Cameroon

The coast was named "Rio dos Camarões," river of prawns, by Portuguese sailors, and the name stuck. Powerful pre-colonial states included the Bamoun sultanate in the west, whose kings kept written records in their own script, and the Fulani emirates of the north. Germany claimed the territory as Kamerun in 1884.

After Germany's defeat in the First World War, the League of Nations split the territory between France, which took the larger eastern part, and Britain, which governed two strips alongside Nigeria. French Cameroun became independent in 1960 after suppressing a nationalist insurgency; in 1961 the southern British zone voted to join it, while the northern zone joined Nigeria.

The country was ruled as a one-party state under Ahmadou Ahidjo and then, from 1982, Paul Biya, who remains in office as one of the world's longest-serving leaders. Grievances among the English-speaking minority over marginalisation erupted in 2016 into a separatist conflict in the Northwest and Southwest regions that continues, alongside Boko Haram violence in the Far North.

Cameroon's roughly 250 ethnic groups fall into broad regional cultures: forest peoples and the coastal Sawa in the south, the Bamileke and Bamoun of the western "Grassfields" highlands with their chiefdoms and secret societies, the Fulani, Kanuri, and others of the Muslim north, and the Baka and other forest hunter-gatherers of the southeast.

Religion tracks the geography — Christian in the south and west, Muslim in the north, with traditional practice throughout. The Grassfields are known for their carved royal thrones, beaded masks, elephant masquerades, and the ndop indigo cloth; the Bamoun palace and museum at Foumban hold one of the finest art collections in the region.

Football is close to a national religion. The Indomitable Lions' run to the 1990 World Cup quarter-finals, and stars from Roger Milla to Samuel Eto'o, are sources of enormous pride, and match days unite a country otherwise divided by language and region.

Douala, the steamy port on the coast, is the economic capital and largest city; Yaoundé, in the cooler hills inland, is the political capital. Together they draw migrants from across the country. Most Cameroonians, though, still farm — cocoa and coffee in the south and west, cotton and livestock in the north, plantains, cassava, and maize everywhere.

Cameroon is better off than many of its neighbours, with oil, timber, aluminium, and agriculture, and a relatively educated workforce, but growth is slow, jobs are scarce for the young, and the two regional conflicts drain resources and displace people.

Daily life features crowded shared taxis and motorcycle "bendskin," bustling markets, roadside grills in the evening, and the ever-present police and gendarmerie checkpoints on the roads between towns.

Cameroonian cooking is rich and regional, often built around a starch "swallow" — pounded cassava (water fufu), plantain, cocoyam, or couscous of maize — dipped into a heavily seasoned sauce or soup. Ndolé, bitterleaf stewed with groundnuts, dried fish, and meat, is claimed as the national dish and is a speciality of the Douala area.

Other classics include eru (a forest-leaf and waterleaf stew from the southwest), grilled fish with fiery pepe sauce and fried plantain, poulet DG ("director-general's chicken," with plantain and vegetables), and koki, a steamed black-eyed-pea loaf. In the north, grilled meat, millet, and folere (hibiscus) feature.

Street food is everywhere: soya skewers dusted with spiced peanut, roast corn and safou (bush plum), beignets, and bili-bili millet beer in the north. Palm wine is the traditional drink of the forest zone.

Mount Cameroon, an active volcano rising straight from the coast to over 4,000 metres, is the highest peak in West and Central Africa and a two- or three-day climb from Buea — though its location in the troubled Southwest region currently makes access difficult. Nearby, at Kribi, the Lobé Falls tumble directly onto the beach and into the Atlantic.

The west's Grassfields offer cool highland scenery, the crater lakes of the Bamenda and Bamileke plateaus, the royal palaces of Bafut, Bandjoun, and Foumban, and the craft markets of the chiefdoms — again, partly affected by the anglophone conflict.

The north, when secure, holds the country's savanna wildlife: Waza National Park with elephant and giraffe, Bénoué and Bouba Njida further south, and the volcanic spires and terraced Kapsiki villages around Rhumsiki in the Mandara Mountains. In the southeast, Lobéké and Dja are dense rainforest reserves with forest elephants, gorillas, and Baka communities.