[2] Butembo is 90% populated by the Nande tribe,[3] a community distinguished by ethnic solidarity, conservative moral standards and influential leaders.

Bulengera commune has 9 quarters: Kalemire, Kamesi Mbonzo, Kimbulu, Kyaghala, Mukuna, Mutiri, Rughenda, Wayene and Eveché.

Kimemi commune has 8 quarters: Biondi, Bwinyole, Commercial, Lumumba, Malende, Ngerengere, Vutetshe and Vutsundo.

Butembo is home to a large number of quality educational institutions recognized in the Great Lakes region.

[citation needed] Butembo is home to several major hospitals in northeastern DRC, including: Before 1924, the village of Lusando served as the residence of the Mwami of the Bayora.

It was a center dedicated to the trade of salt from Lake Katwe (Uganda), fish and "milumba", beaten bark cloth, from neighboring regions.

From 1928 to 1930, the Compagnie Minière des Grands-Lacs (MGL) set up the administrative headquarters of the northern branch of its operations in Butembo, which became the transit and acclimatization center for the workforce located at road junctions.

In the 1930s to 1940s, a core of Europeans composed mainly of traders and industrialists settled 1 km south of the MGL headquarters on either side of the Congo-Nile road, the current Route National 2.

In the 1943 edition of Codes et Lois du Congo Belge, annotated by Léon Strouvens with Pierre Piron, the name of Butembo was already mentioned in decree no.

The following decade, the city will extend to Goma Avenue, the Vungi cell, Kimemi, Londo, Muhayirwa and Vihya.

Repeal of the status of urban commune enjoyed by Butembo following the abolition of the province of North Kivu and the District of Lake Edward in 1967.

The years 1970 to 1979, the city of Butembo is composed of 6 districts named Kambali, Matanda, Vungi, Lumumba, Congo ya Sika and President of the Republic.

Around the year 1987 when Butembo had 92,932 inhabitants and the period of the 1990s, a neighboring agglomeration, that of Makerere in the chiefdom-community of Bashu developed while in the chiefdom of Baswagha, the localities of Vohakatwa, Mukuna, Ivatama, Malera, Rughenda, Katsya and Vutsundo are experiencing remarkable population growth, bringing the population to 141,707.

In 1988: Opening of the Catholic University of Graben in Butembo with faculties of human and veterinary medicine, agronomy and economics.

A series of attacks on Ebola treatment centers in Butembo led up to the death of a policeman in March 2019 and of a doctor in April 2019.