The Indigenous Batwa of Ituri. The first inhabitants of the mountain forests of the Rift Valley and one of the world’s first Homo sapiens, along with the Kalahari San people, Batwa carries DNA that dates back 60,000 years or more of according to National Library of medicine. There is an estimated number of 67,000 living in Uganda per 2014 National Census by Uganda Bureau of Statistics and total of 112,000 in Rwanda, DRC and Uganda Respectively, Batwa People are also commonly known as pygmies and they are the indigenous, forest-dwelling people of the Great Lakes Region of East Africa. They traditionally resided in small dwellings and caves subsisting on wild game, honey, fruits and vegetables for thousands of years. It’s Once again my pleasure as a Photo Journalist to write about this forgotten tribe of the world and share some of their magnificent identities in Photos.

Uganda’s Batwa, an indigenous people who have suffered a long history of discrimination, have been displaced for decades from their ancestral land. Like other indigenous communities across Africa, despite stewarding the forests for many generations, their eviction has been carried out in the name of conservation – and has left the community struggling to survive on the margins of their former home

By: Muhumuza Adolph