Kukawa (previously Kuka) is a town and Local Government Area in the northeastern Nigerian state of Borno, close to Lake Chad. The town was founded in 1814 as capital of the Kanem-Bornu Empire by the Muslim scholar and warlord Muhammad al-Amin al-Kanemi after the fall of the previous capital, Ngazargamu. The town had great strategical importance, being one of the southern terminals of trans-Saharan trade routes to Tripoli. Historically the city was much larger than today, with a population estimated by the British at 50,000-60,000 in the late nineteenth-century.