Cameroon

• 1. River of Shrimps

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  In 1472, Portuguese sailors reached the coast of Central Africa and found the Wouri River teeming with shrimp. They called it Rio dos Camarões, the river of shrimps, after the Cameroon ghost shrimp, Lepidophthalmus turneranus. English bent that name into Cameroon, and Portuguese speakers still call the country Camarões. Today the country holds nearly 31 million people, who speak around 250 native languages, with Yaoundé as the capital. How did a place named for a crustacean come to contain so many landscapes, languages and loyalties? Why have its colonial inheritance and its long-serving leaders left so many disputes unsettled? And what do its musicians, farmers and footballers show the wider world?

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• 2. Africa in Miniature

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  Tourist literature calls Cameroon "Africa in miniature", and the geography earns the phrase. Coast, desert, mountains, rainforest and savanna all appear within its 475,442 square kilometres, which rank it the 53rd-largest country in the world.

  The coastal plain reaches 15 to 150 kilometres inland and averages 90 metres in height. It is hot, humid and densely forested, and it includes some of the wettest places on earth. Behind it, the South Cameroon Plateau rises to an average of 650 metres. Equatorial rainforest covers this plateau, though its alternating wet and dry seasons make it less humid than the coast.

  Mount Cameroon, standing on the coast at 4095 metres, is the national high point. Volcanic activity has enriched the soils around it and carved out crater lakes. On the 21st of August 1986, one of those lakes, Lake Nyos, belched carbon dioxide and killed between 1,700 and 2,000 people.

  Further north, the grassy Adamawa Plateau averages 1100 metres and forms a barrier between the country's north and south. Beyond it, lowlands of 300 to 350 metres run to Lake Chad. Savanna scrub and grass grow there, and rain is sparse.

  All this variety shelters 8,260 recorded plant species, 156 of them endemic. Cameroon has 409 mammal species, of which 14 are endemic, and 690 bird species, of which 8 are endemic. It also counts 250 reptile species and 200 amphibian species. Only one other African country records greater biodiversity. Forest covers around 43% of the land, about 20,340,480 hectares in 2020, down from 22,500,000 hectares in 1990.

  Protection began under colonial administration in 1932 with the Mozogo Gokoro Reserve and the Bénoué Reserve in the north. The Waza Reserve followed on the 24th of March 1934. Reserves first covered about 4 percent of the country, later 12 percent, and the administration proposes 30 percent. Korup National Park, Takamanda National Park and the Kagwene Gorilla Sanctuary are among the protected areas. In 1987, UNESCO inscribed the Dja Faunal Reserve as the country's first World Heritage Site.

  The gravest present threat is not the axe. The commercial bushmeat trade, long a rural staple and now a delicacy in city restaurants, has overtaken deforestation as the main danger to wildlife.

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• 3. Before the Europeans

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  Excavations at Shum Laka in the Northwest Region show that people lived in Cameroon 30,000 years ago. The Baka are counted among the longest continuous inhabitants, and they remain hunter-gatherers in the southeastern rainforest. Bantu migrations into eastern, southern and central Africa are believed to have occurred around 2,000 years ago.

  Around Lake Chad, the Sao culture arose about 500 CE. It gave way to the Kanem, whose successor state was the Bornu Empire. In the west, kingdoms, fondoms and chiefdoms arose, and the powerful chiefdoms of the west and northwest endured into the modern era. In the 19th century, Fulani soldiers founded the Adamawa Emirate in the north.

  Over the centuries after the Portuguese arrival, European interests regularised trade with the coastal peoples, and Christian missionaries pushed inland.

  In 1896, Sultan Ibrahim Njoya created a writing system for the Bamum language, called the Bamum script or Shu Mom. The Bamum Scripts and Archives Project teaches it in Cameroon today.

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• 4. Colonial Divisions

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  In 1868, the Woermann Company of Hamburg built a warehouse on the estuary of the Wouri River. Later, Gustav Nachtigal made a treaty with a local king to annex the region for the German emperor. In 1884, the German Empire claimed the colony of Kamerun and pushed steadily inland. Local people resisted in the Bafut Wars and the Adamawa Wars.

  Commercial companies ran local administration, and their concessions used forced labour on banana, rubber, palm oil and cocoa plantations. Even infrastructure projects depended on forced labour. Other colonial powers criticised this policy.

  In 1919, after Germany's defeat in World War I, Kamerun became a League of Nations mandate and was split into French Cameroun and British Cameroon. France tied the economy to its own, brought capital and skilled workers, and eased the system of forced labour. Britain tried to auction German-owned plantations in London, intending to pay the proceeds into a reparations account. Few investors bid, so Britain sold most of them back to their original German owners.

