Indigenous ‘hunter gatherer and foraging’ populations of Africa: those present today and those historically documented – Africa Social Work & Development Network | Mtandao waKazi zaJamii naMaendeleo waAfrika

Indigenous ‘hunter gatherer and foraging’ (in quotes because this is not the best word to use, and because of changes to livelihoods) populations are among the first peoples of Africa. Their ancestors lived by hunting, gathering and fishing across the continent long before farming and herding spread. They include the Khoi and San of southern Africa, the Batwa and other forest peoples of central and eastern Africa, and smaller groups in East Africa, the Horn, West Africa, North Africa and Madagascar. Outsiders gave many of these peoples labels such as “Bushmen” and “Pygmies”, which came from colonial writing and which many communities reject. Batwa (singular Mutwa) is a Bantu term for forager peoples and is used across central, eastern and southern Africa, which is why it appears in several countries below.

Mtandao members: is there anyone from these communities, or working closely with them, who would be willing to engage Mtandao in respectful conversations about their peoples, histories, knowledge and aspirations? Please get in touch with us.

This post covers every region of Africa, country by country. It names the populations still living today, says where they live, and records where a historical presence is documented through written records, language, rock art, architecture and archaeology. It then sets out the social issues these populations commonly face from a social development perspective and ends with what social development, community advocates and the Africa Social Work and Development Network (Mtandao) can do. It is written from outside these communities, mostly from published sources by outsiders, and it should be read with that limit in mind.

How to read this post

Names and terms

No single name covers these peoples. San is a word from Khoikhoi languages, has been used as an outsider label, and the San have no collective word for themselves. They name themselves by their own nations, such as the Ju/’hoansi, Naro, !Xun, Khwe and ǂKhomani. In Botswana the official term is Basarwa, and the older form Masarwa is considered offensive. “Pygmy” is widely rejected, and Batwa and Twa are used by many communities and organisations, although Batwa is also a general Bantu word that neighbours have applied to different peoples, including San in Zimbabwe and South Africa. Where possible this post uses the names peoples use for themselves.

Who counts as Indigenous in Africa

Most Africans were colonised. The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) and its Working Group on Indigenous Populations and Communities use other markers: self identification, a distinct way of life tied to land and natural resources, and marginalisation in the nation state. Some governments, including Botswana, hold that all citizens are Indigenous and so reject special measures. Others, such as Rwanda, use terms like “historically marginalised people”. These disputes affect whether these peoples are counted, funded and protected, and readers should treat official population figures with caution.

Levels of evidence

The country entries below fall into three groups, and the post tries to say which applies:

Communities living today who identify as foragers or former foragers, such as the San, Batwa, Hadza and Baka.
Peoples with a recorded forager past whose descendants live as farmers, herders or specialist groups, such as the Ik or the Wata.
Places where the evidence is mainly archaeological or rock art, with no clear link to a named community today.

The working list used to begin this post mixed well documented claims with thin ones, particularly for West and North Africa. Where the evidence is thin I say so rather than repeat it as fact.

Southern Africa

Southern Africa is the ancestral home of the Khoi and San, often grouped as the Khoisan. The San lived by hunting and gathering, while the Khoi (Khoikhoi or Khoekhoe) also kept livestock. Genetic research suggests San lineages diverged from other human lineages as early as 100,000 to 200,000 years ago, and one 2009 study of 121 African populations placed San groups among those with the highest genetic diversity. Many communities were killed, displaced or absorbed during the Bantu expansion and European colonisation, and the languages of Nguni peoples such as the Xhosa and Zulu carry click sounds that came from long contact with Khoisan speakers. Total San numbers are usually put at around 100,000, though estimates differ.

Angola

The !Xun and Khwe live in the south and southeast. Many were displaced by the war, and some were recruited as trackers by the South African army, which led to their resettlement in South Africa. The Kwisi and the Kwepe, who speak Kwadi, were foragers and later herders in the southwest, and their languages are close to extinct. Little current information is available, and Angolan San are rarely counted separately.

