Firstly, Simba in swahili means Lion. I belive that the african language and swahili are diffrent...I could be wrong. In fact, most of the characters in TLK are from swahili words. Rafiki=Friend, Puumba= Lazy Nuka= Stink
Next, It was all inspiration.
Ideas float around the universe and sometimes diffrent hands grab the same idea. So what if simmilar lines were used? TLK did not rip off TLB, Disney was simply inspired, IMO.
As for Kimba, my vote is that TLK is the american version of it, in some ways than one.