50 Fun Facts about Cameroon for Inquisitive Learners

(Last Updated On: April 16, 2021)

Roger Milla once said, “Cameroon is a football country–children are born playing football.” There are a lot of fun facts about Cameroon. This African country is thriving with a lot of prospects, opportunities, success, and achievements. In this article, I am going to share some of the fun facts about Cameroon.

Fun facts about Cameroon

In 1986, toxic gasoline was discharged from Lake Nyos killing around 1,800 individuals and three,500 livestock in addition to innumerable birds and bugs, which is one of the fun facts about Cameroon. Carbon dioxide from a pocket of volcanic magma under the Earth’s crust slowly accumulates on the underside of the lake earlier than finally discharging. Scientists have now put in pipes to soundly vent the gasoline.

Cameroon has the second most profitable African soccer group after Egypt. They have gained the Africa Cup of Nations championship 5 instances and have been runners up twice.

The Cameroon group – often known as the Indomitable Lions – had been additionally the first African facet to achieve the quarter-finals of the FIFA World Cup when in 1990 they misplaced to England in a close-run match.

In some Cameroon villages “breast ironing” is practiced. This follows mutilates a younger lady’s breasts, which is assumed to cease their growth and push back development by boys who affiliate breast growth with a sign that the lady is prepared for intercourse.

During the 18th century, Cameroon and Nigeria’s coasts had been hubs for the African slave trade. About 20,000 women and men had been taken from their shores annually.

In a lot of Cameroon, marriages are nonetheless organized, though this custom has been fading in recent times. This is one of the interesting facts about Cameroon culture. The groom is predicted to offer a dowry to his bride or her household, which can consist of products corresponding to palm wine, an animal, or bushmeat. A person can take a number of wives if he pays the dowry for every bride, which is one of the fun facts about Cameroon.

Three out of 4 Cameroonians stay on and work their very own land, and Cameroon gives 90% of its personal meals. Being self-sufficient is likely one of the causes Cameroon is extra economically steady than most of the different countries on the African continent.

A 1972 revision in Cameroon’s structure to unite Eastern and Western Cameroon below one authority modified the official title from the Federal Republic of Cameroon to the United Republic of Cameroon. President Paul Biya modified the title once more in 1984 to the Republic of Cameroon, stating that the individuals of Cameroon have lengthy been united, making the phrase “United” pointless.

Disputes with Nigeria over border areas got here to a head within the early 1990s, significantly over the oil-rich Bakassi Peninsula, and below UN negotiations, the nations exchanged over 200 prisoners of battle. Nigeria surrendered the Bakassi Peninsula to Cameroon in 2008 after the International Court of Justice decided largely in Cameroon’s favor. However, attackers wearing Nigerian troop garb killed 5 individuals at an offshore oil platform on the peninsula in 2010.

Mount Cameroon just isn’t solely the best peak in West Africa, however, it is usually an energetic volcano. The volcano has erupted 7 times up to now 100 years, the newest being a three-week interval within the yr 2000. Many Cameroonians imagine the mountain’s interior core is dwelling to highly effective ancestral spirits, together with a mountain god who causes the ground to shake and spit fireplace when angered.

In 2008, 50,000 refugees fled into Cameroon from Chad. As of 2016, Cameroon additionally holds 259,145 refugees from the Central African Republic and 64,891 refugees from Nigeria, which is one of the fun facts about Cameroon.

The capital is Yaoundé; it covers a space of 70 sq. miles (180 sq. kilometers) and had inhabitants of 3,066,000 in 2015, which is one of the fun facts about Cameroon. This is one of the Yaounde Cameroon facts.

Lake Chad – as soon as one of many world’s largest lakes – sits on the border of Chad, Cameroon, Niger, and Nigeria. The lake has shrunk by 90% because of the 1960s due to local weather change, inhabitants increase, and unregulated irrigation. This is one of the Cameroon facts.

