political theory Ujamaa