Karamoja

Karamoja is a dry plateau of grasslands and volcanic hills, where rainfall is uncertain and cattle are central to life. Households combine cultivation with herding, moving animals to find pasture during the dry season. Livestock provide food and wealth, while ties between families help people manage herds and their movements.

Historians place the arrival of Ateker-speaking herders and farmers on the plateau around the sixteenth century. Their descendants include the Jie, Dodoth and Karimojong, the latter comprising the Matheniko, Bokora and Pian. Over the following centuries communities formed, divided and joined one another as people migrated and married. Among the Jie, political communities took shape around the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries; negotiation and reconciliation were important ways of ending conflicts between neighbours.