This study builds on the concept of moral ethnicity to analyse the influence of the sleeping sickness epidemic on the evolution of Busoga ethnic identity between 1880 and 1912. Using the Confidential Minute Papers of the Uganda National Archives, the study contends that ethnic identity in Africa is more influenced by lived social realities than by colonial or political manipulation. It highlights the shared hardships that fostered social integration based on indigenous relationships among the diverse socio-political groups of Busoga. The study underscores the agency of repeated epidemics in dissolving the social divisions and fostering a shared Basoga ethnic identity which was later formalized by the colonial administration in the 1900s. It accentuates how the destructive impact of the epidemics and the arbitrary remedies of the colonial state reinforced the emergent social integration as the varied sub-groups were fused together despite decades of hostilities and incessant warfare. The unprecedented migrations distorted the existent boundaries, creating conditions of emerging social cohesion, out of which sprung the ethno-identity pool of the Basoga people of eastern Uganda. The unparalleled boundary openness, socio-cultural fusion, and peculiar flexibility, as well as continual accommodation and assiduous integration formed a colossal expression of moral ethnicity.
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