Ila people

The Ila are closely related in language and culture to their more numerous Tonga neighbours in Southern Province. The Ila people mainly reside in Namwala District, which is the principal town for the Ila, Itezhi-Tezhi and Mumbwa districts spread across seventeen chiefdoms. Most Ila grow enough food to feed their families and to cover expenses for physical needs and their children's educational expenses. More educational and career opportunities are available in the larger towns and village centers. Some Ila raise animals such as chickens, goats, or pigs on a small scale, and mostly cows, though that is usually for tradition and prestige. In fact, the belief that cows are a sign of wealth and value undergirds an Ila funeral tradition. The funeral ceremony lasts several days. On the day after burial, cows are slaughtered. It is believed that the more that are killed, the greater the value of the dead person in the eyes of the community.

The Ila-speaking peoples and their neighbours on all sides belong to the Bantu subdivision of the Africans, and their ancestors in remote times must have come down from the southern Sudan. It may be judged from linguistic evidence, to separate lines of immigration. The Ba-ila in the main belong to the Eastern Bantu, and came into their present domain on the crest of a wave of emigration from the north-east, from the country around the southern end of Lake Tanganyika, where the Bantu found a new motherland, a second focus and radius of development. But they have were evidently influenced by, and to some extent intermixed with, peoples of another section, which, after passing from the north-east through the Congo territory towards the west coast, curled* back again towards the centre of the continent in a south-easterly direction. These statements are made on linguistic grounds.