Affinity Bloc: Sub-Saharan African

Overview: Bantu refers to a large, complex linguistic grouping of peoples in Africa. The Chewa-Sena Bantu people cluster encompasses more than a dozen ethnic groups dominated by the Chewa and Sena tribes. The Chewas are the largest ethnic group in Malawi and the third largest in Zambia. They trace their roots to the Kalonga Muzura state in the seventeenth century, when they were known as Maravi. The Sena are an ethnic group living in the far southern tip of Malawi and across the border in Mozambique. Their expansion into southern Malawi is a twentieth-century phenomenon, a migration that began after World War I.

  -- James Olson, The Peoples of Africa: An Ethnohistorical Dictionary. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press (1996). Pp. 127, 514.

Peoples within this cluster: Chikunda (Kunda); Nsenga; Nyanja, Chewa; Nyanja, Manganja; Nyungwe; Podzo; Sena; Sena, Malawi; Senga; Tonga

Countries where they are found: Eswatini; Malawi; Mozambique; Tanzania; Zambia; Zimbabwe