Yearbook 2008
Cameroon. Several cities were shaken at the beginning of the year by protests against the government and at least 20 people were shot dead by police. The unrest was triggered by sharply increased food and fuel prices but were also protests against the government’s plans to change the constitution so that President Paul Biya could be re-elected an unlimited number of times.
The RDPC (Cameroonian People’s Democratic Movement), despite the protests by virtue of its stable majority, was able to change the constitution, allowing the president to run for re-election in 2011, when he would otherwise have been forced to resign. He is also guaranteed prosecution for all future crimes.
The government sought to mitigate the effects of the price increases through increased minimum wages and abolished import duties on basic foodstuffs.
- ABBREVIATIONFINDER: Click to see the meanings of 2-letter acronym and abbreviation of CM in general and in geography as Cameroon in particular.
In August, Cameroon formally took over the disputed Bakassi Peninsula from Nigeria by virtue of a ruling in the International Court of Justice in The Hague. The landslide was met with protests by the Nigerian people in the area and several times during the year Cameroonian soldiers were attacked by armed rebels.
Population 2008
According to Countryaah reports, the population of Cameroon in 2008 was 20,341,130, ranking number 58 in the world. The population growth rate was 2.780% yearly, and the population density was 43.0311 people per km2.
HUMAN AND ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY
West African state, in the heart of Guinea. Thanks to a high natural increase the population, which at the date of the last census (1987) was equal to 10,493,655 residents, During the nineties and in the early years of the 21st century. considerably surpassing accresceva, an estimate of 2005, the 16 million residents. The age pyramid is characterized by a strong prevalence of young people (41 % between 0 and 14 years, 55 % between 15 and 64 years, 4 % over 65 years), which contribute to increasing the already strong pressure on resources. In terms of settlement, the country is divided into an equal percentage of urban and rural population. The capital Yaoundé had 1,525,000 residents in 2005, surpassed by Duala, in whose urban agglomeration there were 1,860,000 residents.
In a region marked by chronic instability, the Cameroon, thanks to a notable political continuity (the president P. Biya has always been re-elected since 1984), represents an exception and this has affected the achievement of good economic results. Since 1997, the country’s growth has always been greater than 4 %. In 2000, Cameroon obtained a first substantial relief from its foreign debt, while its adoption in 2003, under the auspices of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, a strategy for reducing poverty was accompanied, the following year, by a new reduction of this debt. The country’s government is still committed to improving the quality of the social sectors (education, health, water and infrastructure) and to promoting a series of privatizations and structural reforms. Cameroon has a wide range of agricultural resources (peanuts, bananas, cocoa, sugar cane, cotton, rubber, oil palm, corn, sorghum, etc.) and energy resources (gas, hydroelectricity), whose increasing exploitation has contributed to compensate for the decline in oil production that began in 1997 (7.9 million tonnes of oil extracted in 1990,4.5 million tonnes in 2004) due to the progressive exhaustion of reserves. The depletion of available resources led the government to build an oil pipeline, financed by the World Bank and inaugurated in 2003, which from Komé, in the Doba oil basin in Chad, conveys crude oil to the Cameroonian port of Kribi. The new facility was severely contested due to its high environmental impact. The manufacturing sector is always mainly aimed at satisfying the domestic market (it affected only 5 % of exports) and the transformation of raw materials (in particular bauxite from Guinea). The exploitation of forests continued (with more than 300 essences, many of which are valuable), which covered more than 50 % of the territorial surface: this sector, unfortunately subject to cuts and illegal trade, remains fundamental for the country’s economy, contributing about 10 % to the formation of the GDP.