Rutara

The Rutara peoples, who call themselves the Banyakitara, are a cluster of related Bantu communities of the African Great Lakes region, with mutually intelligible dialects; they include the Banyoro, Batooro and others. Their Proto-Rutara ancestors kept cattle in the Kagera grasslands near Bukoba from about 500, learning pastoralism from Cushitic neighbors.

After 1200 a northern branch expanded into the grasslands of western Uganda, absorbing older Central Sudanic populations and opening the era remembered in oral tradition as the age of the Batembuzi and Bachwezi; the great earthworks at Bigo bya Mugenyi and the salt gardens of Kibiro belong to this early Kitara world.

From it arose the Kingdom of Bunyoro, where the Babiito dynasty took power in the late sixteenth century and led the western lakes for two centuries. Its dominance faded in the late eighteenth century, when Buganda seized Kooki, and in the 1830s Tooro broke away, taking the salt works with it.