Bangi

The Bangi are a cluster of Bantu peoples of the central Congo basin, among them the Nunu and Ntomba, who live around Lake Mai-Ndombe and along the rivers of the Équateur forest, fishing, growing cassava and travelling by canoe. Their closely related Bangi-Ntomba tongues belong to the Bantu family, and Bobangi, a Bangi dialect, later supplied most of the vocabulary of the river trade language Lingala.

Oral king lists recall that shortly after 1400 the BaNunu built up the riverine polity of Mwene Muji, which dominated the trade of the lower Kasai with a canoe fleet and exported fine woven cloth.

The polity's unity broke down in the early 1600s, when the Boma, Yaka and Bozanga chiefdoms split away, and the Nunu chiefdoms around the lake never regained their old power, though their canoemen stayed prominent in Congo river commerce.