StapleCameroon
Fufu Corn
Maize flour beaten into a smooth stiff paste, eaten with njama njama or huckleberry greens in the north-west. The standard plate of the Anglophone highlands.
Serves 6 · 30 minutes
Banen
Farmers of the Mbam valley in Cameroon's Littoral and Centre, whose territory the colonial state emptied in the 1950s for the Nachtigal and Mbam reserves, and who were among the communities most heavily involved in the UPC insurgency.
Identity
Population: Estimated 60,000 to 100,000
Location: Nkam and Mbam divisions of Cameroon's Littoral and Centre regions, around Ndikiniméki, Ndom and the Mbam valley
Language: Tunen (Banen)
Language family: Niger-Congo → Bantu (A44)
Traditional governance: Lineage and village authority; state-appointed chiefs; Cameroonian divisional administration.
Clans, Sections & Sub-groups (3)
Most African peoples are federations of named sub-groups (clans, sections, chiefdoms or sub-tribes), each with its own dialect, territory and traditions.
Banen of Ndikiniméki
The Mbam valley communities.
Banen of Ndom and Nkam
Western communities toward the Littoral.
Bafia and Tunen-adjacent groups
Neighbouring communities of the Mbam sharing much of the history.
Culture
Clothing: Contemporary dress; raffia and barkcloth in the older record; ceremonial regalia at funerals and installations.
Food: Cassava, plantain, maize, groundnut sauces, bushmeat, river fish from the Mbam and Nkam, palm oil, and palm wine.
Ceremonies: Funerals with dance over several nights; ancestral offerings; harvest rites; the men's societies' performances.
Marriage customs: Patrilineal and clan-exogamous; bridewealth in goods and cash; the negotiation is prolonged and involves both lineages.
Initiation rites: Boys' circumcision with instruction; the older society initiations reduced under mission and administrative pressure.
Food & Recipes
Every dish the Atlas publishes for Cameroon, at national rather than community level — 12 in all: the staple a household eats daily, the dish the country names as its own, street food, what is cooked for a wedding or Eid, regional specialities and a drink. Quantities and method are given for every one, so these are recipes rather than descriptions, and each has a photograph from Wikimedia Commons. The Food page carries the whole continent, searchable by country and by ingredient.
StapleCameroon
Koki Beans
also Koki corn, Ekoki
Black-eyed beans ground to a paste with palm oil and spinach, wrapped in banana leaf and steamed into a savoury pudding. A Cameroonian street and household staple.
Serves 8 · 2 hours, plus overnight soaking
National dishCameroon
Ndolé
Bitterleaf boiled repeatedly to draw out the bitterness, then cooked with ground groundnuts, shrimp and meat. Cameroon's national dish, from the Douala coast.
Serves 8 · 2 hours
National dishCameroon
Mbongo Tchobi
also Black stew, Sauce noire
Fish or meat in a jet-black sauce made from burnt spices — mbongo seed, country onion and njangsa — from the Bassa country around Edéa. Smoky, bitter and unlike anything else in Africa.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 15 minutes
Street foodCameroon
Soya
Beef skewers rubbed in a groundnut and chilli spice mix and grilled over charcoal, sold from evening braziers across the north and in every Yaoundé quarter.
Serves Makes 12 · 40 minutes, plus 2 hours marinating
Festival & feastCameroon
Eru
Wild forest vine leaves shredded fine and cooked with waterleaf, palm oil and smoked fish, from the south-west. Made for celebrations and eaten with water fufu.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 15 minutes
Festival & feastCameroon
Achu Soup
also Yellow soup, Taro fufu and yellow soup
Pounded taro served with a bright yellow palm-oil soup coloured with limestone, the ceremonial dish of Cameroon's North West grassfields, eaten with the fingers from a shared bowl.
Serves 8 · 2 hours 30 minutes
Regional specialityCameroon
Poulet DG
Chicken with fried ripe plantain and vegetables, whose name stands for Directeur Général because it was originally what you served a man of importance.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 15 minutes
Regional specialityCameroon
Kondre
also Plantain and goat stew
Goat and unripe plantain stewed with country onion and njangsa until the plantain thickens the pot. A grassfields dish cooked for visitors and for the head of the household.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 45 minutes
Regional specialityCameroon
Sanga
also Maize and cassava leaf
Fresh maize kernels cooked with cassava leaf and palm oil into a thick green-and-gold porridge. A Beti and southern Cameroonian dish of the maize harvest.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 15 minutes
Drink & sweetCameroon
Foléré
Hibiscus juice with pineapple, ginger and mint, sold from freezers in the north and served cold at every celebration. Cameroon's name for what is bissap elsewhere.
