Lugbara

The Lugbara are a Central Sudanic people of the West Nile country, living on both sides of the Albert Nile in north-western Uganda around Arua and the adjoining Orientale Province of the Congo. They speak Lugbara ti, a Moru-Madi language so close to Madi that some scholars treat it as a Madi dialect.

In Madi oral tradition the Lugbara, whom the Madi call Lugbari, were the branch of the migrating Moru-Madi cluster that broke off in search of food before the Madi settled by the Nile, part of the southward movements that scholars place between roughly 1400 and 1700.

Lugbara lands had no kings or kingdoms: chiefs headed autonomous chiefdoms, villages allied with their neighbors for defense, and every able-bodied man was liable to take up arms. Originally animists, they were settled farmers growing millet and sorghum and breeding guineafowl.