FROM GERMAN KAMERUN TO AMBAZONIA: BUILD THE NATION BEFORE THE MOMENT ARRIVES

Germany’s defeat helped create the partition from which the Southern Cameroons question emerged. But Germany’s later history gives Ambazonia another lesson worth remembering: Division does not have to be permanent—but political opportunity rewards the nation that prepared before the moment arrived. The deepest lesson is therefore simple. Ambazonia must not wait to become sovereign before beginning to build her Republic.

By Martin S. Mungwa, PhD, Fellow ASCE
Contributor The Independentist News

The Map Was Shaped by Someone Else’s War

Ambazonia’s present predicament cannot be understood without Germany. Before British Southern Cameroons and French Cameroun existed as separate political territories, there was German Kamerun. Germany established its protectorate in 1884 and built an extractive colonial system of plantations, administrative posts, transport infrastructure, taxation, and coercive labor. When Germany was defeated in the First World War, Kamerun was not liberated. It was divided between Britain and France.

That partition eventually produced two very different institutional systems. French Cameroun developed under French administrative centralization, civil law, and French-language education. British Southern Cameroons developed through British administration linked to Nigeria, English common law, Anglo-Saxon education, local-government practice, and a distinct political identity.

The people of Kamerun did not negotiate the partition as sovereign equals. Their future was shaped by European war, imperial bargaining, League of Nations mandates, and later United Nations trusteeship. This history matters because Southern Cameroons did not simply awaken one morning and decide it was different from French Cameroun. Different institutions were deliberately built into the two territories. The present conflict is therefore partly the unfinished consequence of an international settlement imposed after Germany’s defeat.

Germany’s First Lesson: A Nation Must Build Capacity

Germany itself did not begin as a unified state. For centuries the German lands were divided among kingdoms, principalities, free cities, and other political entities. Unification became possible only after economic integration, administrative development, education, infrastructure, diplomacy, and eventually political consolidation.

For Ambazonia, the lesson is important. A nation does not become viable merely because its people declare themselves one. It must build the capacity to act as one. Who collects revenue? Who audits the treasury? Who maintains roads? Who regulates electricity and water? Who protects land records? Who manages schools? Who signs public contracts? Who controls security forces? Who holds leaders accountable?

These questions are less dramatic than declarations of sovereignty, but they determine whether sovereignty survives. Germany’s rise also demonstrated the power of technical education, apprenticeships, universities, manufacturing, science, and disciplined public administration. Natural resources alone did not create German power. Knowledge was connected to production.

Ambazonia must make the same connection. The governing question is not simply what resources we possess. It is: Who owns the productive source? Who processes the resource? Who controls the technology? Who receives the revenue? And does the capital circulate at home or disappear abroad?

The Warning: Power Without Restraint Can Destroy the Nation

Germany also provides a warning. Its extraordinary industrial and scientific capacity eventually coexisted with authoritarianism, militarism, imperial ambition, and catastrophic abuses of power. Technical capability without constitutional and ethical restraint did not save Germany from disaster.

Ambazonia must therefore reject the idea that liberation excuses unaccountable leadership. A movement demanding self-determination cannot reproduce internally the centralized habits it condemns externally. It cannot demand democratic rights from Yaoundé while tolerating financial opacity, intimidation, personality cults, attacks on dissent, or permanent emergency rule within its own institutions.

A future Ambazonia must be constitutional before it becomes powerful. Civilian control of security forces, transparent finance, independent courts, protected opposition, county autonomy, enforceable term limits, and peaceful transfer of authority are not luxuries to be considered after independence. They are part of readiness for independence.

Do Not Reproduce Yaoundé in Buea

Modern Germany rebuilt as a federal republic in which political authority is distributed among the federal government, states, and municipalities. That lesson is especially relevant to Southern Cameroons. Ambazonia should not escape an excessively centralized system only to recreate another centralized state in Buea.

Buea may serve as a national coordinating center, but Victoria, Tiko, Kumba, Mamfe, Bamenda, Nkambe, Wum, and other centers should develop according to their comparative strengths. Federalism and strong local government are not signs of national weakness. They are structural redundancy. When authority, productive capacity, and opportunity are distributed, the failure or capture of one institution does not paralyze the entire country.

Germany’s Reunification Carries Another Lesson Germany was divided again after the Second World War. East and West Germany developed under different political and economic systems until reunification in 1990. The circumstances are not identical to Southern Cameroons, and they should not be treated as if they are. But Germany demonstrates one powerful truth:

Political division does not necessarily have to be permanent.

Reunification became possible not simply because Germans remembered that they belonged together. West Germany had built a functioning democratic state, a powerful economy, credible institutions, international partnerships, and sufficient productive capacity to absorb the enormous cost of reunification. That is the uncomfortable lesson for Ambazonia. Historical injustice matters. Identity matters. Sacrifice matters. Diplomacy matters. But the world will eventually ask something more practical: Can this proposed state work?

Five Tests Before the Moment Arrives

Ambazonia should therefore measure national readiness against five tests. First, constitutional legitimacy: does political authority rest on demonstrable consent, law, rights, and accountable institutions?

Second, administrative effectiveness: can the state collect revenue, deliver services, maintain records, regulate infrastructure, and manage public resources competently?

Third, civilian protection: can citizens be protected from repression, criminality, arbitrary punishment, forced recruitment, and abuses committed in the name of the nation itself?

Fourth, productive capacity: can land, agriculture, energy, coastal access, education, technology, and diaspora expertise become domestic production, employment, ownership, and recurring national wealth?

Fifth, external relations: can Ambazonia become a predictable partner capable of peaceful coexistence, trade, treaty compliance, resource management, and regional stability? These tests are interconnected. Weak institutions eventually weaken every other part of the national structure. Recognition Should Find a Nation Already Being Built Germany’s history offers Ambazonia neither a blueprint nor a prophecy. It offers discipline.

Its rise demonstrates the power of administration, education, infrastructure, productive enterprise, and institutional coordination. Its catastrophes demonstrate the danger of nationalism without ethical restraint. Its federal reconstruction demonstrates the value of distributing authority. Its reunification demonstrates what becomes possible when identity is supported by institutional readiness and productive capacity. Ambazonia therefore cannot simply wait for the international community to recognize it. It must build the institutions that recognition will be asked to recognize. It must develop the productive economy that sovereignty will have to sustain. It must establish the constitutional culture that will restrain power after independence. It must demonstrate that its people will not simply exchange one centralized authority for another.

Germany’s defeat helped create the partition from which the Southern Cameroons question emerged. But Germany’s later history gives Ambazonia another lesson worth remembering: Division does not have to be permanent—but political opportunity rewards the nation that prepared before the moment arrived. The deepest lesson is therefore simple. Ambazonia must not wait to become sovereign before beginning to build the Republic.

Martin S. Mungwa, PhD, Fellow ASCE
Contributor The Independentist News

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