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Article: Cameroon.
- Article from:
- New Internationalist
- Article date:
- September 1, 2000
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2000 New Internationalist Magazine. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Cameroon has two current claims to international fame. The first is the prowess of its national soccer team, which has won the African Nations Cup three times and in 1990 became the first African team to reach the quarter finals of the World Cup. The other is less laudable: Cameroon is notorious for being rated the world's most corrupt nation by Transparency International.
Britain became the dominant foreign power in the country in the early nineteenth century and English became the lingua franca throughout Cameroon. Yet Cameroon became a German protectorate on 12 July 1884 because the envoy of the British colonial office, Edward Hewett, arrived a few days after ...