  The British governed their territory from neighbouring Nigeria. Residents complained that this made them a neglected "colony of a colony". Nigerian migrant workers flocked in, which ended forced labour altogether but angered locals, who felt swamped. In 1946, the mandates became United Nations Trusteeships.

  On the 13th of July 1955, France outlawed the pro-independence party, the Union of the Peoples of Cameroon, known as the UPC. A long guerrilla war followed, and several of its leaders were assassinated, including Ruben Um Nyobè, Félix-Roland Moumié and Ernest Ouandie. In the British territory, the choice was between joining French Cameroon and joining Nigeria, because the British ruled out independence.

  On the 1st of January 1960, French Cameroun became independent under President Ahmadou Ahidjo. On the 1st of October 1961, the former British Southern Cameroons, by a vote of the UN General Assembly, merged with it. The result was the Federal Republic of Cameroon, made of East Cameroon and West Cameroon. Each had its own legislature, government and prime minister. The 1st of October is now Unification Day, a public holiday, though some in the English-speaking regions read the same date very differently.

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• 5. Power in Yaoundé

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  On the 1st of September 1966, Ahidjo's Cameroon National Union became the only legal political party. He used the continuing war with the UPC to concentrate power in the presidency, and he kept doing so after the UPC was suppressed in 1971.

  On the 20th of May 1972, a referendum abolished the federal system in favour of a United Republic of Cameroon, headed from Yaoundé. That date is now the National Day. On the 20th of May 1975, the flag lost its two stars and gained one large central star as a symbol of national unity. Ahidjo pursued what he called planned liberalism, favouring cash crops and petroleum. Oil money paid for a national cash reserve, payments to farmers and major development projects. Many of those projects failed after Ahidjo put unqualified allies in charge.

  Ahidjo stepped down on the 4th of November 1982 and passed power to his constitutional successor, Paul Biya, who had been prime minister since 1975. Ahidjo still controlled the party and tried to rule from behind the scenes. Biya and his allies pressured him into resigning. Biya began with a move toward more democracy, but a failed coup nudged him toward his predecessor's style. In 1984, a presidential decree renamed the country the Republic of Cameroon.

  The president is chosen by popular vote every seven years. He creates policy, commands the armed forces, negotiates treaties and appoints officials at every level, from the prime minister to provincial governors. The National Assembly has 180 members serving five-year terms, and a 1996 constitution added a 100-seat Senate. Traditional chiefs, fons and lamibe keep authority at the local level, provided their rulings do not conflict with national law. Ten regions are headed by appointed governors, and the regions divide into 58 divisions.

  Biya's party, the Cameroon People's Democratic Movement, was the only legal party until December 1990. Its primary opponent is the Social Democratic Front, led by John Fru Ndi and based largely in the English-speaking regions. Rivals say that elections were unfair. Freedom House ranks the country "not free".

  Corruption has proved stubborn. In 1997, anti-corruption bureaus were set up in 29 ministries, yet only 25% became operational. Transparency International placed Cameroon 144th of 176 countries in 2012, and 152nd of 180 in 2018. On the 18th of January 2006, Biya launched an anti-corruption drive under the National Anti-Corruption Observatory, but the ranking later worsened.

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• 6. Borders and Insurgencies

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  In 1994, Cameroon asked the International Court of Justice to settle its dispute with Nigeria over the oil-rich Bakassi peninsula. The two countries share a border of about 1,600 kilometres. A ceasefire attempt in 1996 failed, and fighting continued for years. In 2002, the court ruled that the Anglo-German Agreement of 1913 gave Cameroon sovereignty. It refused Cameroon's request for compensation for Nigeria's long occupation.

  By 2004, Nigeria had missed the deadline to withdraw. In June 2006, a UN-mediated summit brought Paul Biya together with Nigeria's president, Olusegun Obasanjo, and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Both leaders signed the Greentree Agreement. The northern part of the peninsula was handed over in August 2006, and the remainder in 2008. Many Bakassians refused Cameroonian rule, and most militants laid down their arms in November 2009, though some fought on for years.

  In February 2008, a transport union strike in Douala grew into violent protests in 31 municipal areas, the worst violence in 15 years.

  In May 2014, after the kidnapping of the Chibok schoolgirls, Biya and Chad's president, Idriss Déby, declared war on Boko Haram. They sent troops to the Nigerian border. A December 2014 raid killed 84 civilians in Cameroon, but Boko Haram suffered a heavy defeat in January 2015. Cameroon declared victory on its own territory in September 2018.

