LADO ENCLAVE, a region west of the upper Nile reaching southwards to Lake Albert that was at one time leased to the Bel gian Congo. It had an area of 15,000 sq.m., and a population esti mated at 250,00o and consisting of Bari, Madi, Kuku and other Nilotic Negroes. The boundary between the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan and Belgian Congo now runs far north of Lake Albert, which forms part of the frontier between the Belgian Congo and Uganda.
The country is a moderately elevated plateau sloping north ward from the higher ground marking the Congo-Nile watershed. The plains are mostly covered with bush, with stretches of forest in the northern districts. Traversing the plateau are two parallel mountainous chains having a general north to south direction. One chain, the Kuku Mountains (average height 2,000 ft.), approaches close to the Nile and presents, as seen from the river, several ap parently isolated peaks. Below the Bedden Rapids rises the coni cal hill of Rejaf, and north of that point the Nile valley becomes flat. Ranges of hill, however, are visible farther westwards, and a little north of 5° N. is Jebel Lado, 2,500 ft. high and some 12 M. distant from the Nile. It has given its name to the district, being the first hill seen from the Nile in the ascent of some i,000 m. from Khartum.
The northern part of the district was first visited by Europeans in 1841-1842, when the Nile was ascended by an expedition despatched by Mehemet Ali to the foot of the rapids at Bedden. The neighbouring posts of Gondokoro, on the east bank of the Nile, and Lado, soon became stations of the Khartum ivory and slave traders. After the discovery of Albert Nyanza by Sir Samuel Baker in 1864, the whole country was overrun by Arabs, Levan tines, Turks and others, whose chief occupation was slave raiding.
The region was claimed as part of the Egyptian Sudan, but it was not until the arrival of Sir Samuel Baker at Gondokoro in 1870 as governor of the equatorial provinces, that any effective control of the slave traders was attempted. Baker was succeeded by Gen eral C. G. Gordon, who established a separate administration for the Bahr-el-Ghazal. In 1878 Emin Pasha became governor of the Equatorial Province, and made his headquarters at Lado, whence he was driven in 1885 by the Mandists. He then removed to Wadelai, a station farther south, but in 1889 the pasha, to whose aid H. M. Stanley had conducted an expedition from the Congo, evacuated the country and with Stanley made his way to the east coast. In February 1894 the Union Jack was hoisted at Wadelai, while in May of the same year Great Britain granted to Leopold II., as sovereign of the Congo State, a lease of large areas lying west of the upper Nile inclusive of the Bahr-el-Ghazal and Fashoda. Pressed however by France, Leopold II. agreed to occupy only that part of the leased area east of 3o° E. and south of 5° 3o' N., and in this manner the actual limits of the Lado En clave, as it was thereafter called, were fixed. After the withdrawal of the French from Fashoda, Leopold II. revived (1899) his claim to the whole of the area, leased to him in 1894. In this claim he was unsuccessful, and the lease, by a new agreement made with Great Britain in 1906, was annulled. The king however retained the enclave, with the stipulation that six months after the termina tion of his reign it should be handed over to the Anglo-Sudanese government.