Boma (enclosure)

A boma is a livestock enclosure, community enclosure, stockade, corral, small fort or a district government office, commonly used in many parts of the African Great Lakes region, as well as Central and Southern Africa. It is particularly associated with community decision making. The word originally may be from Bantu or Persian, and it has been incorporated into many African languages, as well as colonial varieties of English, French and German.

As a livestock enclosure, a boma is the equivalent of kraal. The former term is used in areas influenced by the Swahili language, and the latter is employed in areas influenced by Afrikaans.

In the form of fortified villages or camps, bomas were commonplace in Central Africa in the 18th and 19th century. They were commonplace throughout Africa, including in areas affected by the slave trade, tribal wars and colonial conquest, and were built and used by both sides.

Apart from the neatly built stockades shown in illustrations of bomas, the term, in practice, more often resembled the structure shown in the illustration accompanying this article. In that form, they often were referred to by the likes of J. A. Hunter and Henry Morton Stanley.