Luba

The Luba, or Baluba, are a Bantu people of the Upemba Depression and the surrounding Katanga savanna. Iron-working farmers had settled its lakes and marshes by the 400s, building dams for fishing and cultivation and trading dried fish, salt and metals along routes to both oceans; by the 900s fishing, farming and metalwork sustained a stratified society.

Around 1500 these communities coalesced into the Kingdom of Luba. Tradition remembers the tyrant Nkongolo, overthrown by Kalala Ilunga, son of the hunter Mbidi Kiluwe from the east. Kalala became the ancestor from whom every sacred king, the Mulopwe, claimed descent. Nobles and the Mbudye men of memory sustained the state, a model borrowed by the neighboring Lunda.

From 1700 the empire expanded through tribute rather than direct conquest, campaigning against the Songye and planting client fire kingdoms on its frontiers, the first founded before 1810.