Cameroon

Cameroon stamps, available worldwide at Io Collezionista. Cameroon has a population of about 24 million and a density per km² in line with the average for the continent. It is nicknamed Africa in miniature because of the many cultures and the variety of environments in its territory: beaches, rainforest, mountains, savannah and desert. The official name comes from the term the first Portuguese explorers gave the river Wouri in 1472, Rio dos Camaroes, the river of prawns, because of the abundant crustaceans there. Camaroes later became Cameroon in English. Over the centuries Cameroon was first a German colony, from 1884, and then a territory entrusted to France and the United Kingdom under a UN mandate, from the end of the First World War to independence in 1960-61.