7 Billion by National Geographic Page A

Bashali, a man swept into the hornet’s nest, with no land left for him to parcel out. As his guest, a journalist from the West, I have brought no gifts, only demeaning questions. “Yes, of course my power has been greatly affected,” the Mwami snaps at me. “When others back up their claims with guns, there is nothing I can do.”
    The reign of the Mwamis is finished in this corner of East Africa, which has become a staging ground for violence of mind-reeling proportions in the past few decades: The murder and child abductions of tens of thousands in northern Uganda, the massacre of close to a million in the genocides of Rwanda and Burundi, followed by multiple civil wars in the eastern Congo, the last of which is estimated to have killed more than 3 million people, largely through disease and starvation—the deadliest since World War II. Armed conficts that started in one country have seeped across borders and turned into proxy wars, with the region’s various governments often backing a numbing jumble of acronymned rebel militia groups—the LRA, RPF, FDLR, CNDP, RCD, ADFLC, MLC, the list goes on—each vying for power and resources in one of the richest landscapes in Africa.
    The horrific violence that has occurred in this place—and continues in the lawless Congo despite a 2009 peace accord—is impossible to understand in simplistic terms. But there is no doubt geography has played a role. Erase the borders of Uganda, DRC, Rwanda, and Burundi and you see what unites these disparate political entitites: a landscape shaped by the violent forces of shifting plate tectonics. The East African Rift bisects the horn of Africa into two—the Nubian plate to the west and the Somalian plate to the east—before forking on either side of Uganda. The western branch of the rift contains Africa’s Great Lakes, where the deep rift has filled with water, and is close to the volcanic Virunga and Rwenzori mountain ranges.
    Called the Albertine Rift Valley (after Lake Albert) this three thousand square mile geological crease of lowland forests, snow-capped mountains, fertile savannahs, and chain of lakes is Africa’s most fecund and biodiverse region, the home of mountain gorillas, okapi, lions, hippos, and elephants, dozens of rare bird and fish species, not to mention a bounty of minerals ranging from gold and diamonds to the key microchip component known as coltan. In the 19th century European explorers like David Livingstone and John Speke came here searching for the source of the Nile River. They gazed in awe at the profusion of lush vegetation and vast bodies of water, according to the scholar Jean-Pierre Chretien: “In the heart of black Africa, the Great Lakes literally dazzled the whites.”
    The paradox of the Albertine Rift Valley is that its very richness has led to scarcity. People have crowded into this area because of its fertile volcanic soil, its plentiful rainfall, its biodiversity, and an altitude that protects it from malaria and tsetse fly. As the population soared, more and more forest was cut down to increase farm and grazing land. Even in the 19th century the paradise that visitors beheld was already wracked with a central preoccupation: Is there enough for everyone?
    Today that question hangs over every square inch of the Albertine Rift Valley, where the birth rates are among the highest in the world, and where violence, between humans and against animals, has erupted in a horror show of land-grabs, spastic waves of refugees, mass rapes, and plundered national parks—the last places on Earth where wildlife strives to survive undisturbed by humans. For the impoverished residents of the region, overcrowding has spawned an anxiety so primal and omnipresent that one hears the same plea over and over again.
    We want land!
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    The suspected lion killer sits near the shore of Lake George and plays a vigorous board game, known as omweso, with one of his