Cameroon
Africa in miniature, from rainforest to Sahel
Cameroon is often called Africa in miniature, and the nickname holds: within its borders sit coastal mangroves, equatorial rainforest, volcanic highlands, savanna, and the dry approaches to Lake Chad. Mount Cameroon, an active volcano rising straight from the Gulf of Guinea, is the highest summit in West and Central Africa. The country is unusual in straddling the continent's colonial language divide, with both French and English as official tongues - a legacy that still shapes its politics. More than 250 ethnic groups and languages give Cameroon a cultural density few nations match.
Physically the land rises from the humid coast at Douala through the forested Cameroon Highlands, a chain of volcanic massifs crowned by Mount Cameroon at 4,095 meters. North of the forest the terrain opens into the Adamawa Plateau and then the Sahelian flatlands that slope toward the shrinking waters of Lake Chad. The Sanaga is the principal river, powering hydroelectric dams that supply much of the country. Cocoa, coffee, timber, and offshore oil form the export base, while the volcanic soils of the west make it one of the region's richer agricultural zones.
Named for the prawns Portuguese sailors found in its estuary - Rio dos Camaroes - the territory was a German protectorate before being split between Britain and France after World War I. The two parts reunited around independence in 1960, an English-French fusion that endures uneasily. Long governed by President Paul Biya, one of the world's longest-serving leaders, Cameroon has faced a separatist conflict in its Anglophone regions and Boko Haram pressure in the far north. Its football team, the Indomitable Lions, remains a continental sporting touchstone.