Mongo Beti (1932-2001) and Ferdinand Oyono (1929-2010), two of Africa’s foremost writers had been from Cameroon. Both wrote extensively on points surrounding anti-colonialism and African independence.

Cameroon reported 1.8 million cases of malaria within the yr 2009, which is one of the fun facts about Cameroon, which is one of the fun facts about Cameroon.

Cameroon has fewer than 2 doctors for every 10,000 people, which is one of the fun facts about Cameroon.

Only 44% of Cameroon’s inhabitants have entry to secure ingesting water, and bottled water is by far the most secure water possibility within the nation.

Cameroon grows espresso, cacao, rubber, and cotton; additionally, they rear livestock and produce timber. This is one of the interesting facts about Cameroon.

Its trade consists of petroleum manufacturing and refining, textiles, meal processing, and light-weight client items.

The principal exports encompass lumber, crude oil and petroleum merchandise, cacao, and aluminum. This is one of the Cameroon facts and information.

Archaeological proof suggests the African nation of Cameroon has been inhabited by people for at least 50,000 years. This is one of the Cameroon facts for kids.

Cameroon is also known as “Africa in miniature” due to its geographical and cultural variety.

Cameroon is dwelling to over 200 completely different ethnic teams and has been described as an “ethnic crossroads”. This is one of the mount Cameroon facts.

There are as many as 275 native languages spoken in Cameroon, making it some of the linguistically diverse nations.

In reality, Cameroon is the ninth most linguistically various nation on the planet and the second in Africa after Nigeria.

The flag of Cameroon contains vertically strips of inexperienced, red, and yellow with a central yellow star. The star symbolizes national unity, the green stripe symbolizes the vegetation of the south, yellow the savannas of the north and the pink represents a link between the north and south and stands for national sovereignty.

The first Europeans to discover Cameroon had been Portuguese navigators who sailed up the Wouri River in 1472. This is one of the Cameroon world factbook.

As pastoral cattle herders, the Fulani of Cameroon places nice worth on their livestock. They will typically put the health of their cattle earlier than their own, and social standing is decided by the variety of cattle a person possesses.

The Fulani of Cameroon follows an initiation ceremony that entails lashing younger boys with sticks to depart distinctive scarring to indicate that they’ve come of age.

The Internet safety firm McAfee rated Cameroon’s internet area (.cm) because of the world’s riskiest area. About 36.7% of Cameroon web sites are ranked as posing a safety danger, with cybercriminals focusing on the websites for malicious downloads, spyware, adware, and different undesirable applications.

Transparency International ranks Cameroon as some of the corrupt nations on the planet. In 2006, the organization rated Cameroon 138th of 163 in its Corruptions Perception Index.

Cameroon is a lovely, wildlife-rich nation in Central Africa.

It is bordered by Chad to the northeast, the Central African Republic to the east, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and the Republic of the Congo to the south, and Nigeria to the west. It additionally has a shoreline alongside the South Atlantic Ocean to the southwest.

Fancy trekking via the jungle or mountain climbing up the mountains? Head for the coordinates of three.8667° N, 11.5167° E to get pleasure from your individual Cameroonian journey!

The critically endangered Western Lowland Gorilla (a subspecies of the gorilla – the most important dwelling primate) will be present in Cameroon, which is one of the fun facts about Cameroon.

They initially named the river Rio dos Camarões (River of Shrimps), after quite a few shrimps discovered there.

In 1520, Portuguese colonialists settled within the area completely and arrange sugar plantations, and commenced buying and selling slaves.

The Dutch took management during the 1600s, then Germany took over in 1884 creating the German colony of Kamerun.

After the First World War, Cameroon was divided between Britain and France, then in 1961, the 2 colonies unified after gaining independence and have become the United Republic of Cameroon.

In 1984 the nation’s title was modified to the Republic of Cameroon, which is one of the fun facts about Cameroon.

