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The Hema are an ethnic group with about 160,000 members located in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, in particular the Ituri region and Orientale province, as well as parts of Uganda and Rwanda. The Hema are pastoralists and the preferential treatment given to them by Ugandan officials is blamed for igniting the recent Ituri conflict.
The northern Hema speak Lendu, the language of the neighbouring Lendu people. The southern Hema still speak Hema, a Bantu language. Its linguistic lineage is: Niger-Congo, Atlantic-Congo, Volta-Congo, Benue-Congo, Bantoid, Southern, Narrow Bantu, Central, J, Nyoro-Ganda. Ethnolinguistically the Hema are fairly closely related to the speakers of the Hima dialect of Nyankore of western Uganda; more distantly related are such languages as Luganda and Lusoga.
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