https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CameroonThis is another ex-French colony in Africa, and tbh I know very little about them in general. Actually I simplify. Cameroon is an ex-French colony with a small ex-British colony attached (Southern Cameroons which is..... errrr... in the west of the country, next to Nigeria). Cameroon's colonial is a great colonial hodgepodge. The name of the country is not indigenous but comes from an anglicization of the Portuguese word for Shrimp, whom the first Portuguese sailors around the coast associated with the region and the name stuck. It was a general description for this part of the West African coast until pieced together from various fractured states and kingdoms by the Germans, who turned it into, like their other African colonies, into a giant centre for partially and not so partially forced labour. After WWI, it was split between France and England with France getting by far the greatest share. This French colony was kept separate from the rest of French Equatorial Africa and maintained its own colonial administration. Southern Cameroons, otoh, was ruled from Nigeria and saw a great deal of migration from Nigeria into its territory. Thus it was sometimes called "a colony of a colony". Despite some calls to unify with Nigeria, Southern Cameroons was unified with the rest of Cameroon very soon after its independence in 1960. Since then something of its history can be grasped by the fact that Cameroon has only had two Presidents in that entire time: Ahmadou Ahidjo and Paul Biya, the present incumbent (since 1982). The standard criticism of such rulers in Africa certainly applies here down to authoritarianism, massive corruptions, economic mismanagement (one of Africa's worst ever recessions was here in the late 80s) and continuing fidelty to the former colonial power. In recent years there have been greater calls for autonomy or even independence on behalf of Southern Cameroons, or as their nationalists call it "Ambazonia". French and English are official language but, unusually for the contemporary world, French has remained the most dominant with English rarely creeping much beyond the former Southern Cameroons. As typical in Africa all education and media is in the language of the former colonizer. This has created something of a marginalization of Southern Cameroons in 'national' consciousness. Although it is worth observing that many people in the country speak neither European tongue. Finally, Cameroon has entered the world's attention for being at war against Boko Haram in its Northern provinces (where the Muslim population is substantial in what is a majority Christian country), a war that looks likely to continue for some time to come. Other than that the only time Cameroon has entered world attention is during the World Cup, which it has an excellent record of qualification, and made the quarter finals in 1990; the first African team to do so.
Below is a map of the expansion of the Bantu people. The Bantu people originated in either Cameroon or Nigeria and were horticulturalists with iron tools who in a series of migrations from about 1000BC to 500AD swept across Southern and Eastern Africa. Almost every language in Africa south of the line between Cameroon, Lake Victoria and the Indian Ocean is a Bantu language, having swept over, conquered and/or assimilated those groups which existed prior to the expansion. I mention this here because of the probable Cameroonian origins of the Bantu and their importance to African history.