Botswana

The San, officially Basarwa, include the Ju/’hoansi, G/ui, G//ana, Naro, Shua and Tshwa. They live mainly in the Kalahari, including Ghanzi District and the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR). Botswana had about 63,500 San in 2017, around 2.8 percent of the population, the highest share in any country. The government relocated residents out of the CKGR in several waves between 1997 and 2005, and in 2006 the High Court ruled the removals unlawful. Access to water and the right to return remained disputed for years afterwards. The United States Department of State described discrimination against San in Botswana as the country’s principal human rights concern in 2013.

Lesotho

San people, known to the Basotho as Baroa, lived in the Maloti Mountains and left a large body of rock art. They have largely been absorbed into Basotho society, although a small number of people in Lesotho and South Africa, estimated at around 400, now claim an AmaTola San identity. Claims like this are best treated as community matters to be heard, not verified by outsiders.

Malawi

Forager peoples known as Akafula or Batwa appear in Malawian oral history as the people who lived in the mountains before Bantu migrations. Historians disagree on how far the accounts describe real populations, and I did not find evidence of a recognised community today.

Mozambique

Rock art and archaeological sites show a long San and forager presence across central and western Mozambique before the shift to farming. I did not find reliable information on communities who identify as San or Khoi there today.

Namibia

The San include the Ju/’hoansi, Hai//om, !Xun, Khwe and Naro, living mainly in the north and east, in Otjozondjupa, Omaheke and the Zambezi region. The Ju/’hoansi of Nyae Nyae were among the first communities in Africa to hold a communal conservancy. The Hai//om were removed from the Etosha area during the colonial period and many remain landless. The Nama are a Khoi people of the south who became herders. Namibia counted 71,201 San in 2023, or 2.4 percent of the population, the second highest share after Botswana.

South Africa

The ǂKhomani San live in the Kalahari, and the !Xun and Khwe live mainly at Platfontein near Kimberley, many of them former trackers for the apartheid army and their families. Khoi peoples include the Nama of the Northern Cape, the Koranna, the Griqua and the Cape Khoekhoe. The /Xam of the Cape, whose stories were recorded in the 1870s by Wilhelm Bleek and Lucy Lloyd, are no longer a living community, but the /Xam language supplied the national motto adopted in 2000. The //Xegwi of the Drakensberg are similarly known mainly from history. Khoi and San people make up about one percent of the population, and many people previously classified as “Coloured” now identify as Khoi or San.

Zambia

Small Batwa communities live around the Bangweulu swamps and Kafue Flats, and many now fish for a living. Small San groups, including Khwe, are reported in the west. Zambia has few studies of either group.

Zimbabwe

The Tshwa San live in the western districts of Tsholotsho and Bulilima, near the Botswana border, and the terms Amasili and Batwa are also used for San in Zimbabwe. San presence across the country is recorded in rock paintings, which are found in many areas including Mutoko and Mutare, and in the Matobo Hills, a World Heritage Site. Traces of San architecture are reported in Chipinge and other areas. These reports deserve proper archaeological study and consultation with local communities. Some colonial era writers attributed rock paintings to outsiders, including visitors from the Mediterranean, because they would not credit local peoples, and this needs to be corrected wherever it persists in school books and tourist guides.

East Africa and the Horn

East Africa has forager peoples with distinct languages, some with click sounds, as well as groups once lumped together under the Maasai term Dorobo, meaning people without cattle. The term is outsider language and should be used with care.

Burundi

The Batwa live in small communities across the country and once relied on forest foraging and pottery. The constitution reserves parliamentary seats for Batwa, which gives some political presence, though poverty and landlessness remain widespread.

Eritrea

Forager peoples are noted in historical records along the Red Sea coast and were absorbed by Cushitic and Semitic speaking groups. I did not find reliable information on a living community.

