The Bakele people (or Akele, Bakele, Dikele, Western Kele) are an ethnic group in Gabon and the Republic of the Congo.
The Bakele are also known historically as the Akele, Bongom, and Bougom (James S. Olson).
In Gabon they are widely dispersed throughout the country, from the Atlantic coast to the interior, although there is some concentration of them in Lambarene Prefecture in Moyen-Ogooue Province.
Population in Gabon is between 10.774 (Wikipedia.org) and 15.000 (James S. Olson).
Population in the Republic of the Congo is about 52.000 according Peoplegroups.org (2025)
Their Kele language is part of the Northwest Bantu cluster.
There are several Akele dialects, bearing various degrees of proximity, and they belong to a very fragmented group. At this point it is difficult to determine whether they constitute a group of Akele dialects or Akele languages, as defined by Guthrie.
The lake variant of Akele, Mutumbudie (or Métombolo) is only spoken by around 50 people and is no longer transmitted, according to linguist Jean-Marie Hombert.
They were traditionally elephant hunters, selling the ivory tusks through much of the country. They also lived in farming villages, raising several subsistence crops for their own use.
From the 1760s to the 1860s, the Bakele were very active in the international slave trade as slave raiders, capturing other Africans and selling them to middlemen, who then traded with European slave merchants. They were fierce warriors, but the superior numbers of the expanding Fang people forced the Bakele into the upper Ogooue and Ivindo river systems, where many of them still live.
By the 1870s, the Bakele were supplying rubber to European rubber traders. At the time of Gabonese independence in 1960, the Bakele were the most scattered ethnic group in the country. The Bakele living in eastern Gabon are assimilating with the neighboring Bakota people.
Mutumbudie, the language spoken by the Lake Akele, belongs to the most scattered linguistic group over Gabon. Languages of the same group are found in the north-east of the country (Makokou area), in the south-east (Franceville area), and in the west (near Lambaréné).
A study conducted by Sorosoro in May and June 2009 showed that the Lake Akele did not use the river to settle on their current territory, and that they are linguistically very close to another group, the Tombidi, mainly settled in the village of Rébé, near Malinga, over 300 kilometers away from the Lake Akele’s current territory.
Their linguistic proximity indicated that the separation between these groups occurred three or four centuries ago. Though today, these two groups, the Mutumbudie and the Tombidi, are unaware of their common history.
There is also an ethnic group called the Kele in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The Kele of the Democratic Republic of the Congo are numbering 628,000 (2025). This people group is only found in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Their primary language is Kele. (According Peoplegroups.org)
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