Peoples of Africa
Peoples of Africa Encyclopedia Articles
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Ha
Ha, a Bantu-speaking people belonging to the Interlacustrine Bantu ethnolinguistic family who live in western Tanzania bordering on Lake Tanganyika. Their country, which they call Buha, comprises grasslands...
Zulu
Zulu, a nation of Nguni-speaking people in KwaZulu-Natal province, South Africa. They are a branch of the southern Bantu and have close ethnic, linguistic, and cultural ties with the Swazi and Xhosa. The...
Bamum
Bamum, a West African people speaking a language that is often used as a lingua franca and belongs to the Benue-Congo branch of the Niger-Congo family. Their kingdom, with its capital at Foumban (q.v.)...
San
San, an indigenous people of southern Africa, related to the Khoekhoe (Khoikhoi). They live chiefly in Botswana, Namibia, and southeastern Angola. Bushmen is an Anglicization of boesman, the Dutch and...
Yaunde
Yaunde, a Bantu-speaking people of the hilly area of south-central Cameroon who live in and around the capital city of Yaoundé. The Yaunde and a closely related people, the Eton, comprise the two main...
Bantu peoples
Bantu peoples, the approximately 85 million speakers of the more than 500 distinct languages of the Bantu subgroup of the Niger-Congo language family, occupying almost the entire southern projection of...
Tutsi
Tutsi, ethnic group of probable Nilotic origin, whose members live within Rwanda and Burundi. The Tutsi formed the traditional aristocratic minority in both countries, constituting about 9 percent and...
Hausa
Hausa, people found chiefly in northwestern Nigeria and adjacent southern Niger. They constitute the largest ethnic group in the area, which also contains another large group, the Fulani, perhaps one-half...
Nyoro
Nyoro, an Interlacustrine Bantu people living just east of Lake Albert (also called Lake Mobutu Sese Seko), west of the Victoria Nile, in west central Uganda. In precolonial times, the Nyoro formed one...
Berber
Berber, any of the descendants of the pre-Arab inhabitants of North Africa. The Berbers live in scattered communities across Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Mali, Niger, and Mauritania. They speak...
Acholi
Acholi, ethnolinguistic group of northern Uganda and South Sudan. Numbering more than one million at the turn of the 21st century, they speak a Western Nilotic language of the Eastern Sudanic branch of...
Asante
Asante, people of south-central Ghana and adjacent areas of Togo and Côte d’Ivoire. Most of the Asante live in a region centred on the city of Kumasi, which was the capital of the former independent Asante...
Chewa
Chewa, Bantu-speaking people living in the extreme eastern zone of Zambia, northwestern Zimbabwe, Malawi, and Mozambique. They share many cultural features with their Bemba kinsmen to the west. Their language,...
Fipa
Fipa, a Bantu-speaking people linguistically related to Lungu, Pimbwe, and Mambwe who inhabit the Ufipa plateau between lakes Tanganyika and Rukwa in southwestern Tanzania. From prehistoric times the plateau...
Efik
Efik, people inhabiting the lower Cross River in Cross River state, Nigeria. Their language is the main dialect and language of the Efik-Ibibio group of the Benue-Congo branch of Niger-Congo languages....
Luba
Luba, a Bantu-speaking cluster of peoples who inhabit a wide area extending throughout much of south-central Democratic Republic of the Congo. They numbered about 5,594,000 in the late 20th century. The...
Igbo
Igbo, people living chiefly in southeastern Nigeria who speak Igbo, a language of the Benue-Congo branch of the Niger-Congo language family. The Igbo may be grouped into the following main cultural divisions:...
Boer
Boer, (Dutch: “husbandman,” or “farmer”), a South African of Dutch, German, or Huguenot descent, especially one of the early settlers of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. Today, descendants of the...
Nguni
Nguni, cluster of related Bantu-speaking ethnic groups living in South Africa, Swaziland, and Zimbabwe, whose ancestors inhabited a broad band of upland territory extending from the Great Fish River, in...
Mpondo
Mpondo, group of Nguni-speaking peoples who have for several centuries occupied the area between the Mtata and Mtamvuna rivers in Eastern province of South Africa. The Mpondo homeland formed one of the...
Tembu
Tembu, Bantu-speaking people who inhabit the upper reaches of the Mzimvubu River in Eastern province, South Africa. The Tembu speak a dialect of Xhosa, a Bantu language of the Nguni group that is closely...
Nilot
Nilot, any member of several east-central African peoples living in South Sudan, northern Uganda, and western Kenya. The name refers to the area in which they live, mostly the region of the upper Nile...
Yoruba
Yoruba, one of the three largest ethnic groups of Nigeria, concentrated in the southwestern part of that country. Much smaller, scattered groups live in Benin and northern Togo. The Yoruba numbered more...
Ngoni
Ngoni, approximately 12 groups of people of the Nguni (q.v.) branch of Bantu-speaking peoples that are scattered throughout eastern Africa. Their dispersal was due to the rise of the Zulu empire early...
Amhara
Amhara, people of the Ethiopian central highlands. The Amhara are one of the two largest ethnolinguistic groups in Ethiopia (the other group being the Oromo). They constitute more than one-fourth of the...
Maasai
Maasai, nomadic pastoralists of East Africa. Maasai is essentially a linguistic term, referring to speakers of this Eastern Sudanic language (usually called Maa) of the Nilo-Saharan language family. These...