According to Countryaah website, Cameroon has about 25 million residents. The region around the capital Yaoundé, the grasslands of the Bamileke and the coastal province near the port city of Douala are most densely populated. If you compare the middle of Cameroon with these regions, however, it is almost deserted.
Ethnic composition
The population of Cameroon is made up of over 200 different ethnic groups. These include Bantu tribes (including Douala, Pangwe-Fang and Bassa), who mainly live in the north of the country, in the west Semibantu (such as Bamileke, Bamum, Tikar) and Adamawa, Sudan peoples (Massa, Mundang) as well as Fulbe and Hausa in the north and in the center of the country. Several thousand pygmies inhabit the southern rainforest of Cameroon. There is also a European minority, which consists mainly of French and a few English.
Religious affiliation
Approximately 25% of the population of Cameroon are Catholics, 25% Protestants, 30% are followers of natural religions and about 20%, mainly in the north of the country, are Muslims.
National language
The official languages are English and French. The colloquial languages used are African languages such as Bantu, Semibantu and others, as well as Weskos, an English-based Creole language.
Note
The country is divided between the urban and rural population, but especially between the Anglophone minority in the west of the country and the Francophone majority. The capital Yaounde, for example, is clearly frankofon. It goes so far that the Anglophone minority advocates its own state and violent clashes occur again and again.
Capital and other cities
Bamenda
Bamenda has about 350,000 residents. It is located in the northwest of the country and is the largest Cameroonian city of the English-speaking minority. Bamenda continues to be an important commercial, university and transport city. The many buildings that are still children of the German colonial era are interesting for tourists. One of them is the fortress of Bamenda, which towers over the city. According to Abbreviation Finder, CMR stands for Cameroon in English. Click to see other meanings of this 3-letter acronym.
Douala
Douala is the most populous city in the country with around 2.5 million residents and the financial, industrial, commercial and cultural center of the country. The city is located on the Atlantic Ocean and has the largest and most important port in Cameroon. Douala is a melting pot of diverse ethnic groups, as Douala International Airport is where most travelers set foot on Cameroonian soil for the first time. The city offers a whole range of sights. These include the former governor’s building, the neo-Romanesque cathedral, the Palace of Justice and the city museum.
Garoua
About 290,000 people live in Garoua. This is also where Ahmadou Ahidjo, the first president of Cameroon, was born. He had contributed a lot to the development of his hometown during his reign (1960-1982). But Garoua is also a center of inland shipping. The city has an international airport and is an important factor in the trade in the north of Cameroon.
Yaoundé (German Yaoundé)
Cameroon’s capital Yaoundé has around 2 million residents and is the most densely populated area in the country. It was built on hills around the Mfoundi River. The two mountains Mont Mbankolo and Mont Fébé rise in the western urban area. Yaoundé continues to be surrounded by tropical jungle. The city is an important transport hub in Cameroon and the industrial center of the tobacco, milk, glass, clay and wood industries.
Cameroon: geography, map
Cameroon is located on the west coast of Central Africa on the Gulf of Guinea, part of the Atlantic Ocean. The length of its coast to the gulf is around 400 km. Check topmbadirectory for politics, flags, famous people, animals and plants of Cameroon.
The country covers a total area of 475,442 km². The country is considered to be a kind of “Africa miniature”, as you can find savannah, desert, jungle, mountains and scrubland:
ForestAround 50% of the country is forest and scrubland.
Meadow and pasture landAround 18% of the land is used as meadow or pasture land.
Fields and fieldsAround 15% of the land is used as arable land or fields, especially for growing cocoa, coffee, bananas and cotton.
Savannah and desertThe north of the country is a flat and dry plain that forms a savannah. Only bushes and grasses grow here with a few trees in between. In the far north lies a desert. In addition to Chad, Nigeria and Niger, Cameroon has a smaller share of Lake Chad, which used to be around 22,000 km², but has since shrunk considerably. The north of the country is bordered in the south by the Adamaua highlands up to 2,710 m high.
Cameroon shares a border with the following six states.
Equatorial Guinea with a length of 189 km
Gabon with a length of 298 km
Republic of the Congo with a length of 523 km
Nigeria with a length of 1,690 km
Chad with a length of 1,094 km
Central Africa with a length of 797 km.
Longitude and latitude
Cameroon extends over the following geographical latitude (abbreviation Δφ) and geographical longitude (abbreviation Δλ):
Δφ = from around 2 ° to 13 ° north latitude Δλ = from around 008 ° to 016 ° east longitude
You can find detailed information on this subject under Longitude and Latitude.
Legal time
For Cameroon, the following value applies to Central European Time (CET), i.e. the time (without summer time) in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. A minus sign means that it is earlier there, a plus sign that it is later than CET:
Δt (CET) = 0 h
Further and detailed explanations of the time can be found under Time zones, time.
The highest point of the sun in Yaoundé
The capital Yaoundé is located at a north latitude of around φ = 04 °. If the declination δ of the sun has the value 04 ° North, and thus the image point of the sun is above the city, the sun is perpendicular there. This happens exactly twice a year, roughly 15 days after March 21 and 15 days before September 21 (for details see position of the sun).
Attention
If the image point of the sun and thus the declination is north of the latitude of Yaoundé, the sun is not in the south at noon, as in our latitudes, but in the north. In this case, the sun moves from east to north to west, where, like us, it sets.
mountains
The highest mountain in the country is the Cameroon Mountain (Fako) with a height of 4,070 m.
Other high mountains are:
Mount Oku with a height of 3,011 m
Mount Bambouto with a height of 2,740 m
Rivers
The longest river in the country is the Sanaga with a length of 918 km. Other rivers in the country are the Nyong, the Ntesu and the Dja.
Lakes
The country includes several smaller and larger lakes. The largest of them is Lake Chad with an average area of 20,700 km². (Since the water level varies, the area is between 10,000 and 25,000 km².). Other lakes are:
– LagdoReservoir
– MbakaouLake
Gulf of Guinea, Atlantic
Cameroon borders in the west and south-west of the country with a length of around 400 km on the Gulf of Guinea, which is part of the Atlantic. Here Cameroon has an important shipping connection with the port in Douala. From here, for example, goods and goods are delivered to Chad and the Central African Republic.
A detailed description of these seas can be found at Goruma under the following links:
