According to ehistorylib, in 2005, Cameroon had a population of around 18 million people, with the majority being of Bantu ethnicity (71%), followed by Fulani (15%), Kirdi (8%) and other ethnicities (6%). The economy of Cameroon was largely based on agriculture and the export of agricultural products such as cocoa, coffee and cotton. It also relied heavily on foreign aid from countries such as France, China and the United States. Cameroon’s foreign relations were mainly focused on Central Africa where it had close ties with its neighbours such as Chad, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon. With regards to politics in 2005, Cameroon was a semi-presidential republic led by President Paul Biya who sought to improve the country’s economic situation through investment in infrastructure and education. He also advocated for increased regional integration through the establishment of the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS).
Yearbook 2005
Cameroon. According to countryaah, Yaounde is the capital and one of the major cities within the country of Cameroon. The conflict with Nigeria over the right to the Bakassi Peninsula in the Gulf of Guinea extended over time. In 2003, the International Court of Justice in The Hague granted Cameroon the right to the 1,000 km 2 large peninsula in a fish and oil-rich area, but Nigeria did not fulfill its obligation to evacuate the area before October 2004. Cameroon in June accused Cameroon of attacking Cameroonian military positions, but the neighboring government claimed that it was the local Nigerian fisherman population who took up arms against Cameroon’s army.
- Also see abbreviationfinder.org for how the acronym CM stands for the country of Cameroon and other meanings of this two-letter abbreviation.
However, the two governments agreed to begin demarcating their entire 169-mile common border in 2006 and received a € 4 million grant from the European Commission for the work.
In October, UN experts raised alarms about a problem of a completely different kind. A study showed, according to the UN, that the natural pond at Lake Nyos 30 miles north of the capital Yaoundé is bursting. The dam consists of volcanic rocks and is, according to the experts, so heavily eroded that it will burst within the next few years if nothing is done. In this case, not only large areas will be submerged; At the bottom of the lake there are large amounts of carbon dioxide that can be spread over the area in the form of toxic clouds if the water disappears. This happened in 1986, when 1,800 people were suffocated by a smoke puff from the lake. According to UN experts, discharging large quantities of water would release much larger gas clouds.
History. – In the interior of Cameroon there have been no indigenous states that have left a memory of themselves; it seems that the region has been divided into several principalities which have not had historical importance. In 1837 the king of Bimbia, in the coastal region, ceded a vast tract to the North of the Cameroon estuary to the English, who had already had commercial relations with the hinterland for some time, by means of the Duala population who served as an intermediary. Between 1845 and 1860 the natives of the English concession were evangelized by several Protestant missions. In 1860 a trading house in Hamburg set up a farm on the Cameroon estuary and on July 15, 1884, Dr. Nachtigal concluded a protectorate treaty with King Bell and other Cameroon leaders, thereby founding a German colony, at the head of which was placed the baron von Soden. By agreement of 24 December 1885, France ceded Batanga and an island west of Kwakwa Kriek to Germany, in exchange for the German recognition of its interests in Conakry.
In the twenty years preceding the World War, Cameroon played an important part in Franco-German relations. With an agreement on February 4, 1894, Germany ceded part in the hinterland of Cameroon to France, perhaps not without the thought of getting closer to her rival in order to one day join her against England. When, moreover, Germany arose threateningly to contend for the expansion of France to Morocco, it removed the obstacle and delayed the world war, giving back to Germany a stretch of the hinterland of Cameroon which measured 250,000 square kilometers and which, from its shape, it was called “duck beak” (February 4, 1911). The enlargement of Cameroon should have been the first step towards the realization of the vast German colonial program, Central – Africa).
The German administration of Cameroon was troubled, as a military rebellion took place in 1895 and another indigenous rebellion in 1904-05. When the world war broke out, the allied forces undertook the conquest of Cameroon in 1916 after a long German resistance (see below). Following the division of the colonial mandates provided for by the Peace of Versailles, five sixths of Cameroon were entrusted to France and the remainder (Adamaua) to England, which, having administratively reunited this territory with Nigeria, was able to reconstitute the ethnic unity of important communities, which had been arbitrarily divided by the previous Franco-German divisions of the region.