Ethiopia

The Chabu live in the southwestern forests and rely partly on foraging. The Wata and Manjo are former hunting peoples, now low status minorities within farming societies. Their situation is poorly documented in international reports.

Kenya

The Ogiek of the Mau Forest and the Sengwer of the Cherangani Hills are highland forest peoples. The Yaaku live around Mukogodo Forest and have lost most use of their language. The Aweer (Boni) and Waata are coastal and dryland hunting peoples, and the El Molo are a small fishing and foraging people at Lake Turkana. In 2017 the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights found that Kenya had violated the rights of the Ogiek by evicting them from the Mau Forest. The Sengwer have faced repeated evictions in the Cherangani Hills.

Rwanda

The Batwa are the oldest recorded inhabitants of Rwanda’s mountain forests and were displaced from them, including through the creation of national parks. They are estimated at about 0.4 percent of the population. Rwanda has banned the collection of data on ethnic composition, so Batwa needs are hard to measure. A third of the Batwa population is reported to have been killed in the 1994 genocide, a loss that has received little recognition. A 2012 survey cited in a United Nations review submission found 43 percent of Batwa families without access to land.

Somalia

The Eyle are a distinct forager people of southern Somalia, and the Aweer (Boni) cross from Kenya into the southern coastal forests. The Madhiban, a minority historically linked with hunting, have faced low status and exclusion. Security conditions have limited research.

South Sudan

The mountains bordering Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are reported to have hosted forager bands related to the Kango or Batwa. The record is limited, and I did not find evidence of a recognised community today.

Tanzania

The Hadza of Lake Eyasi are among the last peoples living mainly by nomadic foraging, although estimates put the Hadza population at around one thousand, and only a few hundred rely mainly on foraging. The Sandawe of central Tanzania and the Akie of the Maasai Steppe have click language features, and the Sandawe today are largely farmers. Hadza land has been under pressure from herders, farmers, hunting concessions and tourism.

Uganda

The Batwa lived in the Bwindi, Mgahinga and Echuya forests in the southwest, mainly in Kisoro, Kanungu and Kabale districts. They were evicted when the forests became protected areas, with no compensation, and became what researchers have called conservation refugees. The Ik and Soo (Tepeth) of the northeastern mountains were hunting peoples. The Ik lost hunting grounds when Kidepo Valley National Park was created and now farm, and the widely read account of their hardship by the anthropologist Colin Turnbull has been criticised for its harsh portrayal.

Central Africa

The equatorial rainforest holds the largest number of forest forager peoples on the continent. In this region conservation, logging, mining and armed conflict all press on forest peoples at once.

Cameroon

The Baka live in the southeastern rainforest, the Bagyeli (Gyele or Bakola) near the Atlantic coast, and the Bedzan in the central forest and savannah transition. Baka and Bagyeli have been affected by protected areas, logging and road building, and there are reports of abuse linked to anti poaching patrols.

Central African Republic

The Aka (Bayaka) and Baka live in the southwestern rainforest. The Central African Republic was the first African country to ratify International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention No. 169 on Indigenous and tribal peoples, in 2010.

Republic of Congo

The Aka, including the Mbendjele, and the Baka live mainly in the northern departments of Likouala and Sangha. A 2011 law on the promotion and protection of Indigenous peoples was an early national law of its kind in Africa. Reports suggest implementation has been weak.

Democratic Republic of Congo

The Mbuti (Bambuti), Efé and Asua live in the Ituri rainforest in the northeast, and the Kango live in the northeast as well. Batwa communities live across the central and eastern lake regions, including around Kahuzi-Biega National Park, from which they were removed from the 1970s, and in North and South Kivu. The DRC passed a law on the rights of Indigenous Pygmy peoples in 2022. Ituri province is the epicentre of the 2026 Ebola outbreak, and I did not find reporting on how the outbreak is affecting Mbuti and Efé communities specifically. That gap deserves attention.