The forest in Korup National Park is Africa’s oldest remaining forest at over 60 million years old. This is one of the Cameroon rainforest facts. It has over 1,000 identified species, together with over 90 species of crops with medicinal worth. One such plant, Ancistrocladus korupensis, could possibly struggle with HIV and most cancers.

Waza National Park is probably the most visited park in Cameroon, permitting guests to see lions, hippopotamuses, monkeys, giraffes, buffalo, elephants, and more.

Cameroon has greater than 1,000 species of butterfly—greater than 1 / 4 of all species present in Africa. This is a fun fact about Cameroon.

In 2015, the Islamic extremist terrorist group Boko Haram killed about 1,000 individuals in Cameroon via suicide bombings and different assaults. In 2016, Boko Haram murdered 50 individuals in Northern Cameroon from January 25 to February 10 via suicide bombings alone.

Islamic militant group Boko Haram has kidnapped over 30 individuals from Cameroon close to the northern border. Many of the focused victims are international nationals, together with French national Tanguy Moulin-Fournier and his 4 kids, together with other members of the family. Most of the victims have been recovered by negotiations carried out by Cameroon’s authorities.

At 184,000 sq. miles (475,440 sq km), Cameroon is barely bigger than the state of California, or twice the dimensions of the United Kingdom, and is dwelling to over 200 ethnic teams.

Cameroon has big inhabitants of Christians and Muslims, however, 40% of Cameroonians nonetheless follow conventional religions and lots of images in witchcraft. For instance, the Baba village employed a witch hunter in 2001 after believing an outbreak of meningitis chargeable for a median of 10 deaths per week was the work of witches and wizards, which is one of the fun facts about Cameroon.

In some Cameroonian tribes, diviners are thought to have particular expertise to divine supernatural elements of life. Spider diviners create small shrines with symbolic playing cards on the entrance of earth spider burrows. Upon tempting the spider out with bait, a diviner determines an individual’s fortune by studying the playing cards based mostly on how the spider disrupts their association.

The oldest inhabitants of Cameroon are regarded as the Baka, a tribe of hunter-gatherers dwelling within the forests. Because they’re 4 ft 9 inches tall on average, Baka are sometimes mislabeled as Pygmies. Most Baka discover the time period Pygmy to be offensive and take it as an indication of ignorance or misunderstanding of their individuals and tradition.

Cameroon’s national soccer/soccer group, the Indomitable Lions, has certified for FIFA competitions six instances, greater than another African group. In 1990, they grew to become the first group in Africa to make it to the quarterfinals of the World Cup, they usually went on to win the gold medal at the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games.

The Bamileke of Cameroon exhume and honor the skulls of their ancestors with singing and dancing two years after the preliminary burial. They imagine the skulls maintain the ancestral spirit, which has the ability to deliver good or bad fortune. The skulls are sometimes stored near members of the family, corresponding to inside the ground of the house.

A Bamileke village in Cameroon typically has a “fon,” or king. The fon is assumed to have supernatural powers, together with the flexibility to show right into a lion, elephant, buffalo, or leopard. He additionally holds the best to marry many wives and may have upward of 150 queens in addition to a number of hundreds of kids. This is one of the Cameroon culture facts.

About 1.Three million Cameroonian kids have lost one or each mother and father, which is one of the fun facts about Cameroon.

About 160 kids in each 1,000 are more likely to die earlier than the age of 5 in Cameroon.

In Cameroon, malaria is responsible for 1 in 5 deaths of kids under the age of 5, which is one of the fun facts about Cameroon.

The terrain here’s a mixture of desert plains within the north, rainforest within the south, and gorgeous mountains within the center.

The complete land space of Cameroon is 183,569 sq. miles (475,442 sq. kilometers) that’s roughly the same size as Spain.

Cameroon’s inhabitants were 25.22 million in 2018 that’s solely half the inhabitants of Spain!

Ever questioned what residents listed below are often known as? They’re known as Cameroonians!

