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The Bantu peoples are an indigenous ethnolinguistic grouping of approximately 400 distinct native African ethnic groups who speak Bantu languages. The languages are native to countries spread over a vast area from West Africa, to Central Africa, Southeast Africa and into Southern Africa. Bantu people also inhabit southern areas of Northeast African states.
There are several hundred Bantu languages. Depending on the definition of "language" or "dialect", it is estimated that there are between 440 and 680 distinct languages."Guthrie (1967–71) names some 440 Bantu 'varieties', Grimes (2000) has 501 (minus a few 'extinct' or 'almost extinct'), Bastin et al. (1999) have 542, Maho (this volume) has some 660, and Mann et al. (1987) have c. 680." Derek Nurse, 2006, "Bantu Languages", in the Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, p. 2. Ethnologues report for Southern Bantoid lists a total of 680 languages. The count includes 13 Mbam languages which are not always included under "Narrow Bantu". The total number of speakers is in the hundreds of millions, ranging at roughly 350 million in the mid-2010s (roughly 30% of the population of Africa, or roughly 5% of world population).Total population cannot be established with any accuracy due to the unavailability of precise census data from Sub-Saharan Africa. A number just above 200 million was cited in the early 2000s (see subgroups and numbers of speakers for a 2007 compilation of data from SIL Ethnologue, citing 210 million). Population estimates for West-Central Africa were recognized as significantly too low by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs in 2015 (). Population growth in Central-West Africa is estimated at between 2.5% and 2.8% p.a., for an annual increase of the Bantu population by about 8 to 10 million. About 90 million speakers (2015), divided into some 400 ethnic or tribal groups, are found in the Democratic Republic of the Congo alone.
The larger of the individual Bantu groups have populations of several million, e.g. the Baganda people of Uganda (5.5 million as of 2014), the Shona people of Zimbabwe (17.6 million as of 2020), the Zulu people of South Africa (14.2 million ), the Luba people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (28.8 million ), the Sukuma people of Tanzania (10.2 million ), the Kikuyu people of Kenya (8.1 million ), the Xhosa people of Southern Africa (9.6 million as of 2011), Batswana of Southern Africa (8.2 million as of 2020) and the Pedi people of South Africa (7 million as of 2018).
In linguistics, the word Bantu, for the language families and its speakers, is an artificial term based on the reconstructed Proto-Bantu term for "people" or "humans". It was first introduced into modern academia (as Bâ-ntu) by Wilhelm Bleek in 1857 or 1858 and popularised in his Comparative Grammar of 1862. The name was said to be coined to represent the word for "people" in loosely reconstructed Proto-Bantu, from the plural noun class prefix *ba- categorizing "people", and the root *ntʊ̀ - "some (entity), any" (e.g. Xhosa umntu "person" abantu "people", Zulu, Ndebele and Swazi "person", "people").
There is no native term for the people who speak Bantu languages because they are not an ethnic group. People speaking Bantu languages refer to their languages by ethnic endonyms, which did not have an indigenous concept prior to European contact for the larger ethnolinguistic phylum named by 19th-century European linguists. Bleek's coinage was inspired by the anthropological observation of groups self-identifying as "people" or "the true people".R.K.Herbert and R. Bailey in Rajend Mesthrie (ed.), Language in South Africa (2002), p. 50 . That is, idiomatically the reflexes of * bantʊ in the numerous languages often have connotations of personal character traits as encompassed under the values system of ubuntu, also known as hunhu in Shona language or botho in Sotho language, rather than just referring to all human beings. p. 50 .