  Since November 2016, protesters in the English-speaking Northwest and Southwest regions have campaigned to keep English in schools and courts. People were killed and hundreds were jailed. In 2017, the government cut those regions off from the Internet for 94 days, hampering five million people, including startups of the so-called Silicon Mountain. In September 2017, separatists began a guerrilla war for a Federal Republic of Ambazonia. The government answered with a military offensive, and the insurgency spread across both regions.

  Since 2016, more than 450,000 people have fled their homes. OCHA estimates that more than 1.7 million people in the two regions need humanitarian assistance. At least 628,000 are displaced inside the country, and more than 87,000 have fled to Nigeria. With the army largely withdrawn from the north to fight separatists, Boko Haram attacks rose again.

  In December 2021, ethnic clashes over water between Musgum fishermen and ethnic Arab Choa herders drove more than 30,000 people into Chad. After the 2025 presidential election, the opposition alleged fraud, and protests broke out.

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• 7. Farms, Forests and Fuel

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  An estimated 70% of Cameroonians farm, yet agriculture made up only about 16.7% of economic output in 2017. Most farming is on a subsistence scale with simple tools, and farmers sell their surplus. Cities rely heavily on this peasant agriculture for their food.

  The coast suits bananas, cocoa, oil palms, rubber and tea. On the South Cameroon Plateau, farmers grow coffee, sugar and tobacco, and coffee is also a major crop in the western highlands. The north favours cotton, groundnuts and rice, and Fairtrade cotton production began there in 2004. Fishing employs 5,000 people and yields over 100,000 tons of seafood a year.

  The southern rainforest holds vast timber reserves, estimated to cover 37% of the land. Foreign-owned firms handle most logging, which pays the government US$60 million a year in taxes. Laws require safe and sustainable harvesting, yet in practice this is one of the least regulated industries in the country.

  Factories produced about 26.5% of output in 2017, and more than 75% of industry sits in Douala and Bonabéri. Petroleum output has fallen since 1986, though price dips still shake the economy. Waterfalls and rapids on the southern rivers supply most of the country's power. The largest hydroelectric station sits at Edéa on the Sanaga River, and oil-powered thermal engines supply the rest. Much of the country still lacks reliable electricity.

  Between 2004 and 2008, public debt fell from over 60% of output to 10%, and official reserves quadrupled to over US$3 billion. Growth has averaged about 4% a year, and the currency is the CFA franc. Even so, 23.8% of people lived below the US$1.90 daily poverty line in 2014.

  Getting around is hard. Only 6.6% of roads are tarred, and some roadblocks seem to exist mainly so police and gendarmes can collect bribes. Private intercity buses are the most popular transport, followed by the Camrail railway, which runs from Kumba in the west to Bélabo in the east and north to Ngaoundéré. Kribi Deepwater Port began operating in 2014, and a third international airport is under construction in Maroua.

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• 8. Rhythm and Football

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  Prince Nico Mbarga's highlife hit "Sweet Mother" is the top-selling African record in history. Nigerian music influenced Anglophone Cameroonian performers, but the two dominant home-grown styles are makossa and bikutsi.

  Makossa developed in Douala, blending folk music, highlife, soul and Congo music. Manu Dibango, Francis Bebey, Moni Bilé and Petit-Pays carried it around the world in the 1970s and 1980s. Bikutsi began as war music among the Ewondo. Anne-Marie Nzié turned it into popular dance music from the 1940s, and Mama Ohandja and Les Têtes Brulées took it abroad.

  Traditional music is passed on orally, usually with a chorus echoing a soloist. Accompaniment can be as simple as clapping and stamping, or can include talking drums, xylophones, flutes and bells worn by dancers.

  Language is its own creative field. The Presidency estimates that 70% of Cameroonians speak French and 30% speak English. German, the tongue of the original colonisers, has long since faded. Cameroonian Pidgin English is the common language in the formerly British regions. Since the mid-1970s, a blend of English, French and Pidgin called Camfranglais has gained ground in the cities.

  After World War II, writers such as Mongo Beti and Ferdinand Oyono analysed and criticised colonialism and rejected assimilation. In the mid-1970s, filmmakers Jean-Pierre Dikongué Pipa and Daniel Kamwa explored the conflict between traditional and postcolonial society.

  Football dominates sport. The national team has ranked among Africa's most successful since strong showings at the 1982 and 1990 World Cups. Cameroon has won five African Cup of Nations titles and the gold medal at the 2000 Olympics, and it hosted the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations. The women's team, the "Indomitable Lionesses", has not yet won a major trophy.

  Cameroonians have also reached the NBA, including Pascal Siakam and Joel Embiid, and Francis Ngannou became UFC Heavyweight Champion. Cameroon is one of the few tropical countries to have competed in the Winter Olympics. Each year, several hundred runners tackle the 40 kilometre Mount Cameroon Race of Hope.

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