The migration of labourers to centres of mining, plantations and industrial production has been one of the most important demographic features of the African continent since its incorporation into the capitalist money economy. It is, however, surprisingly that the influence of this phenomenon on rural transformations remains largely unexplored. Most of studies have addressed the negative consequences of labour on the local communities. This is the impression that this paper aims to correct by using colonial Njombe as a case study. While not denying the detrimental impacts of labour migration, the paper integrates written and oral information to establish that such exclusive attribution of rural underdevelopment to labour migration was indeed a traditional way of viewing labour migration. Such views were mainly a result of macro-economic cost-benefit analysis that economists have always considered and emphasized upon. This article, therefore, is an effort to go beyond such economic arena by considering the acquisition of human capital particularly linking labour migration with western education and the spread of the Kiswahili language. Drawing from transformational approaches, this article argues that knowledge and skills that Njombe migrant labourers got from different work places, imbued them with elements which knowingly or unknowingly became part of the instruments for the wider rural transformations