The root in Proto-Bantu is reconstructed as *-ntʊ́. Versions of the word Bantu (that is, the root plus the class 2 noun class prefix *ba-) occur in all Bantu languages: for example, as bantu in Kongo language, Kituba language, Tshiluba and Kiluba; watu in Swahili language; ŵanthu in Tumbuka language; anthu in Chewa language; batu in Lingala; bato in Duala language; abanto in Gusii language; andũ in Kamba language and Kikuyu language; abantu in Kirundi, Soga language, Zulu language, Xhosa language, Nyoro language and Luganda; wandru in Shingazidja; abantru in Mpondo people and Ndebele; bãthfu in Phuthi language; bantfu in Swazi language and Bhaca language; banhu in Sukuma language; banu in Lala; vanhu in Shona language and Tsonga language; batho in Sotho language, Tswana language and Sepedi; antu in Meru language; andu in Embu language; vandu in some Luhya language dialects; vhathu in Venda language and bhandu in Nyakyusa.
Within the fierce debate among linguists about the word "Bantu", Seidensticker (2024) indicates that there has been a "profound conceptual trend in which a "purely technical term without any non-linguistic connotations was transformed into a designation referring indiscriminately to language, culture, society, and race"."
During the Bantu expansion, Bantu-speaking peoples absorbed or displaced many earlier inhabitants, with only a few modern peoples such as Pygmy peoples groups in Central Africa, the Hadza people in northern Tanzania, and various Khoisan populations across southern Africa remaining in existence into the era of European contact. Archaeological evidence attests to their presence in areas subsequently occupied by Bantu speakers. Researchers have demonstrated that the Khoisan of the Kalahari are remnants of a huge ancestral population that may have been the most populous group on the planet prior to the Bantu expansion. Biochemist Stephan Schuster of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and colleagues found that the Khoisan population began a drastic decline when the Bantu farmers spread through Africa 4,000 years ago.
Genetic analysis shows a significant clustered variation of genetic traits among Bantu language speakers by region, suggesting admixture from prior local populations. Bantu speakers of South Africa (Xhosa, Venda) showed substantial levels of the SAK and Western African Bantu AACs and low levels of the East African Bantu AAC (the latter is also present in Bantu speakers from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda). The results indicate distinct East African Bantu migration into southern Africa and are consistent with linguistic and archeological evidence of East African Bantu migration from an area west of Lake Victoria and the incorporation of Khoekhoe ancestry into several of the Southeast Bantu populations ~1500 to 1000 years ago.
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Bantu-speaking migrants would have also interacted with some Afro-Asiatic outlier groups in the southeast (mainly Cushitic),Toyin Falola, Aribidesi Adisa Usman, Movements, borders, and identities in Africa (University Rochester Press: 2009), pp. 4–5. as well as Nilotic peoples and Central Sudanic speaking groups.
According to the early-split scenario as hypothesized in the 1990s, the southward dispersal had reached the Congo rainforest by about 1500 BCE and the southern savannas by 500 BC, while the eastward dispersal reached the Great Lakes by 1000 BCE, expanding further from there as the rich environment supported dense populations. Possible movements by small groups to the southeast from the Great Lakes region could have been more rapid, with initial settlements widely dispersed near the coast and near rivers, because of comparatively harsh farming conditions in areas farther from water. Recent archeological and linguistic evidence about population movements suggests that pioneering groups had reached parts of modern KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa sometime prior to the 3rd century CE along the coast and the modern Northern Cape by 500 CE.Newman (1995), Ehret (1998), Shillington (2005)
Cattle terminology in use amongst the relatively few modern Bantu pastoralism groups suggests that the acquisition of cattle may have been from Central Sudanic, Kuliak languages and Cushitic-speaking neighbors. Linguistic evidence also indicates that the customs of milking cattle were also directly modeled from Cushitic cultures in the area.J. D. Fage, A history of Africa, Routledge, 2002, p.29 Cattle terminology in southern African Bantu languages differs from that found among more northerly Bantu-speaking peoples. One recent suggestion is that Cushitic speakers had moved south earlier and interacted with the most northerly of Khoisan speakers who acquired cattle from them and that the earliest arriving Bantu speakers, in turn, got their initial cattle from Cushitic-influenced Khwe-speaking people. Under this hypothesis, larger later Bantu-speaking immigration subsequently displaced or assimilated that southernmost extension of the range of Cushitic speakers.Roger Blench, "Was there an interchange between Cushitic pastoralists and Khoisan speakers in the prehistory of Southern Africa and how can this be detected?" [4] Robert Gayre, Ethnological elements of Africa, (The Armorial, 1966), p. 45
Based on dental evidence, Irish (2016) concluded: Proto-Bantu peoples may have originated in the western region of the Sahara, amid the Kiffian period at Gobero, and may have migrated southward, from the Sahara into various parts of West Africa (e.g., Benin, Cameroon, Ghana, Nigeria, Togo), as a result of desertification of the Green Sahara in 7000 BCE. From Nigeria and Cameroon, agricultural Proto-Bantu peoples began to Bantu Migration, and amid migration, diverged into East Bantu peoples (e.g., Democratic Republic of Congo) and West Bantu peoples (e.g., Congo, Gabon) between 2500 BCE and 1200 BCE. Irish (2016) also views Igbo people and Yoruba people as being possibly back-migrated Bantu peoples.
