41 Bantu Migration Facts: Interesting Details Revealed On African History

The academic term 'Bantu' refers to people from West Africa who originally lived between the countries of Cameroon and Nigeria.

The Bantu expansion is the term used to describe a millennia-long migration of speakers of the Proto-Bantu language group. Linguistic evidence, particularly the striking closeness of the languages spoken in sub-equatorial Africa, has been the primary source of evidence supporting Bantu expansion.

In that vast territory, there are around 500 languages that have emerged from the Proto-Bantu language. The expansion of Bantu speakers from their core territory in West Africa appears to have started around 1000 BC. The western branch of the Congo system may have followed the coast and major rivers southward, reaching central Angola in 500 BC.

By 1000 BC, another wave of migration had moved east, becoming a huge new population center near East Africa's Great Lakes region. By 300 AD, pioneering groups had reached modern-day KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, and the modern-day Limpopo Province (previously Northern Transvaal) by 500 AD.

The Bantu ruled the African continent south of a line that ran from southern Nigeria to Kenya.

Bantu people were originally brought to central Africa, southern Africa, and southeast Africa during the Bantu expansion. These are places where they had previously been absent. Several prior residents were assimilated or evicted as a result of the Proto-Bantu migration.

Before the arrival of agricultural and pastoralist African people, southern Africa was populated by hunter-gatherers and early pastoralists. New technology and abilities, including high-yield crop farming and ironworking, were introduced by the Bantu, resulting in more efficient tools and weaponry.

Bantu people established relatively powerful Bantu-speaking governments on a greater scale than local chiefdoms. By the 19th century, groups that had previously been marginalized had gained political and economic significance.

Although most historians believe in the fact that Bantu migrations occurred in general across Africa, the exact timeframes, reasons, routes, and consequences are still questioned.

Who were the Bantu and where did they live?

The Bantu were farmers who spoke a number of Bantu dialects.

In his 1862 book 'A Comparative Grammar of South African Languages', Wilhelm Bleek coined the term 'Bantu' in its current sense, hypothesizing that a large number of languages spread across central Africa, southern Africa, eastern Africa, and western Africa shared so many similarities that they must be part of a single language group.

• The exact number of Bantu languages that exist now is unknown, however, Ethnologue lists 535 Bantu languages.
• They are predominantly spoken east and south of present-day Cameroon, that is, in the central African, southeast African, and southern regions.
• The total number of Bantu speakers was predicted to reach 350 million in 2010. Africa contains around 5% of the world's population of Bantu people.
• There are around 60 million speakers in the Democratic Republic of Congo, grouped into 200 ethnic or tribal groups.
• All Bantu communities with populations of several million people include the Shona of Zimbabwe (12 million in 2000), the Zulu of South Africa (12 million in 2005), the Luba of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (7 million in 2010), the Sukuma of Tanzania (9 million in 2016), and the Kikuyu of Kenya (7 million as of 2010).
• Their dominance was the savannah and rain forest of the southern West Africa region near the Niger River.
• They successfully produced agricultural crops like sorghum, beans, oil palms, millets, melons, and dry rice with both stone and iron tools, but only on a subsistence level.
• They knew how to produce iron weapons out of iron ore.
• Bantu people enhanced agricultural output by using iron tools, and their iron weaponry made them strong military opponents.
• They were also hunters and herders of animals like sheep, as well as potters, weavers, and traders, and they exchanged goods such as copper.
• Bomba, Bongos, Candombe, Chimpanzee, Gumbo, Hakuna matata, Impala, Kalimba, Mamba, Mambo, Marimba, Safari, Samba, Simba, and Ubuntu are some of the most well known Bantu words.
• Bantu peoples have not vanished. They account for almost two-thirds of Africa's population. They mostly live in the southern half of the African continent.
• The Bantu were divided into two significant linguistic regions early in African history. The Western African region went into what is now Angola, Namibia, and northwestern Botswana, while the Eastern African region moved into what is now Zimbabwe and Mozambique, eventually arriving in South Africa.

What is Bantu migration?

Going by history, there are two possible theories behind the migration of the Bantu people. First, expansion happened as a big group of Bantus emerged from an area between Cameroon and Nigeria, marched east, and then separated into two groups, one heading east and the other heading south.