Serves 8 · 30 minutes, plus chilling
Drink & sweetCameroon
Bil-Bil
also Millet beer, Bilibili
Sorghum beer of northern Cameroon, brewed by women in great clay pots and sold from the compound door. Sour, cloudy and drunk from a shared calabash.
Serves Makes about 8 litres · 1 hour active, plus 4 days germinating and 3 days fermenting
Stories & Oral Literature
The Emptied ValleyLand history
In the 1950s the French administration moved Banen and neighbouring communities out of a large part of the Mbam valley to create hunting and forest reserves, in a displacement that was not compensated and that the community has never accepted. The Mbam-Djerem and Nachtigal areas remain protected land; Banen organisations have pressed for recognition of their claims and for access, and the case has been raised before Cameroonian authorities and international bodies repeatedly since the 1990s.
The UPC YearsPolitical history
The Union des Populations du Cameroun, the nationalist movement banned by France in 1955, drew heavily on Bassa, Bamileke and Banen communities, and the counter-insurgency that followed — pacification through resettlement into guarded villages, aerial bombardment and mass arrests — fell on the Mbam and Nkam with particular weight. Estimates of the total dead in the Cameroonian independence war vary widely and the archives were long closed. It is the founding violence of the Cameroonian state and is only now being publicly examined.
The Dam at NachtigalContemporary history
The Nachtigal hydroelectric project on the Sanaga, under construction from 2019, is the largest power scheme in Cameroon's history and will supply a substantial share of the national grid. It sits on and near the ground from which Banen communities were displaced in the 1950s. The project's resettlement and compensation arrangements have been closely scrutinised, and the community's older claim — never settled — sits underneath the new one.
Proverbs
“The village that was moved knows exactly where it stood.”
On displacement and memory.
“A forest without people in it was made, not found.”
On the reserves.
“Water that turns a wheel still passes the same villages.”
On the dam.
Mythology & Spiritual Beliefs
Creation: A high god of the Bantu Cameroonian tradition; ancestral spirits at lineage sites; river and forest powers with prohibitions attached.
Beliefs: Ancestral offerings; divination and healing; men's societies with graded knowledge; Catholic and Protestant Christianity dominant, with Pentecostal expansion.
Ancestors: The dead are buried near the village; the graves left behind in the 1950s displacement are cited in the community's continuing land claim.
Gods, Goddesses & Spirits
The high god
The remote creator
Ancestral spirits
Addressed at lineage sites for health, harvest and dispute
River powers
Presences of the Mbam, the Nkam and the Sanaga
Architecture
Traditional settlements: Villages of rectangular houses along a road in the valley and on the surrounding hills, with gardens behind and gallery forest along the rivers.
Building techniques: Pole and mud with raffia mat or thatch roofing, now plank, brick and iron sheet; raffia weaving; drum making; dugout canoes on the Mbam.
Village layout: Houses in lines along the road with gardens behind, the meeting space at the centre, and the reserves' boundaries somewhere beyond.
Artifacts
Displacement claim documents
Legal record
The Banen community's submissions on the 1950s removals from the Mbam valley.
Mbam-Djerem reserve boundaries
Contested site
Protected land created on ground from which communities were moved.
Raffia cloth and drums
Craft
Woven cloth and skin drums of the Mbam valley tradition.
Nachtigal dam works
Infrastructure
Cameroon's largest hydroelectric project, on and near the displaced land.
Historical Timeline
Pre-1800
Bantu-speaking communities settle the Mbam and Nkam valleys.
1884–1916
German administration reaches the interior; missions and plantations follow.
1950s
The French administration displaces Banen communities from the Mbam valley for reserves.
1955–1971
The UPC insurgency and its suppression fall heavily on the Mbam and Nkam.
2019–present
The Nachtigal hydroelectric project is built near the displaced land, reopening the community's claim.
Sources & Further Reading
Open sources
Premium & scholarly sources
- Ethnologue: TunenSIL International