Equatorial Guinea

A very small population of Bagyeli lives in the southern forests along the border with Cameroon. Almost nothing has been published about them.

Gabon

The Baka live in the north, the Babongo in the south and centre, and the Bakoya in the northeast. Logging and protected areas affect forest access.

West Africa

Nomadic foraging largely ended in West Africa centuries ago with the rise of large farming states. The source list used for this post described many West African countries as having “historical foragers” or “casted hunters”, and most of those statements are general claims, not documented findings. Specialist hunter associations, such as those among Mande peoples, are not proof of descent from earlier foragers. For most countries below I did not find reliable evidence of a named forager population.

Benin and Togo

Claims of former forager lineages absorbed into Fon, Ewe and Yoruba societies are general and thinly sourced.

Burkina Faso

Hunter guilds exist among the Mossi and Bobo, but their link to earlier foraging peoples is not established.

Côte d’Ivoire

Archaeological research suggests earlier forest peoples in the southwest before farming spread. No community is identified today.

Gambia and Senegal

The Bedik and Bassari of the Tenda group in southeastern Senegal are farmers who kept distinct woodland ways of life. Describing them as foraging peoples overstates the evidence.

Ghana

Central Ghana has archaeological evidence of earlier hunter gatherers. The Kintampo culture, however, is usually described as an early farming and herding culture, so it does not show a hunter gatherer presence by itself.

Guinea

Foragers are said to have lived in the Guinea Highlands before Mande expansion, but I found no firm documentation.

Liberia and Sierra Leone

Forest foraging histories are suggested for the Gola and Mende areas, again with limited evidence.

Mali

Claims that forager populations moved into desert zones or became specialised groups, including among the Dogon, are speculative.

Mauritania

The Nemadi are a small, endangered people who hunted antelope with trained dogs in the Majabat al-Koubra region. Most are now settled, and their numbers are small. This is the clearest living case of a foraging people in West Africa.

Niger

The Gobero site in the Ténéré Desert and the Aïr Mountains hold records of Saharan hunter gatherers and early herders from the time the Sahara was green.

Nigeria

The Cross River region and southern delta have archaeological evidence of earlier foragers, and the Iwo Eleru rock shelter has yielded human remains of great age. No living community is identified.

North Africa and the Sahara

When the Sahara dried about 5,000 years ago, its inhabitants moved to the Nile, moved south, or became herders. This history should not be read as a claim of direct descent for any people today, including the Amazigh and Tuareg, whose ancestry is complex.

Algeria and Libya

Rock art at Tassili n’Ajjer in Algeria and the Akakus Mountains in Libya records thousands of years of Saharan life, including hunting and, later, herding.

Chad

The Ennedi and Tibesti highlands hold rock art and records of forager and herder groups before the shift to camel herding.

Egypt

Nile Valley foragers, hunters and fishers lived in the area long before pharaonic states. The claim in the source list that predynastic Egypt relied entirely on foragers is overstated, because farming and herding were present in the predynastic period.

Morocco and Tunisia

The Iberomaurusian and Capsian are archaeological cultures of the Atlas Mountains and coast, occupying the area before farming spread. They are known from sites and tools, not from living descendants.

Sudan

Hunting and fishing peoples lived along the Blue and White Nile and the Red Sea and were later displaced or absorbed by Kushite and Nubian kingdoms.

Island nations

Madagascar

Austronesian and Bantu seafarers settled the island about 1,500 to 2,000 years ago. The Mikea live a mobile foraging life in the dry spiny forests of the southwest, digging tubers and hunting tenrecs. Scholars disagree on how far the Mikea are a separate people or farming communities with forest foraging practices, and the answer is best left to the Mikea themselves.

Cabo Verde, Comoros, Mauritius, São Tomé and Príncipe, and Seychelles

These islands had no human populations before the arrival of seafarers in recent centuries, so they have no forager peoples.

