Geography
Much of the interior consists of plateaus that stretch northwards to the Adamawa Plateau, then gradually fall again to the lowlands of Lake Chad to the far north. The western region is mostly volcanic mountain terrain that rises near the coast to Mount Cameroon, an active volcano and the highest mountain in West Africa. The southern plateaus are covered in tropical rainforest, and lead into broad plains in the vicinity of the coast..
The climate is tropical, with periods of intensive rainfall and high temperatures, which are milder in the highlands. The climate is dry in the north of the country, near Lake Chad. The tropical climate can be divided into three zones: In the north it varies from humid to dry, with little to no rainfall between October and April, and average annual rainfall of around 700 mm. This is where Cameroon’s section of the Chad Basin is located, with numerous areas of swamp. Most of the modest amount of rain falls between July and September. The average temperature is 32.2° C. Due to the high temperatures and relatively low levels of rainfall, this area is fairly prone to drought, which tends to occur every two to five years. In the highlands in the interior (with altitudes ranging from 1,000 to 1,500 meters above sea level), the mean annual temperature is around 22° C, and annual rainfall averages between 1,500 and 1,600 mm. This is where the transition takes place from the savanna scrub in the north to the rainforest in the south. In the mountains to the west, rainfall levels vary from 2,000 to 11,000 mm. The region in the southern foothills of Mount Cameroon has a mean annual rainfall of 11,000 mm, and is thus one of the wettest places on earth. In both these regions there is a “dry” season between December and February, though a certain amount of rain can still fall during this period. The climate of the coastal region in the south is equatorial, with annual rainfall of between 1,500 and 2,000 mm and a mean annual temperature of 25° C. This region is covered in dense tropical rainforest, and the dryer months are December and January. To put it in a nutshell, Cameroon is like an Africa in miniature. The soils found in the south and interior are ferrolitic, i.e. the equatorial loamy soils typical of wet tropics. In the regions to the north we find reddish brown and red soils typical of dry savanna country.
Ethnic make-up
Cameroon has 286 different ethnic and language groups. The south is populated by Bantu (Luanda, Ewondo, Kpe/Bakwiri, Duala [2% of the total population], Basaa, Ngoumba, Beti/Mpongwe-Fang [15% of the total population], Boulou, Makaa, Njem, Ndzimou, etc.), while the interior and north are populated by Semibantu (Bamiléké [19% of the population], Bamoun [1.3% of the population], Chamba (Samba), Tikar, Vute and others), as well as Chad (Kanuri, Massa, Moundang, etc.) and Sudanese (Kirdi [11% of the population], Kotoko, Fulbe [10% of the population], Gbaya, etc.). The southern rainforests are inhabited by several thousand pygmies. The European minority is mainly French. The most densely populated areas are the grasslands of Bamileke, the coastal province with its port, Douala, and the region surrounding the capital, Yaoundé. The central and south-eastern regions of Cameroon are sparsely populated.
Languages
DThere are as many languages in Cameroon as there are ethnic groups. The official languages are French (approx. 80% of the population) and English (approx. 20% of the population), according to the allocation of the administrative districts following World War I and World War II (League of Nations / UN mandates). Pidgin English is the lingua franca, though Camfranglais (a mixture of English, French and Pidgin) is gaining in importance in urban areas and among youths.
The main languages in the north are Fulfulde, Kanuri, the Kotoko languages and Shuwa, and in the south (around 40% of the total population) the main languages are Bantu (including Basaa, Douala, Kpe-Mboko, Malimba-Yasa, Makaa, Njem, Ndsimu, Ngoumba, Kounabémbé) and a variety of Beti-Fang dialects, including Ewondo, Bulu and Fang. More than 20% speak Sudanese and Az-Sande languages. The remainder of the population in the grasslands of west Cameroon, speak the languages of Semibantu.
Education
Although school is compulsory, the illiteracy rate is still higher than 25 percent. There are state universities in Yaounde, Douala, Buea, Dschang and Ngaoundéré, while private colleges include Yaounde South University (Joseph Ndi-Samba), the Catholic Central African University in Yaounde, the Protestant Central African University in Yaounde, the Adventist University in Nanga Ebogo, the Université des Montagnes in Dschang and the Bamenda University of Science and Technology
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