While ethnic divisiveness is not uncommon in African countries, Cameroon is special because the hostilities are not based around tribal ties native to Africa. Instead, Cameroon has a French/English split. The country’s powerful central government administers a population of about 23 million people, 80% of whom speak French, and is located in the section of the country that was historically controlled by the French. The result is a government that feels unsympathetic to just under 4 million English speakers in the formerly British controlled regions.

Some people in these regions have decided to respond by seceding from Cameroon. They have chosen the name Ambazonia and begun to piece together a convincing array of stately apparatuses. Naturally, the central government identifies these people as terrorists, and have been treating them as such by cutting off their internet access and deploying the military in September of 2017, according to Africa News. However, the Ambazonia Defence Force (ADF), the military arm of Ambazonia, is not completely undeserving of the polarizing label of “terrorist.” In January and February of 2018, the ADF proceeded to kidnap multiple officials from the Francophone government. The justification for these actions, from the ADF’s point of view, was to get their concerns heard amid the government’s increasingly hostile response to Anglophone protests. The Voice of America also suggests that the kidnappings are in response to the extradition of 47 separatist leaders from Nigeria to Cameroon, none of whom have been seen since their arrest at the end of January. In fact, a recording of one of the officials was released showing him reading demands that stated the separatists wanted a proof of life from their detained leaders or else he would be killed.

Since the problem stems from the Anglophone community not having its voice heard, any solutions offered should improve their representation in the parts of the government most relevant to their everyday lives. On the one hand, the central government could make a better effort to teach French to those disenfranchised groups. Two major problems to this solution are that learning French is quite literally on the bottom of the separatists’ to-do list and there exists a possibility for cultural erosion. To those who inhabit the former British Southern Cameroons, the English language roots them to the laws and customs they took from their former colonizers which some see as worth fighting for.

On the other hand, the central government of Cameroon could try to remedy this conflict with a political solution, whether it is an autonomous region classification for the Anglophone areas or utilizing federalization throughout the country.  However, it is always a risky decision for a strong but repressive central government to bestow freedom upon the loudest protesters. Those who have been wronged in the past may begin to ask for greater concessions, and foreigners could play these tensions to achieve gains at the expense of President Paul Biya’s regime. Yet, at this point the people of Ambazonia want nothing less than federalization or freedom, and the longer the central government waits, the more the separatists are going to want.