Ivory has been a staple trade item from the East Africa coast since before the Christian era, but growing world demand in the nineteenth century, together with the provision of increasingly efficient firearms to hunters, creates a moving "ivory frontier" as elephant herds near the coast are nearly exterminated.

Leading large caravans financed by Indian moneylenders, coastal Arab traders based on Zanzibar (which will unite with Tanganyika in 1964 to form Tanzania) had reached Lake Victoria by 1844

One trader, Ahmad bin Ibrahim, had introduced Buganda's kabaka to the advantages of foreign trade: the acquisition of imported cloth and, more important, guns and gunpowder.

Ibrahim also introduced the religion of Islam, but the kabaka was more interested in guns.

By the 1860s, Buganda had become the destination of ever more caravans, and the kabaka and his chiefs have begun to dress in cloth called mericani, which is woven in Massachusetts and carried to Zanzibar by American traders.

It is judged finer in quality than European or Indian cloth, and increasing numbers of ivory tusks are collected to pay for it.

Bunyoro seeks to attract foreign trade as well, in an effort to keep up with Buganda in the burgeoning arms race.