Madi, group of more than 150,000 people who inhabit both banks of the Nile River in northwestern Uganda and in South Sudan. They speak a Central Sudanic language of the Nilo-Saharan language family and are closely related to the Lugbara, their neighbours to the west.
Primarily hoe cultivators with millet as their staple crop, the Madi also fish, hunt, and keep cattle; smithing is an important craft. The settlement pattern of ordinary people is one of large joint family homesteads.
The country is divided into areas under the ritual care of vudupi (“owners of the land”—i.e., descendants of the indigenous or pre-clan population of the area). Vudupi have a ritual relationship with the land that includes the presumed power to control wind and crop-destroying pests. The Madi have about 25 chiefdoms with boundaries that differ from those of the ritual lands. The chief is the head of the dominant patrilineal clan that first settled in the chiefdom; later groups are assigned accessory lineages. The chiefship is a powerful office with many privileges; its authority is sanctioned by a belief that the chief’s lineage ancestors will punish recalcitrant subjects. Ritual centres on ancestor worship.