What the map shows

Living forager and former forager communities are concentrated in southern, eastern and central Africa. West and North Africa are known mainly through archaeology, rock art and history. This pattern partly reflects real history, since large farming states and desert change reduced foraging in the north and west. It also reflects how much attention outsiders have paid to different places. A blank entry means that little has been written, and it is not evidence that nobody is there.

Land dispossession and conservation evictions

Loss of land is the issue from which most others follow. These peoples were moved from forests and savannah in the name of conservation, farming and national development. The CKGR removals in Botswana, the Batwa evictions in Uganda, Rwanda and the DRC, the Hai//om removals from Etosha, and the Ogiek and Sengwer evictions in Kenya share one pattern: the state treats these peoples as a threat to the land they managed for thousands of years. Conservation bodies and donors have a share of responsibility, because many protected areas were created and funded with their support. Compensation has rarely been paid, and few of these peoples ever held title to the land in the first place.

Recognition, identity and registration

Many states do not recognise these peoples as Indigenous. Convention No. 169 has been ratified by the Central African Republic only among African states. A 2021 South African leadership law recognises Khoi and San leadership structures, but some Khoi and San organisations have criticised how it defines leadership and recognition. Some governments rely on neutral labels such as “remote area dwellers” or “marginalised communities”, which can limit rights claims. Many Batwa births are not recorded in population registers, which cuts people off from legal rights and services. Questions of who is Khoi or San are for communities to decide, not for governments or researchers.

Poverty, landlessness and food insecurity

Without land, households lose both food and income. Many depend on casual farm labour for neighbours, on begging, or on small sales of crafts. A United Nations review submission on Rwanda reported that land grabbing had pushed some Batwa into conditions close to slavery, and in parts of central Africa forest peoples are bound to farming neighbours through unequal labour arrangements. In several countries, laws against hunting have criminalised subsistence hunting, including Botswana’s 2014 hunting ban, under which San have been arrested.

Education and language

School completion is low. San representatives have linked high dropout rates to the absence of San languages in schools, and many Khoi, San and Batwa languages are endangered or extinct. Children report discrimination from teachers and peers, boarding schools far from home, and costs that families cannot meet.

Health and wellbeing

Eviction from the forests has been followed by a severe decline in Batwa health. Distance from clinics, cost, discrimination in health facilities and services that ignore Indigenous health knowledge all limit access. Alcohol misuse, tuberculosis and HIV are recurring concerns in some San settlements, and a lack of clean water has been reported in Batwa settlements.

Discrimination, violence and exploitation

Licences to hunt San were issued in the past, the last reportedly in Namibia in 1936. Armed groups have targeted forest peoples in the eastern DRC, and the Rwandan genocide killed a third of the Batwa. Recent reports from Kahuzi-Biega and from Cameroon and Congo describe abuse by park or patrol guards. These are present day harms, and describing them only as history is inaccurate.

Research extraction and cultural commodification

The San are among the most studied peoples in the world, often without consent or benefit, which led to the San Code of Research Ethics and its instruction to come through the door, not the window. Cultural tourism brings some income, but revenue from parks and tourism flows mainly to others, and communities can be reduced to performances for visitors. There is also a risk of romanticising these peoples as timeless or pure, which hides their present day politics, their own organising and their wish for schools, clinics and jobs.

Development programmes themselves

Many programmes have encouraged settlement and farming without asking whether people want it, and some have created dependency. Social work and development agencies have taken part in removals, assimilation and the placement of children, and we need to say so openly. Projects are often designed outside the community, report to donors first, and end when funding ends.

Political participation

Small numbers, scattered settlements and low literacy limit their voice in decision making. Their own organisations, such as the United Organisation for Batwa Development in Uganda (UOBDU) and San councils in Botswana, Namibia and South Africa, lead advocacy but remain under resourced, and international organisations sometimes speak in their place.

