Buganda Kingdom

Buganda Kingdom was a kingdom located in present day Uganda, founded between the thirteenth and sixteenth century. It became the most powerful of the Lake Plateau states.

Around the thirteenth century, Nilotic speaking pastoralist and Bantu speakng farmers began to arrive in northern Lake Victoria.  The people that developed from admixture of the two groups, began to be referred to as the Ganda(Muganda for individual) and founded the Buganda Kingdom. Buganda initially was a tribute paying state of the Bunyoro-Kitara Empire

The region known today as Buganda was known as Muwaawa before the 12th century, a name literary seem to mean a place that is sparsely populated. It is believed that these people come from Abyssinia through the rift valley and the mountains of Elgon.
These people were organized into groups that had a common ancestry and constituted the most important unit in Buganda’s culture – the clan. The leader of each of these clans would be a chief and ruled a section of the territory. There were five original clans referred to as Banansangwa simply meaning the indigenous clans and they are: Ffumbe, Lugave, N?onge, Njaza and Nyonyi. These went on expanding to 52 clans by 1966.