Ada ya usafirishaji imelipwa kupitia mfumo wa kiposta.

A helpful breakdown is:

• Ada = fee, charge
• ya = of
• usafirishaji = shipping, transportation
• imelipwa = has been paid
• kupitia = through, via, by means of
• mfumo = system
• wa = of
• kiposta = postal / related to the post

So grammatically, the sentence is built like:

[Fee of shipping] + [has been paid] + [through the postal system]

Swahili does not usually use articles like English the and a/an.

So ada can mean:

• a fee
• the fee
• sometimes just fee/fees in a general sense

The exact meaning depends on context. English requires an article, but Swahili usually does not.

In Swahili, the word for of changes to agree with the noun that comes before it.

Here the head noun is ada.
Ada belongs to a noun class that takes the connector ya.

So:

• ada ya usafirishaji = fee of shipping = shipping fee

A key point for English speakers: the connector agrees with ada, not with usafirishaji.

Usafirishaji is a noun formed from the verb safirisha, which means to transport, to ship, or to send.

A simple way to think of it is:

• safirisha = to ship / transport
• usafirishaji = shipping / transportation

This is a very common pattern in Swahili: a verb can be turned into a noun meaning the act/process of doing that verb.

Swahili verbs often pack a lot of information into one word.

imelipwa can be divided like this:

• i- = subject marker agreeing with ada
• -me- = perfect aspect, often meaning has
• lip- = verb root from lipa, pay
• -w- = passive marker
• -a = final vowel

So imelipwa means it has been paid.

The i- is there because the subject is ada.

Swahili verbs must agree with the subject noun class, not just with person like English verbs do. Since ada belongs to a noun class that takes i- in the singular, the verb becomes:

• ada imelipwa = the fee has been paid

This is noun-class agreement, and it is one of the most important features of Swahili grammar.

The passive is used because the sentence focuses on the fee, not on the person who paid it.

So:

• imelipwa = has been paid

This is very natural in Swahili, just as it is in English. If the payer is unknown, unimportant, or obvious from context, the passive is often preferred.

An active version would need a subject such as they, someone, or a specific person.

Here kupitia means through, via, or by means of.

Its basic idea is connected to passing through, but in many sentences it works much like a preposition in English:

• kupitia mfumo wa kiposta = through the postal system
• kupitia benki = through the bank
• kupitia mtandao = through the internet / online

So in this sentence, it shows the method or channel used for payment.

Just like ya earlier in the sentence, wa is a connector meaning of, and it agrees with the noun before it.

Here the noun before it is mfumo.

So:

• mfumo wa kiposta = literally system of postal type
• natural English: postal system or postal method

Again, the connector agrees with the head noun:

• mfumo takes wa

Not in the same way as a regular adjective like kubwa (big) or nzuri (good).

In this sentence, kiposta behaves more like a noun-based descriptor after wa. Swahili often uses:

• noun + connector + noun

where English would often use:

• noun + adjective

So instead of something exactly like postal system word-for-word, Swahili expresses it as something like system of postal type.

That is a very common Swahili structure.

Yes. If you want to say who did the paying, you could make it active.

For example:

• Wamelipa ada ya usafirishaji kupitia mfumo wa kiposta.
• They have paid the shipping fee through the postal system.

The original sentence is passive because it emphasizes the fee itself:

• Ada ya usafirishaji imelipwa kupitia mfumo wa kiposta.
• The shipping fee has been paid through the postal system.

Both are possible, but they focus on different things.