Cameroon’s Conflict Cure: Stealing the Separatists’ Thunder

Names confer recognition. When the state refuses to adopt the language through which people understand their suffering, it sends a clear message: your reality does not count. That denial has consequences.

By Colbert Gwain | The Muteff Factor (formerly The Colbert Factor)

How the Government of Cameroon Can Begin Ending a Senseless Conflict by Appropriating the Language of Identity

When Muteff village, perched on Ijim Hill near Abuh, began agitating for greater autonomy from mainland Abuh in the Fundong Subdivision of the then Menchum Division of the former North West Province, the struggle quickly became one of identity as much as administration.

Abuh authorities, adamant in resisting change, repeatedly insisted that Muteff was—and would remain—a quarter of Abuh, referring to it as Muteff-m’Abuh.

Muteff’s traditional authorities rejected this designation outright, insisting instead on Muteff-m-Kom. The naming dispute became so charged that Muteff youths routinely clashed with anyone who misidentified them. Some even severed long-standing friendships with Abuh counterparts over the issue.

Tensions only began to ease when Abuh authorities finally recognized Muteff by the name it claimed for itself. Dialogue followed. Autonomy followed. Cameroon today stands at a similar crossroads.

Like mainland Abuh then, the state now has a rare opportunity to begin ending the nearly decade-long conflict in the North West and South West Regions—by appropriating the language of those most affected. One symbolic but strategic step would be to recognize the conflict-affected areas through a new administrative vocabulary rooted in lived geography and identity: the Savanna Zone, the Midland Zone, and the Atlantic Zone.

Such recognition would not be unprecedented. President Paul Biya himself has acknowledged the layered histories of Cameroonian spaces, noting in Buea that it once served as the capital of German Kamerun and later of British Southern Cameroons. Administrative names have changed before. The North West and South West were once provinces before becoming regions. Names have never been immutable.

As Cameroon prepares once again to redraw its administrative map, it may be wise for Yaoundé to win the first—and least costly—battle in this conflict: the battle over language.

Recognizing the areas as the Savanna, Midland, and Atlantic zones would allow their inhabitants to affirm their identity and historical geography within a united Cameroon, much as Québécois affirm theirs within a united Canada.

A Conflict Framed as a Security Problem

Cameroon’s Anglophone conflict has endured for years, claiming lives, displacing communities, and corroding trust in the state. Much has been said about military strategy, decentralization, and dialogue initiatives. Far less attention has been paid to a quieter but decisive factor: language.

Officially, the government continues to describe the violence in the North West and South West Regions as a crisis, a security situation, or a terrorist threat. This framing reduces a deeply political and historical conflict to a law-and-order problem. It criminalizes dissent and sidelines grievance.

Among Anglophones themselves, however, a very different vocabulary dominates: Anglophone problem, marginalization, self-governance, Savanna, Midland, Atlantic. The gap between official language and lived experience has become a chasm. A conflict that is consistently misnamed is inevitably mismanaged.

Why Naming Is Power

Names confer recognition. When the state refuses to adopt the language through which people understand their suffering, it sends a clear message: your reality does not count. That denial has consequences.

Moderate voices lose credibility. Extremist narratives gain appeal. Dialogue efforts sound insincere. By treating identity-based terminology as taboo, the state has inadvertently handed symbolic ownership of identity to armed separatist groups. Suppressing a name does not weaken it. It radicalizes it.

Identity Without Secession

A proposal increasingly discussed in policy and mediation circles is simple but bold: officially acknowledge the Anglophone areas through the administrative recognition of the Savanna, Midland, and Atlantic zones—without conceding sovereignty or endorsing separation.

For Yaoundé, identity-based naming has long been treated as a slippery slope toward secession. For many Anglophones, however, these terms function first as historical, cultural, and geographic markers, not merely as political claims. Recognizing them administratively would not redraw borders. It would acknowledge identity.

Such a move would strip armed groups of their monopoly over identity language while signaling that the state is willing to recognize people before negotiating power. Recognition is not surrender. It is strategy.

A Low-Cost, High-Impact Shift

Renaming the regions using the Savanna–Midland–Atlantic framework would achieve several strategic goals at once. It would restore dignity to communities that feel erased, de-escalate symbolic hostility, and reposition the state as a listening authority rather than a dismissive one.

Crucially, it would cost nothing in military or constitutional terms. No referendum. No territorial concession. Only political courage—the willingness to accept that unity imposed through linguistic denial is fragile, and often violent.

Comparative experience shows that conflicts rooted in identity soften when states first accept the language of grievance, before debating solutions.

Peace Begins with What Is Said

Cameroon’s Anglophone conflict has been fought with weapons—and with words. Thus far, the state has focused almost exclusively on the former. But wars rarely end because one side dominates the battlefield. They end when reality is acknowledged.

Until the government dares to speak the conflict as Anglophones experience it—until it adopts a vocabulary that reflects lived geography and identity—the silence around recognition will continue to fuel the noise of war.

Peace in Cameroon’s Anglophone areas may begin not with a new military strategy or another administrative reform, but with something far simpler—and far harder: choosing the right names.

Doing so would not only honor the memory of the thousands of civilians and members of the defense and security forces who have died in this senseless conflict; it would also go a long way toward making Cameroon stronger, more credible, and more united.

Colbert Gwain | The Muteff Factor (formerly The Colbert Factor)