From the 12th century onward, the processes of state formation amongst Bantu peoples increased in frequency. This was the result of several factors such as a denser population (which led to more specialized divisions of labor, including military power while making emigration more difficult); technological developments in economic activity; and new techniques in the political-spiritual ritualisation of royalty as the source of national strength and health.Shillington (2005) Examples of such Bantu states include: the Kingdom of Kongo, Anziku Kingdom, Kingdom of Ndongo, the Kingdom of Matamba, the Kuba Kingdom, the Lunda Empire, the Luba Empire, Lozi people, Kazembe, Mbunda Kingdom, Yeke Kingdom, Kasanje Kingdom, Empire of Kitara, Tooro Kingdom, Bunyoro, Buganda, Busoga, Rwanda, Burundi, Ankole, the Hororo people, the Kingdom of Igara, the Kooki, the Kingdom of Karagwe, Swahili coast, the Mutapa Empire, the Zulu Kingdom, the Mthwakazi, Mthethwa Empire, Kaditshwene, Mapungubwe, Kingdom of Eswatini, the Kingdom of Butua, Maravi, Danangombe, Khami, Naletale, Kingdom of ZimbabweRoland Oliver, et al. "Africa South of the Equator," in Africa Since 1800. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005, pp. 21-25. and the Rozvi Empire.Isichei, Elizabeth Allo, A History of African Societies to 1870 Cambridge University Press, 1997, page 435
On the coastal section of East Africa, a mixed Bantu community developed through contact with Muslim Arab and Persian people traders, Zanzibar being an important part of the Indian Ocean slave trade. The Swahili culture that emerged from these exchanges evinces many Arab and Islamic influences not seen in traditional Bantu culture, as do the many Afro-Arabs members of the Bantu Swahili people. With its original speech community centered on the coastal parts of Zanzibar, Kenya, and Tanzania – a seaboard referred to as the Swahili coast – the Bantu Swahili language contains many Arabic language as a result of these interactions.Daniel Don Nanjira, African Foreign Policy, and Diplomacy: From Antiquity to the 21st Century, ABC-CLIO, 2010, p. 114. The Bantu migrations, and centuries later the Indian Ocean slave trade, brought Bantu influence to Madagascar,Cambridge World History of Slavery The Cambridge World History of Slavery: The ancient Mediterranean world. By Keith Bradley, Paul Cartledge. pg. 76 (2011), accessed 15 February 2012 the Malagasy people showing Bantu admixture, and their Malagasy language Bantu loans. Toward the 18th and 19th centuries, the flow of Zanj slaves from Southeast Africa increased with the rise of the Sultanate of Zanzibar. With the arrival of European colonialists, the Zanzibar Sultanate came into direct trade conflict and competition with Portuguese and other Europeans along the Swahili Coast, leading eventually to the fall of the Sultanate and the end of slave trading on the Swahili Coast in the mid-20th century.
Examples of South African usages of "Bantu" include:
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