Affinity Bloc: Sub-Saharan African

Overview: Bantu refers to a large, complex linguistic grouping of peoples in Africa. Makua and Yao are two large Bantu tribes of southern Tanzania and northern Mozambique. Some ethnologists consider the Makua to be a subgroup of the Yao. Until the colonial conquest of the nineteenth century, the Yao were known widely as traders who exchanged ivory, slaves, beeswax, tobacco, guns, gunpowder, beads, and cloth between Arab and Swahili traders on the East African coast and interior ethnic groups.

  -- James Olson, The Peoples of Africa: An Ethnohistorical Dictionary. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press (1996). Pp. 361, 602-602.

Peoples within this cluster: Chwabo; Ganda, Luganda; Kara; Kokola; Koti; Kunyi; Lolo; Lomwe; Lomwe, Nguru; Makhuwa; Makhuwa-Marrevone; Makhuwa-Meetto; Makhuwa-Mwaja; Makhuwa-Nahara; Makhuwa-Shirima; Makonde; Manyawa; Marendje; Mwera, Chimwera; Ndengereko; Ndonde; Ngindo; Takwane; Yao

Countries where they are found: Canada; Central African Republic; Comoros; Congo (Brazzaville); Kenya; Malawi; Mayotte; Mozambique; Tanzania; Uganda; United States; Zimbabwe