Connections across the Ubuntu levels

Across the Ubuntu levels of family, community, society, environment and spirituality, these issues are connected. Land loss breaks family livelihoods, community cohesion, standing in wider society and the spiritual relationship with forests and ancestral places. Responses that treat health, education or income in isolation will keep missing this.

What we can do

Work should start from these peoples’ rights and their own priorities, with the following areas of practice:

Land and resources: supporting claims to ancestral land, access to forests, water and hunting and gathering areas, and fair compensation where land has been taken.
Recognition and registration: supporting legal recognition, birth registration and identity documents so that people can reach services.
Conservation and tourism: pressing for conservation that includes these peoples as managers of the land, with fair sharing of income and free, prior and informed consent before any project.
Education: mother tongue teaching, local teachers from the communities, support with fees and boarding, and action against discrimination in schools.
Health: culturally safe services that work with Indigenous health knowledge and healers, and outreach to remote settlements.
Livelihoods and social protection: linking households to cash transfers, food assistance and livelihoods that people choose themselves.
Our own profession: examining our history in removals and assimilation, and training social workers from these communities.
Practice: entering communities through recognised leaders and structures, as the San Code requires, and treating these peoples as holders of knowledge rather than as beneficiaries.

What advocates, professionals and organisations from these communities can do

People from these communities are best placed to lead, and they can:

Set the terms on which outsiders, including researchers, governments, conservation bodies and development agencies, engage with their communities.
Document their own histories, languages, place names and knowledge, in their own languages and under their own ownership.
Build links across borders, for example between San in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Angola, Zambia and Zimbabwe, and between Batwa in Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and the DRC.
Use national courts and regional bodies such as the ACHPR and the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights to pursue land and recognition claims, as the Ogiek have done.
Negotiate benefit sharing agreements for research, tourism and the use of their knowledge.
Mentor young people into social work, law, health, education and research so that the next generation of professionals comes from within.

None of this is a duty placed on communities that already carry heavy burdens. It is a list of roles that outsiders should support with resources and then step back from.

The role of Mtandao

Mtandao can play a supporting role guided by these communities. This includes:

Advocacy alongside: standing with these communities on land, recognition, education and health, and amplifying their own voices rather than speaking for them.
Documenting: recording the presence, histories and contributions of these peoples across African countries, including rock art and architecture such as that found in Mutoko, Mutare and Chipinge in Zimbabwe, with consent and with communities as owners of what is recorded.
Research with: carrying out research with communities rather than on them, following the San Code values of respect, honesty, justice and fairness, and care, and ensuring that findings return to and benefit the communities. Indigenous data governance principles of collective benefit, authority to control, responsibility and ethics are a useful guide.
Learning: learning about their ethics, wisdom, spirituality and aspirations, including their practices of sharing, collective decision making, care for the land and relationships with ancestors. Anthropological accounts of practices such as hxaro gift exchange among the Ju/’hoansi were written by outsiders, so these accounts should be tested against what communities say about themselves.
Ubuntu knowledge: asking how their knowledge contributed to the Ubuntu knowledge we use today. The long contact between Khoisan and Bantu speaking peoples, and the shared values of sharing and mutual care, make this a serious question. It is a question for research with these communities, not a conclusion to assume, and we should not claim these peoples as sources of Ubuntu without their agreement.
Publishing and teaching: creating space in Mtandao’s journals, courses and conferences for authors, elders and practitioners from these communities to share their knowledge on their own terms, with fair credit and payment.
Checking ourselves: Mtandao is mostly made up of people outside these communities, and we should be ready to be corrected, to share control, and to step back when asked.

These peoples hold some of the oldest knowledge on the continent. Social development that recognises their rights and learns from them will serve them better and will be better informed about the roots of the African knowledge systems we draw on in social work and social development.

Sources:

Research for this post was helped by Claude AI.

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