Cameroon

Cameroon is a country in Africa.

It has hot, rainy forests and green hills. In the north, the land is dry and grassy. The capital city is called Yaoundé.

Cameroon is a country shaped a bit like a triangle, where western Africa meets central Africa. Its southwest corner touches the Atlantic Ocean.

The land changes a lot from place to place. The south is covered in thick rainforest, the west is mountainous, the middle is a high plateau, and the north is a dry savanna plain that slopes down toward Lake Chad. The capital is Yaoundé, but the biggest port is Douala. About 29.9 million people lived in Cameroon in 2025, and French and English are both official languages.

Cameroon lies at the junction of western and central Africa and is roughly triangular. Britannica divides it into four regions: a northern savanna plain dotted with inselbergs (mounds of erosion-resistant rock), the central Adamawa Plateau at 750 to 1,350 m, a southern belt of coastal plains about 40 km wide backed by a densely forested plateau, and a mountainous west formed by a volcanic rift that runs north from the island of Bioko.

Its name comes from Rio dos Camarões, the "River of Prawns," which Portuguese explorers of the 15th and 16th centuries gave to the Wouri River estuary; in 1884 Germany extended the name Kamerun to its whole protectorate. The capital is Yaoundé, and the World Bank put the population at 29,879,337 in 2025. Britannica describes it as among the most urban populations in western Africa.

Douala is a big city with a busy port.

Ships come there from far away. Yaoundé is the capital city. It is built on green hills.

Douala, on the estuary of the Wouri River, is Cameroon's main port and its most populous city. Its port handles most of the country's trade with the rest of the world, and goods for Chad and the Central African Republic pass through it too. A bridge about 1,800 meters long carries cars and trains across the river.

Yaoundé, the capital, was founded in 1888. It has a university, the national library and the national museum. In the west, Bamenda sits in the highlands. In the south, the Dja Faunal Reserve is one of the largest and best-protected rainforests in Africa.

Douala, on the Wouri estuary, was the capital of German Kamerun from 1884 to 1902 and again from 1940 to 1946. Britannica calls it the most populous city in the country and one of the major industrial centers of central Africa; its deepwater port handles most overseas trade, and the 1,800 m Wouri Bridge carries road and rail traffic to western Cameroon.

Yaoundé was founded in 1888 under the German protectorate, became the capital of French Cameroun in 1922 and has been the seat of government since independence. It holds the University of Yaoundé (1962), the national library, archives and museum. Other important towns include Garoua, Bamenda, Maroua, Bafoussam and Ngaoundéré. The Dja Faunal Reserve, founded in 1950 and inscribed by UNESCO in 1987, covers about 526,000 ha almost encircled by the Dja River; 90 percent of it was considered undisturbed at inscription.

Mount Cameroon is a tall volcano near the sea.

It is the tallest mountain in Cameroon. Near this mountain, it rains and rains. In the south, the rainforest trees grow very tall.

Mount Cameroon, near the coast, is an active volcano 4,095 meters high, the tallest mountain in western Africa. One spot on its slopes, Debundscha Point, gets more than 10,000 millimeters of rain a year on average. That is more than 10 meters of water, an amount rarely reached anywhere else on Earth.

Cameroon is hot all year. Along the coast the rainy season lasts from April to November, while the north is much drier. In the southern rainforests, trees such as mahogany and ebony can grow more than 60 meters tall, and mangroves grow along the coast.

Lying wholly within the tropics, Cameroon is hot year-round, with mean annual temperatures in the 20s °C, lower at altitude. Rainfall depends on two air masses: dry, dusty air from the Sahara and humid air from the Atlantic. It decreases from south to north: the coast gets more than 2,500 mm a year over about 150 days, the central plateau about 1,500 mm and the north about 750 mm. Debundscha Point on Mount Cameroon averages more than 10,000 mm, mostly from May to October.

The rivers drain four ways: the Sanaga, Wouri, Nyong and Ntem to the Atlantic, the Benue to the Niger, the Logone and Chari to Lake Chad, and the Dja through the Sangha to the Congo basin. From south to north the plant cover changes: evergreen rainforest, where hardwoods may grow more than 60 m tall, then semi-deciduous forest, wooded savanna and sparse acacias toward the Chad basin. On Mount Cameroon, the 4,095 m active volcano, short grasses take over above about 3,000 m.

Gorillas and chimpanzees live in the rainforest.

Mandrills and many kinds of monkeys live there too. So do gray parrots. In the north, lions and leopards live in Waza National Park.

Cameroon's forests are home to chimpanzees, mandrills and many kinds of monkeys, along with bats, rodents and birds from tiny sunbirds to big eagles. The Dja Faunal Reserve has more than 100 kinds of mammals, including western lowland gorillas, forest elephants and at least 14 kinds of primates, and gray parrots live there too.

In the far north, Waza National Park was first set up to protect elephants, giraffes and antelope. It is also home to lions, leopards, baboons, and white and gray pelicans.

Britannica describes the dense forests as home to monkeys, chimpanzees and mandrills, with rodents, bats and birds ranging from sunbirds to large hawks and eagles; a few elephants survive in forest and grassy woodland. Waza National Park in the north, created to protect elephants, giraffes and antelope, also holds lions, leopards, baboons and pelicans.

UNESCO describes the Dja Faunal Reserve as one of Africa's most species-rich rainforests, with over 100 mammal species, at least 14 of them primates: endangered species such as the western lowland gorilla, chimpanzee, white-collared mangabey, mandrill and drill. Its flagship species include the forest elephant, the African gray parrot, the bongo and the leopard. Commercial hunting and agriculture are banned inside the reserve, but the Baka people who live there may hunt in traditional ways.

About 30 million people live in Cameroon.

They belong to more than 200 different groups. Many people speak French, and many speak English. Football is the favorite sport.

Cameroon has been called an "ethnic crossroads" because more than 200 ethnic groups live there. In the south many people speak Bantu languages, in the north Sudanic languages, and in the west Semi-Bantu languages such as those of the Bamileke. French and English are both official languages.

In the south, farmers grow plantains, beans, yams, cassava and corn, and in the north peanuts, millet and cassava. Wrestling is found in almost every village, but football is the favorite sport. The national team, the Indomitable Lions, won the Africa Cup of Nations in 1984 and 2000.

Britannica counts more than 200 ethnic groups in three main language families: Bantu speakers in the south (including the Maka, Duala, Fang and Beti), Sudanic speakers in the north (including the Fulani and Kanuri) and Semi-Bantu speakers in the west (including the Bamileke and Tikar). The oldest inhabitants are forest peoples, locally known as the Baguielli and Babinga, who have hunted and gathered for thousands of years. German was the official language under colonial rule; English and French replaced it. Nearly two-fifths of people are Roman Catholic, more than a quarter Protestant and about one-fifth Sunni Muslim.

More than half the population lives in towns, and more than two-fifths are under 15. Southern staple crops are plantains, beans, yams, cassava, corn and oil palm; in the north, peanuts, millet and cassava. Crafts vary by region: Fulani leatherwork and calabashes, Bamileke carvings and Tikar brass pipes. In 1990 the Indomitable Lions became the first African team to reach a World Cup quarterfinal.