Baganda

The Baganda are the Bantu people of Buganda, fertile hill country on the northwestern shore of Lake Victoria, which they call Nalubaale. They speak Luganda, and every Muganda belongs to an exogamous clan, traditionally fifty-two in number; the seven oldest claim roots in local rulers going back to about 400.

Their kingdom was unified around the thirteenth century under its first king, Kato Kintu, and a second wave of clans arrived with Kabaka Kimera in about 1370.

Ruled by the Kabaka from a hilltop court through chiefs gathering village tribute, Buganda grew from a small lakeshore polity into one of the strongest African Great Lakes states in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. At the end of the eighteenth century it seized Kooki and Buddu from the fading kingdom of Bunyoro, most neighbouring rulers sending it tribute.