Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Gusii
The Gusii are divided into seven clan clusters: Kitutu (Getutu), North Mugirango, South Mugirango, Majoge, Wanjare (Nchari), Bassi, and Nyaribari. Gusiiland is located in western Kenya, 50 kilometers east of Lake Victoria. Since...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Ghorbat Kinship
The term "Ghorbat" is applied to several non-food-producing, itinerant populations of fairly low status throughout the Middle East and even beyond, in parts of formerly Soviet Central Asia and the Balkans. These peripatetic populations...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Ganda
The Ganda are a group of people who live in the province of Buganda in Uganda. The Ganda are primarily an agricultural society; their staple crops are bananas and yams. Cotton was introduced as a market crop early in the twentieth...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Iraqw
The Iraqw are an agrico-pastoral people who live in north-central Tanzania. With the expansion of their territory, the Iraqw have come to interact and coexist with other ethnic groups. Maize is the staple crop of the Iraqw; it is...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Igbo
Igbo-speaking peoples can be divided into five geographically based subcultures: northern Igbo, southern Igbo, western Igbo, eastern Igbo, and northeastern Igbo. Each of these five can be further divided into subgroups based on specific...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Ibibio
The name "Ibibio" identifies the largest subdivision of people living in southeastern Nigeria, in Akwa Ibom State, and it is generally accepted and used for both ethnic and linguistic descriptions. Like their Igbo neighbors, the Ibibio...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Herero
The Herero are a Bantu group living today in Namibia and in the Republic of Botswana in southern Africa. The Herero speak a form of southwestern Bantu that is shared most closely by two other major groups. Cattle herding remains the...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Karamojong
The Karamojong are a pastoral group who inhabit the plateau region of Uganda. Linguistically, the Karamojong belong to the Central Group of the Nilote Language Family, which also includes several neighboring groups that speak a mutually...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Kanuri
The Kanuri are the dominant ethnic group of Borno Province in northeastern Nigeria. They number over 3 million in Nigeria, about 500,000 in Niger, 100,000 in Chad, and 60,000 in Cameroon. They are called "Beri-beri" by the Hausa, but...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Fipa
The Fipa are a Bantu-speaking people of southwestern Tanzania in East-Central Africa. The name "Fipa" appears to have been bestowed on them by nineteenth-century traders and means "people of the escarpment." It was later adopted by...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Fali
The Fali belong to the vast paleonegritic group of people who are sometimes designated "Kirdi" (pagans), as opposed to the Islamized Peul or Fulbe, with whom they share the northern part of Cameroon. The Fali are farmers and...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Falasha
The Falasha are a northern Ethiopian highland population of Jewish belief. They are one of the dozens of small ethnic minorities in Ethiopia and have been recognized as a "nationality" in the Ethiopian constitution of 1986. More than...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Edo
"Edo" is the name that the people of the Benin Kingdom give to themselves, their language, and their capital city and kingdom. Renowned for their art of brass and ivory and for their complex political organization, the Edo Kingdom of...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Betsileo
The Betsileo (Bts) are one of approximately twenty "ethnies," or ethnic units, into which Madagascar divides its population. The Betsileo began to use that term for themselves after their conquest by the Merina in the nineteenth century....
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Berbers of Morocco
"Berber" refers to any native speaker of a dialect of the Berber language, although many Arabic speakers in North Africa are also Berber by descent, even if they have lost the language. Especially in Morocco, "Imazighen" is today the...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Basseri
The Basseri are traditional pastoral nomads who inhabit the Iranian province of Fars and migrate along the steppes and mountains near the town of Shiraz. The Basseri are a clearly delineated group, defined by political rather than by...