AIDS has left about 300,000 Cameroonian kids orphaned, and as many as 45,000 out of Cameroon’s 9,142,000 kids are contaminated with HIV.

The goliath frog is the most important frog on the planet and is just present in Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea. The frog weighs about the identical as a home cat and reaches as much as a foot lengthy.

Cameroon is the sixth-largest producer of cocoa beans on the planet, incomes $600 million from cocoa exports in 2010 alone. It can also be an exporter of timber, petroleum merchandise, espresso, cotton, tea, rubber, peanuts, and bananas.

The average minimum wage of a Cameroonian is $44 per month. About 50% of the inhabitants of Cameroon makes lower than $2 per day.

About 50% of Cameroon’s kids stay under the poverty line, and an estimated 55,000 below the age of 5 undergo acute malnutrition. Around 52,000 Cameroonian kids die from malnutrition yearly.

Lake Nyos is certainly one of solely three lakes on the planet identified to be saturated with carbon dioxide.

Lake Nyos in Cameroon holds the world report for the best variety of non-drowning deaths of any lake on the planet. On August 21, 1986, the crater lake erupted carbon dioxide, killing over 1,800 individuals and three,500 livestock inside a 15.5-mile (25 km) radius. Two years earlier, Cameroon’s Lake Monoun had a similar eruption that asphyxiated 37 people.

In 2016, Cameroon’s authorities burned 2,000 tusks and 1,753 ivory objects to discourage poaching, which is one of the fun facts about Cameroon.

The world’s largest frog will be present in Cameroon. The goliath frog (Conraua goliath) can develop as much as 34cm lengthy, weigh over 3.2kg, and builds their very own ponds utilizing heavy rocks.

In 2018, President Paul Biya was elected for a seventh time period. Biya has been president since 1982, making him Africa’s second-longest serving chief, and, at 87 in 2020, he’s the oldest chief in Africa.

On April 18, 2016, an automobile within the convoy of the United States ambassador to the United Nations hit and killed a 7-year-old boy in Cameroon. The ambassador was the first cabinet-level official to go to the nation since 1991 and had arrived to showcase American efforts to assist defend West Africa’s ladies and children.

Douala’s seashores in Cameroon have chocolate-brown sand from volcanic, darkish igneous rock particles.

Cameroon is the one nation on the planet named after a crustacean. In 1472, Portuguese explorer Fernando Po named the nation “Rio dos Camaroes,” which suggests “River of Prawns” after he saw the immense variety of shrimp within the nation’s Wouri River. Cameroon is the English spelling.

While the official languages of Cameroon are French and English, the nation is home to about 280 endemic languages. Someday, a Cameroonian might have to make use of as much as six completely different languages.

Much of Western Cameroon’s English-speaking inhabitants need to both have a decentralized federal construction that separates every Cameroonian province into its own governed system or secession from Eastern French-speaking Cameroon.

The German colony of Kamerun, first established in 1884, grew to become French Cameroon and British Cameroons when World War I British, French, and Belgian troops drove out the Germans in 1916. After the Treaty of Versailles and a 1919 League of Nations mandate, 80% of Cameroon was formally granted to France, whereas the remaining Western territory was awarded to Britain.

Uprisings for independence earned Eastern Cameroon partial self-government from France in 1957. Cameroon lastly gained its independence on January 1, 1960. The Southern British Cameroons overwhelmingly voted to hitch the previous French Cameroons, creating the Federal Republic of Cameroon in 1961. The Northern British Cameroons voted to turn into part of the newly impartial Nigeria.

Homosexuality is unlawful in Cameroon, and public gay acts can obtain anyplace from 6 months to five years in jail as punishment. Contributing to the dearth of acceptance of the homosexual community is a pervading perception that homosexuals are cursed or bewitched.

