In English, the passive voice takes the form 'noun was verbed by noun.' For example, 'the book was read by Sarah.' You may already be familiar with passive voice in Swahili by way of some verbs. When you say, 'mimi ninaitwa ____' you are using the passive ('I am called ____'). Kuitwa to be called is thus the passive form of kuita to call.
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First we will look at the construction of passive verbs and then how these are used to form sentences with the nouns to which they refer.​

 

GENERAL FORMATION OF THE PASSIVE FORM

Generally, the passive form is created by adding a 'w' before the final vowel, a. Therefore, kuita becomes kuitwa, n.k. There are, however, exceptions to this, as outlined below.

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VERBS THAT END IN AA, UA, AU TAKE -LIWA AS THEIR ENDING
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kununua to buy
kuzaa to birth
kusahau to forget
kuvaa to dress 
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VERBS THAT END IN OA AND EA TAKE -LEWA AS THEIR ENDING

​​kuoa to marry (males)           kuolewa to be married (females)
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[This is also a very important cultural distinction: males always marry whereas females are always married. It is an active action for males and a passive action for females. There are negative connotations if these verbs are used in reverse.]
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ARABIC VERBS THAT END IN I AND U TAKE -IWA
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kutafsiri to translate
kujibu to answer
kujaribu ​to try
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THE FORMATION OF THE PASSIVE SENTENCE
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In its most basic form, the passive sentence in Swahili is very similar to its English counterpart.
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Notice three things:

i.) The noun that has been acted upon comes before the verb and the subject
marker of the verb matches the noun class of this noun.
ii.) The object doing the acting comes after the noun. 'By' is represented by 'na.'
iii.) There are no direct object infixes.

This last point is important. What if you had a sentence like 'Mama alininunulia kalamu hii.'? Now you have three objects involved. The simplest formation of passive would be, 'Kalamu hii ilinunuliwa na mama,' but for whom was the pen bought? Though tempting, we also can't say, 'Kalamu hii ilinunuliwa na mama kwa mimi,' for this would be incorrect. The proper formation of this sentence in the passive is therefore, 'Nilinunuliwa kalamu hii na mama,' or, I was bought this pen by mama. Though this may not be the exact formation of the sentence in English, it is the manner in which you must deal with direct objects in the passive in Swahili. There should be no direct object pronouns within passive verbs.