From around 1200, Bantu-speaking agriculturalists moved into the Great Lakes region, largely from the south and west. They cleared forests and founded permanent settlements in which millet and sorghum were cultivated. Their communities also hunted and worked iron, linking food production with craft production and the transformation of forest landscapes.

In Rwanda, agriculturalists grew sorghum, kept livestock and bees, hunted and developed village industries. They wore goat skins and barkcloth, while their exchange with Batwa hunters connected agricultural villages to forest economies. These practices formed part of a diversified material and subsistence culture rather than a solely farming-based economy.

Their political organization changed as settlement expanded. Extended families initially placed authority in the hands of family heads, but increasing immigration encouraged the development of clans. Clans incorporated newcomers through blood brotherhood, shared protection, language and custom, eventually becoming territorial organizations whose chiefs governed land and performed ritual duties.

Before the rise of the Nyiginya state in Rwanda, several Bantu-speaking lineages and clans had already acquired cattle and established small states. Agricultural clans also supplied ruling dynasties in much of the region before the emergence of several pastoralist states in the fifteenth century. Their political and technical traditions therefore formed a major foundation of Great Lakes state formation.