Ngbandi

The Ngbandi are an Ubangian speaking people of the upper Ubangi River, straddling the border of the Central African Republic and the Congo around Bangui and Bosobolo; their name means people of the water, and in the Central African Republic those who speak the river tongue are often called Sango.

Their speech forms a dialect continuum, its northern variety being the base of the Sango trade language that spread along the Ubangi before European rule.

Oral history traces the Ngbandi to a migration south from Nubia, and from the 1600s their fortunes were bound up with the neighboring Zande and Nzakara: the senior Bandia clan conquered Nzakara lands and part of the Zande country and ruled them until the late 1800s, gradually absorbing Zande culture, while cadet lineages kept the Ngbandi language and the old river territory.