Cameroon
POPULATION 16,184,748
ROMAN CATHOLIC 34.7 percent
AFRICAN INDIGENOUS BELIEFS 26 percent
MUSLIM 21.8 percent
PROTESTANT 17.5 percent
Country Overview
Introduction
The Republic of Cameroon, located on the west coast of Africa on the Gulf of Guinea, is surrounded by six countries: Nigeria to the northwest, Chad and Central African Republic to the east, and Republic of the Congo, Gabon, and Equatorial Guinea to the south. Cameroon is often said to be Africa in miniature, both for its geographic diversity, which ranges from rain forests in the south to the semidesert Sahelian landscape of the north, and for its rich cultural diversity, which includes a mix of more than 150 different languages and a variety of African religious practices.
Christianity spread from the coast, and Christians predominate in the south and the west. Islam arrived from the Sahel region and from northern Nigeria, and most Muslims are found in northern Cameroon. Among African indigenous religions, the populations of the north are famous for their circumcision rites and their fertility rituals, as well as their masquerades, which are usually associated with fertility or funerary rituals in which the masks represent bush spirits or the spirits of the deceased. Societies in the western part of Cameroon also have spectacular masquerades, but these are often connected with secret societies (among, for example, the Bamiléké or the Bafut) or elaborate chiefly rituals (such as the Nguon ceremony among the Bamoun, which celebrates a dynasty claiming to be more than 600 years old).
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