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
Maka (Makaa)
Forest farmers of Cameroon's east around Abong-Mbang, whose villages line the road to the Central African Republic, and whose forest is the country's largest timber concession zone and the home of the Baka.
Identity
Population: Estimated 150,000 to 250,000
Location: The East region of Cameroon around Abong-Mbang, Doumé and Nguelemendouka
Language: Makaa (South Makaa and North Makaa)
Language family: Niger-Congo → Bantu (A83, Makaa-Njem)
Traditional governance: Lineage and village authority; Cameroonian divisional administration with state-appointed chiefs; forest management units and community forests now central to local politics.
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.
Maka of Abong-Mbang
The divisional centre and its surrounding villages.
Maka of Doumé
Communities on the Nyong toward the Bertoua road.
Njem and Bikele neighbours
Related Makaa-Njem communities of the south-east forest.
Culture
Clothing: Contemporary dress; barkcloth and raffia in the older record; ceremonial regalia at funerals and dances.
Food: Cassava and plantain, cocoyam, groundnut sauces, forest game, river fish, palm oil, caterpillars and mushrooms in season, and palm wine.
Ceremonies: Funerals with several nights of dance and drumming; ancestral offerings; hunting rites; the men's societies' performances.
Marriage customs: Patrilineal and clan-exogamous; bridewealth in goods and cash; the negotiation is staged and prolonged.
Initiation rites: Boys' circumcision with instruction; entry into the men's societies conferred standing; the older initiations are much reduced.
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 Road EastEconomic history
The road from Yaoundé through Abong-Mbang and Bertoua to the Central African Republic is the east's spine, and everything in Maka country is arranged along it: villages in two lines facing the tarmac, timber trucks running west, traders running east, and the bush behind. The road brought schools, markets and the timber companies in the same decade, and it is the reason a forest region with very low population density has one of the country's more visible commercial economies.
Living With the BakaSocial relationship
Maka villages have long-standing exchange and patronage relationships with Baka forest communities, who supply game, honey and forest knowledge and receive cassava, cloth and, often, poorly paid agricultural labour. The Baka's exclusion from land title, from schooling and from citizenship documents has been documented repeatedly by Cameroonian and international bodies. Where Maka villages have obtained community forests, the question of whether Baka households share in them has been the practical test of the relationship.
The Community ForestsPolicy history
Cameroon's 1994 forestry law created community forests — areas of up to 5,000 hectares that a village can manage and log on its own account — alongside the large industrial concessions. The east has more of them than anywhere else. Assessments have found the model works where a community has capacity and honest management and fails where it becomes a front for outside loggers. Maka villages have both kinds, and the difference is visible from the road.
Proverbs
“The road brought the school and the sawmill on the same lorry.”
On what development arrives with.
“The one who knows the forest is not the one who owns the paper.”
On Baka knowledge and land title.
“A tree takes eighty years and a chainsaw ten minutes.”
On logging.
Mythology & Spiritual Beliefs
Creation: Zambe as the high god; ancestral spirits at lineage sites; forest powers with prohibitions attached to named groves and streams.
Beliefs: Ancestral offerings; hunting rites; healing and divination, with Baka specialists consulted; Catholic and Protestant Christianity now dominant, with Pentecostal expansion.
Ancestors: The dead are buried near the village and addressed at lineage sites; land claims within community forests are argued through ancestral occupation.
Gods, Goddesses & Spirits
Zambe
The high god
Ancestral spirits
Addressed at lineage sites for health, hunting and harvest
Forest powers
Presences of named groves, streams and hunting grounds
Architecture
Traditional settlements: Villages of rectangular houses in two lines along the road, with the chief's compound and the meeting house at the centre and the forest immediately behind the gardens.
Building techniques: Pole and mud with raffia mat or thatch roofing, now plank and iron sheet; sawn timber from the local mills; drum making; net and crossbow making for hunting.
Village layout: Two lines of houses facing across the road, gardens behind, Baka camps at the village's edge or in the forest, and the concession boundary somewhere beyond.
Artifacts
Community forest management plans
Institutional heritage
Documents under Cameroon's 1994 law giving villages rights over up to 5,000 hectares.
Slit and skin drums
Instrument
Signal and dance drums of the south-eastern forest.
Hunting nets and crossbows
Craft
Forest hunting equipment used with and by Baka partners.
Sawmill towns
Industrial heritage
The timber-processing settlements that the east's concessions have created.
Historical Timeline
Pre-1800
Makaa-Njem communities settle Cameroon's south-eastern forest alongside Baka forest peoples.
1884–1916
German administration; rubber and ivory exactions reach the east.
1920s–1960
French administration; the road east is built; missions and cocoa arrive.
1994
Cameroon's forestry law creates community forests alongside industrial concessions.
2003–present
The Chad-Cameroon pipeline crosses the region; timber concessions expand; Baka land rights remain unresolved.
Sources & Further Reading
Open sources
- Center for International Forestry Research — Cameroon community forestry assessmentsCIFOR-ICRAF
- Forest Peoples Programme — Baka land rights in CameroonForest Peoples Programme
Premium & scholarly sources
- Ethnologue: MakaaSIL International