The Lunda people of the

Luapula River The Luapula River is a section of Africa's second-longest river, the Congo. It is a transnational river forming for nearly all its length part of the border between Zambia and the DR Congo. It joins Lake Bangweulu (wholly in Zambia) to Lake ...

valley in

Zambia Zambia (), officially the Republic of Zambia, is a landlocked country at the crossroads of Central, Southern and East Africa, although it is typically referred to as being in Southern Africa at its most central point. Its neighbours are t ...

and

DR Congo The Democratic Republic of the Congo (french: République démocratique du Congo (RDC), colloquially "La RDC" ), informally Congo-Kinshasa, DR Congo, the DRC, the DROC, or the Congo, and formerly and also colloquially Zaire, is a country in ...

are called by others the ''Eastern Lunda'' to distinguish them from the 'western' Lunda people who remained in the heartland of the former Lunda Kingdom, but they themselves would use ''Kazembe-Lunda'' or Luunda with an elongated 'u' to make that distinction. (The name 'Lunda' may also be spelled Luunda). The Eastern Lunda migrated in the 18th Century to their current area under the leader

Mwata Kazembe Kazembe is a traditional kingdom in modern-day Zambia, Southeastern Congo. For more than 250 years, Kazembe has been an influential kingdom of the Kiluba- Chibemba, speaking the language of the Eastern Luba- Lunda people of south-central Afric ...

. Their neighbours in northern Zambia to whom they are allied, the

Bemba Bemba may refer to: * Bemba language (Chibemba), a Bantu language spoken in Zambia * Bemba people (AbaBemba), an ethnic group of central Africa * Jean-Pierre Bemba, the former vice-President of the Democratic Republic of Congo * A Caribbean drum, ...

, did so at the same time, and the Eastern Lunda took on the

Bemba language The Bemba language, ''ChiBemba'' (also ''Cibemba, Ichibemba, Icibemba'' and ''Chiwemba''), is a Bantu language spoken primarily in north-eastern Zambia by the Bemba people and as a lingua franca by about 18 related ethnic groups. History Bem ...

in place of the

Chilunda Lunda, also known as Chilunda, is a Bantu language spoken in Zambia, Angola and, to a lesser extent, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Lunda and its dialects are spoken and understood by perhaps 4.6% of Zambians (1986 estimate), and ...

, their original language. Their (western) Lunda compatriots in the North-Western Province of Zambia still speak Chilunda however.

Further reading

see also