With its climatic, mining, geographical, human, linguistic and cultural diversity, Cameroon is nicknamed “Africa in miniature”.
The country has natural resources in agriculture (bananas, cocoa, coffee, cotton, honey), forestry, mining (bauxite, iron, cobalt, nickel, manganese, diamonds, marble) and petroleum; the junior mining companies of Vancouver or Toronto judge that it “will be a mining country of great magnitude in the years to come”.
The working population in 2010 was divided between the primary (19.7%), industrial (31.4%) and tertiary (48.9%) sectors. The country ranks fifth among the top seven African cotton producers in the mid-2010s.
Cameroon is a Central African state whose official languages are French and English for a country with a multitude of local languages.
The Cameroonian legal system is inherited from colonization. In this respect, Cameroon has inherited two distinct but coexisting legal systems: the British common law and the French civil law. The Cameroonian constitution distinguishes between legislative and regulatory powers in sections 26 and 27 of the constitution respectively. Article 26 is the main provision specifying in detail the scope of Parliament’s legislative competence. This article identifies six areas that fall within the domain of the law: “the fundamental rights, guarantees and obligations of the citizen,” “the status of persons and property,” “the political, administrative and judicial organization,” certain financial and patrimonial matters, “the programming of the objectives of economic and social action,” and “the regime of education.
Article 27 of the Constitution states, on the other hand, that “matters other than those falling within the domain of the law are the responsibility of the regulatory power”.
In addition to domestic legislation, Cameroon is also a member of various regional and sub-regional organizations, the main ones being OHADA and OAPI.