Kamerun’s mandate split still shapes a bilingual African hinge
Cameroon owes its name to Portuguese sailors who reached the Wouri River in 1472 and, seeing it teem with ghost shrimp, called it the river of shrimps. Today nearly 31 million people there speak some 250 native languages, and French and English share official status, a legacy of rule split between two colonial powers.
The country sits where West and Central Africa meet, bounded by Nigeria along its west and north, by Chad and the Central African Republic eastward, and by Gabon, Equatorial Guinea and Congo-Brazzaville along its southern edge. Douala on the Wouri is the main port and economic capital, Yaoundé the political one. Christianity is the majority faith, and the country is known for Makossa, Njang and Bikutsi music and for its national football team.
Digs at Shum Laka in the Northwest Region show people living there 30,000 years ago, and the Baka are among its longest continuous inhabitants. The Sao culture arose around Lake Chad about 500 CE, later giving way to Kanem and Bornu, while in the nineteenth century Fulani fighters carved out the northern Adamawa Emirate. In 1896 Sultan Ibrahim Njoya invented the Bamum script for his people's language.
A Hamburg firm, Woermann, built a warehouse on the Wouri estuary in 1868, and Germany proclaimed the colony of Kamerun in 1884, relying on forced labour for rubber, palm oil and banana plantations. After the First World War the territory was split in 1919 between France and Britain, which ran its share from Nigeria. France banned the pro-independence UPC party in 1955, setting off a guerrilla war in which leaders such as Ruben Um Nyobè were killed.
French Cameroun became independent on 1 January 1960 under Ahmadou Ahidjo, and British Southern Cameroons joined it on 1 October 1961 in a federation that a 1972 referendum replaced with a unitary state. Paul Biya took over in 1982 and, having served as prime minister since 1975, is the oldest head of state in the world. English-speaking grievances turned into open war over a proposed Ambazonian state in 2017.
Source: Cameroon
