Aka (Pygmy tribe)

The Aka or Bayaka (also BiAka, Babenzele) are a nomadic Mbenga pygmy people. They live in southwestern Central African Republic and the Brazzaville region of the Republic of the Congo. An ecologically diverse people, they occupy 11 different ecological zones of the Western Congo Basin. They are related to the Baka people of Cameroon, Gabon, northern Congo, and southwestern Central African Republic.

Unlike the Mbuti pygmies of the eastern Congo (who speak only the language of the tribes with whom they are affiliated), the Aka speak their own language along with whichever of the approximately 15 Bantu peoples they are affiliated.

In 2003, the oral traditions of the Aka were proclaimed one of the Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO. They were featured in the July 1995 National Geographic article "Ndoki: the Last Place on Earth".

A traditional hunter-gatherer society, the Aka have a varied diet that includes sixty-three plants, twenty-eight species of game and twenty species of insect, in addition to nuts, fruit, honey, mushrooms and roots. Some Aka have recently taken up the practice of planting their own small seasonal crops, but agricultural produce is more commonly obtained by trading with neighboring villages, whom the Aka collectively term as Ngandu.

From the Ngandu, they obtain manioc, plantain, yams, taro, maize, cucumbers, squash, okra, papaya, mango, pineapple, palm oil, and rice in exchange for the bushmeat, honey, and other forest products the Aka collect. There are over 15 different village tribes with whom the approximately 30,000 Aka associate.

As a result of their hunter-gatherer lifestyle, which frequently exposes them to the blood of jungle fauna, they have among the highest rates of seropositivity for Ebola virus in the world.

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