They argue that the Bantus influenced East and Central Africa significantly. The second expansion happened due to a single point of origin for migration, which began in Central Africa.

• The primary evidence for Bantu expansion has been linguistic, especially the striking similarity of the languages spoken in sub-equatorial Africa.
• Attempts to determine the exact route of the expansion, as well as to correlate it with archaeological and genetic evidence, have failed to produce concrete results.
• The Bantu family of languages, a part of the Niger-Congo language family, had its linguistic core in the Cameroon and Nigeria borderlands.
• Around 3,000 years ago, one stream poured into East Africa. Others went towards the southern region of the African coastlines of Gabon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as Angola, or inland along the Congo River system's several south-to-north flowing rivers.
• The expansion had reached South Africa as early as 300 AD.
• Around 1000 BC, the expansion of Bantu speakers from their core location in West Africa appeared to have begun.
• Although early theories suggested that early Bantu speakers were both iron-users and farmers, archaeology has revealed that they did not utilize iron until 400 BC, despite being farmers.
• According to Christopher Ehret, the western Africa branch, which wasn't necessarily linguistically distinct, followed the Congo system's coast and major rivers southward, arriving in central Angola in approximately 500 BC.
• Bantu-speaking African communities had reached the great Central African rainforest by 500 BC, and pioneering groups had formed in the savannas to the south, which is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Angola, and Zambia.
• By 1000 BC, another wave of migrations had moved east, forming new Bantu populations in East Africa's Great Lakes, where a fertile environment supported a dense population.
• Due to comparatively tough farming conditions in locations further from water, small groups from the Great Lakes region moved more quickly to the southeast, with initial settlements widely spread near the coast and near rivers.
• By 300 AD, pioneering parties had reached the contemporary South African province of KwaZulu-Natal along the coast, and by 500 AD, they had reached the modern Limpopo Province (previously Northern Transvaal).

Why did the Bantu migration happen?

The Bantu peoples migrated south due to political, economic, and social reasons.

• Due to population growth, Bantus began to migrate to South Africa. This was due to the introduction of new crops, such as the banana (a South Asian native), which improved food supplies.
• The Bantu people may have chosen or been forced to leave their original settlements due to various circumstances. For example, competition for local resources was at a peak, grazing lands were required, they wanted to roam freely, they were curious to explore, they encountered family or tribal issues, there were frequent changes in the temperature and climate, and local resources were exhausted.
• Diseases like sleeping sickness, bilharzia, and smallpox are some reasons why the Bantu people migrated.
• Hostile neighboring tribes such as the Pygmies might have provoked the Bantu movement, and in turn, caused their migration into East Africa as they frequently attacked and harassed Bantu ancestors.

Consequences Of Bantu Migration

The migration of the Bantu peoples has a long list of consequences. Due to the area's aptitude for farming, they settled intermittently to farm as they traveled the beaches of the River Niger Basin.

• They lived among the locals and shared their rich art and culture with them. The Bantus taught the natives how to utilize iron instruments such as cutlasses and knives.
• In Eastern African interiors, the Bantus are credited with iron smelting, ironsmithing, as well as ironworking.
• A rise in agricultural crop yields has been seen.
• The Bantus brought gourd, black-eyed peas, and voandzeia.
• Bananas and other crops were cultivated by the Bantus to other sections of the country.
• Much of Afro-Eurasia experienced an agricultural revolution between 8,000 and 10,000 years ago. Agricultural and farming practices in sub-Saharan Africa have also changed.
• Farming has been demonstrated in modern-day Cameroon as early as 7000 BC. Originally, Bantu-speaking people lived here. However, until 2000 BC, foraging was the primary food source in the rest of sub-Saharan Africa.
• The Bantu people were zealous in their acceptance of different people and civilizations. They also shared the Bantu culture with other people.
• They started using mud to create their huts or dwellings instead of traditional thatch structures.
• They introduced a barter trading system. They traded items such as mats, pots, food, hoes, and spears between themselves and neighboring communities.
• They established a centralized government.
• Their language has highly influenced the migration patterns of different African languages. The Bantu language is deeply rooted in Swahili.