Buganda

This was the royal line of the kabakas, the kings of Buganda, known as the Kintu or Abalasangeye dynasty. Its founder Kato Kintu united the clans around the north-western shore of Lake Victoria in the late 1200s and set up his capital at Nnono. His son Chwa succeeded him as Chwa I.

Chwa's son Kalemeera was driven into Bunyoro, and Kalemeera's son Kimera returned to reign as the third kabaka. From a small polity in Busiro, Buganda survived a Bunyoro invasion in the 1500s and expanded as Bunyoro-Kitara declined.

During the 1600s and 1700s it conquered Buddu, parts of Busoga and Karagwe, and made Kooki a tributary. Appointed military chiefs bound the conquered lands together, and by the early 1800s the kabaka ruled the strongest and most centralised kingdom of the Great Lakes, served by fleets of war canoes on Lake Victoria.