Cameroon
Capital: Yaoundé · Central Africa
'Africa in miniature' — Sahelian sultanates, Grassfields kingdoms with beaded thrones, coastal Sawa cultures and Baka forest knowledge in one country.
Ethnic communities
- Bamiléké & BamounGrassfields kingdoms; Bamoun script invented by Sultan Njoya
- Fulbe & KirdiNorthern sultanates (Adamawa) and mountain peoples of Mandara
- Beti-Pahuin (Fang-Beti)Forest lineage societies of the center-south
- Duala & SawaCoastal traders; Ngondo water festival
- BakaForest people with celebrated polyphonic music
More communities of Cameroon
- Bamiléké — Grassfields kingdoms of beaded thrones and enterprise
- Bamoun — Njoya's script-inventing sultanate at Foumban
- Fulbe (Adamawa) — Northern emirate herders (full profile: Fulani)
- Beti (Ewondo) — Center-south forest lineages of Yaoundé
- Bulu & Fang — Southern forest kin of mvet epic
- Duala — Coastal trade dynasties of the Ngondo festival
- Bassa — Forest farmers between coast and center
- Bakweri — Mount Cameroon's slope farmers
- Tikar — Plateau kingdoms famed in diaspora genealogy
- Nso, Kom & Bafut — Grassfields palace kingdoms of the northwest
- Kirdi peoples (Mafa, Kapsiki) — Mandara mountain terrace cultures
- Kotoko — Chad-basin city-states of Sao heritage
- Shuwa Arabs — Cattle Arabs of the far north
- Gbaya & Mbum — Adamawa plateau farming peoples
- Maka & Njem — Southeastern forest communities
Languages
Major languages: French, English, Fulfulde, Ewondo, Duala, Ghomala'
Language families: Niger-Congo (Bantu, Grassfields); Afro-Asiatic (Chadic); Nilo-Saharan
Historical kingdoms & states
- • Bamoun (Bamum) Kingdom
- • Bamiléké chefferies
- • Adamawa Emirate
- • Kotoko city-states
Heritage sites
- • Bamoun palace of Foumban
- • Grassfields royal architecture
- • Dja Faunal Reserve
Cultural highlights
Deep-dive community profiles
Baka
Forest hunter-gatherers of the western Congo basin — whose yelli and water-drumming polyphonies are among the world's most admired music, whose Jengi forest spirit governs the hunt, and whose land rights are among Africa's most contested.
Open deep profile →Bamileke
The dynamic chiefdom civilization of Cameroon's western Grassfields — beaded elephant masks, towering bamboo palaces, sacred forests and a famed entrepreneurial spirit rooted in tontine savings circles and ancestral skulls kept close to home.
Open deep profile →Bamoun (Bamum)
The kingdom that wrote itself — Sultan Njoya invented an original script, drew maps and chronicles, founded schools and a new religion, and built Foumban's palace into one of Africa's great courts, still reigning in its twentieth generation.
Open deep profile →Beti (Ewondo & Bulu)
The people of Cameroon's southern plateau and its capital — Ewondo, Bulu and Eton communities whose mvet epics, bikutsi rhythm and cocoa farms shaped the nation's centre, politics and popular music.
Open deep profile →Duala
The estuary traders who gave Cameroon its port and its name — middlemen kings of the Wouri whose Ngondo water-festival honours the Jengu spirits, and whose 1884 treaty and 1914 martyrdom shaped a nation's history.
Open deep profile →Fang
The forest people of the mvet epic and byeri ancestor reliquaries — whose migrations across the equatorial rainforest, guardian sculptures that transfixed Picasso's generation, and harp-zither bards made them Central Africa's great epic civilization.
Open deep profile →Fulani (Fulbe)
The great pastoral nation of the Sahel — some 40 million people scattered from Senegal to Sudan, keepers of the pulaaku ethical code, founders of Islamic reform states, and among them the Wodaabe, whose Gerewol beauty festival is world-famous.
Open deep profile →Gbaya
The savanna-forest farmers of the CAR's west — whose Karnu prophet led the great Kongo-Wara rebellion against French rule, and whose hunting societies, initiation dances and sanza thumb-pianos hold the country's largest people together.
Open deep profile →Kanuri
The imperial people of the Lake Chad basin — heirs of Kanem-Bornu, a Muslim state that lasted a thousand years, whose sultans corresponded with Istanbul and whose scholars, saddled cavalry and desert trade routes linked the Sahara to the savanna.
Open deep profile →Tikar
The 'mother-people' of the Cameroon Grassfields — savanna migrants whose dynasties are claimed as founders by many Grassfields and Bamileke chiefdoms, keepers of the tumbu drum-dances, brass-casting and the sacred kingship of Bankim and Nditam.
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