Due to its favorable geographic place, a wealth of pure sources, and relative political stability, Cameroon has some of the various and affluent economies in Africa, making up half of the gross home product of all nations in Central Africa. However, the economy continues to be comparatively poor on a worldwide scale attributable to corruption, poor distribution of wealth, and the destruction of forests. This is one of the Cameroon economy facts.

Mount Cameroon at 4,095m (13,435ft) Cameroon’s highest mountain and the best peak in sub-Saharan western and central Africa, which is one of the fun facts about Cameroon.

Mount Cameroon can also be certainly one of Africa’s largest and most energetic volcanoes. The stratovolcano last erupted in 2012.

The average life expectancy of a Cameroonian is 55 years, which is 0.7 instances shorter than the world average of 74 years.

Traffic accidents declare a median of 4,700 victims per yr on Cameroonian streets. In 2015 alone, 7,000 had been wounded or disabled, for an average of 12 victims per day. Many of the accidents happen attributable to poor roads and excessive speeds.

As pastoral cattle herders, the Fulani of Cameroon places nice worth on their livestock. They will typically put the well being of their cattle earlier than their very own, and social standing is decided by the variety of cattle a person possesses.

The Fulani of Cameroon follows an initiation ceremony that entails lashing younger boys with sticks to depart distinctive scarring to indicate that they’ve come of age.

The Internet safety firm McAfee rated Cameroon’s internet area (.cm) because of the world’s riskiest area. About 36.7% of Cameroon websites are ranked as posing a safety danger, with cybercriminals focusing on the sites for malicious downloads, spyware, adware, and different undesirable applications.

Transparency International ranks Cameroon as some of the corrupt nations on the planet. In 2006, the group rated Cameroon 138th of 163 in its Corruptions Perception Index.

Cameroon is a lovely, wildlife-rich nation in Central Africa, which is one of the fun facts about Cameroon.

Head for the coordinates of 3.8667° N, 11.5167° E to enjoy your individual Cameroonian journey! This is one of the Cameroon facts.

The critically endangered Western Lowland Gorilla (a subspecies of the gorilla – the most important dwelling primate) will be present in Cameroon.

Cameroonians get pleasure from local weather that varies with the terrain, with the north experiencing semiarid local weather, transferring to tropical alongside the coast.

Standing at an unbelievable 13,250 ft, Mount Cameroon is an energetic volcano and the best mountain in sub-Saharan western and central Africa.

Cameroon boasts many lovely and fascinating species of untamed animals, together with the Cross River Gorilla, Moustached Monkey, Black Rhinoceros, Forest Warbler, African Elephant, Cheetah, and lots of, many more!

The official languages of Cameroon are French and English, though there are around 24 different main native languages spoken here too.

Like many African nations, the official currency of Cameroon is CFA Franc. This is one of the Cameroon facts.

The average life span right here is 58.51 years (2017).

After being dominated by Germany, France, and England, Cameroon lastly gained independence in 1960.

Debundscha Point on Mount Cameroon (together with the close-by village of Debundscha) is certainly one of the wettest locations on Earth. It has implied annual precipitation of greater than 10,000mm – a median hardly ever seen elsewhere on the planet.

Cameroon can also be dwelling on wealthy biodiversity. It has 220,000 sq km of tropical forests that are dwelling to at least 9,000 plant species, roughly 900 bird species, and round 320 mammals.

The UNESCO World Heritage Site of Dja Reserve is certainly one of Africa’s largest and best-protected rainforests. Founded in 1950, 90% of the reserve stays largely untouched and contains 107 mammal species, 5 of that are threatened.

In the early 2000s, scientists discovered robust proof that Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) originated from chimpanzees in a southeastern nook of Cameroon. They speculate a human first acquired the virus in 1908 whereas killing a contaminated chimpanzee for bushmeat.

About 4.77% of the grownup inhabitants, or 657,500 Cameroonians, are infected with HIV/AIDS. In 2014, HIV/AIDS was responsible for 34,200 deaths. This is one of the Cameroon facts.