Bafoussam is the gateway to one of Cameroon's most culturally fascinating regions: the western highlands, the land of the Bamileke. Set on green hills 1.500 metres up, this busy trading city is the great market of the west (coffee, bananas, maize, crafts) and the starting point for visiting the 'chefferies', the palaces of the traditional kings who still govern the ritual and community life of their peoples.
The city itself is more a logistics and trading centre than a monumental destination: its charm lies in the bustle of the central market, the coming and going of motorbike taxis, the craft workshops and the energy of the Bamileke, a people famous across Cameroon for their business drive and very strong identity. The real show begins when you leave Bafoussam for the surrounding chefferies, with their bamboo houses, ritual courtyards and mask museums.
This guide uses Bafoussam as a base for discovering the Bamileke grassfields: what to see in the city, how to visit the neighbouring chefferies (starting with the imposing one at Bandjoun), where to try the food of the west (the famous 'poulet DG' or bean 'koki'), how to get around the region and how to combine it with Foumban and the rest of the country. This is the Cameroon of kings, drums and masks, as alive today as it was centuries ago.
Bafoussam began as the settlement of the Bamileke chefferie of Bafoussam (the 'Ba-Fussep') and grew during the 20th century into the commercial capital of western Cameroon. Its history is that of the Bamileke kingdoms of the grassfields: small hierarchical states ruled by a sacred 'fon' (king), which reached these hills in migratory waves from the north around the 17th century, resisted the Germans and the French, and keep their institutions to this day. The full story (migrations, chefferies, colonialism and modern Bamileke dynamism) is told on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The land of kingdoms: the Bamum sultanate of Foumban with its own script, and the nearly one hundred Bamileke chefferies of the grassfields, a land of masks, palaces and conical roofs.
Read the history of The West: kingdoms, palaces and grassfields →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
The highlands of western Cameroon, which the English called the 'Grassfields' (highland grasslands) and the French 'les Grassfields' or simply Bamileke country, are among the most historically and culturally rich regions of Central Africa. They form a rolling plateau between 1,400 and 1,800 metres above sea level, with fertile volcanic soils and a mild climate, and for centuries they have supported one of the densest populations on the continent.
The Bamileke are the main people of this region, and Bafoussam is now their commercial capital. Strictly speaking, though, they did not originate in these hills. Oral tradition and historical studies agree that their ancestors reached the Grassfields in waves of migration from the north, between the 17th and 18th centuries. They came from the Tikar region, in what is now north-central Cameroon, and some came from even further north in the Nun valley. They were pushed partly by pressure from the Islamic kingdoms of the Sahel and by the slave trade. Once settled in the highlands, they split into dozens of small independent kingdoms.
That is the defining feature of the Bamileke world. Instead of one large unified state, it is a mosaic of more than a hundred 'chefferies', or kingdoms. Each is ruled by a 'fon' (king) regarded as sacred and has its own dialect, court, secret societies and territory. Bafoussam, Bandjoun, Baham, Bamendjou, Bangangté, Dschang and many other names belong to these chefferies. They were neighbours and often rivals, yet they shared the same cultural roots: those of the Grassfields.
The Bamileke chefferie is a masterpiece of political and religious organisation. At its centre is the 'fon' (or 'fo'), at once a political and a sacred king. He stands between the living and the ancestors and guarantees the fertility of the land and of women. He lives in a walled royal compound, the 'chefferie' itself. It is built around a large ceremonial 'case' with a conical thatched roof and carved wooden pillars, and it is surrounded by the homes of his many wives and by the courtyards where rituals are held.
The fon's power is not absolute. It is balanced by councils of notables and, above all, by powerful secret societies such as the famous 'kuosi', the society of the elephant masks. These societies bring together the dignitaries, guard ritual knowledge, keep the king himself in check and carry out the community's decisions. The masks, beaded thrones, bronze pipes, horns and drums are not decorations. They are symbols of power and sacred objects full of meaning.
Much of Bamileke life revolves around these events and rites: the death of a fon and his succession, the huge funerals that still bring thousands of people together for days of dancing and masks, the initiation of young people and the cult of ancestral skulls. Far from being a relic, this system is still alive. The fon still reign, the chefferies still stand and the great rituals are still held. That makes the Bafoussam region one of the best places to see the Africa of traditional kingdoms in the 21st century.
When Europeans reached Cameroon in the late 19th century, the Grassfields were already a populated and organised region. Germany established the protectorate of Kamerun in 1884 and gradually pushed into the western highlands. Some chefferies resisted, and the Germans exploited the rivalries between others. Bafoussam and the neighbouring courts came under German administration, which imposed cash crops and forced labour and laid out the first roads.
After the First World War and Germany's defeat, Cameroon was divided between France and the United Kingdom under a League of Nations mandate. The Grassfields were split. The eastern part, including Bafoussam and Bamileke country, went to French Cameroon, while the northwestern highlands (Bamenda, Bafut) came under British administration. That colonial border, drawn across a shared cultural world, lies at the root of many later tensions.
Under the French mandate, Bafoussam grew as the administrative and commercial centre of the western region. The Bamileke were skilled traders and farmers. They took up coffee, which became the highlands' main export, and began moving to Douala and Yaoundé, where they built trading networks that would make them famous across the country. But the late colonial period would bring one of the bloodiest episodes in the region's history.
In the 1950s, as the African continent moved towards independence, Bamileke country became one of the centres of Cameroon's most radical nationalism. The Union of the Peoples of Cameroon (UPC), the main pro-independence party, was strongly rooted among the Bamileke and the Bassa. It demanded immediate independence and the reunification of the two Cameroons. France banned the UPC in 1955, and the party turned to armed struggle.
What followed was a brutal war that was largely kept quiet. In the western highlands, from the late 1950s to the mid-1960s (well after independence in 1960), the French army and then the army of the new Cameroonian state waged a harsh campaign. It targeted the UPC guerrillas and the Bamileke communities suspected of supporting them. Villages were razed, people were displaced on a massive scale and there were executions. According to various estimates, the repression killed tens of thousands of people, and some sources suggest more. The Metché Falls, near Bafoussam, remain in collective memory as one of the places where opponents were thrown to their deaths.
For decades, both France and the Cameroonian regime covered up this conflict, and it left a deep wound in Bamileke country. Its history is only now starting to be acknowledged and studied. It is part of the background to the identity of the west: a proud, hard-working region with a memory of resistance and tragedy that is worth keeping in mind as you travel through its hills.
Once that period was over, Bafoussam grew in recent decades into Cameroon's third- or fourth-largest urban area and the main commercial and farming hub of the west. Its market, its energy and its people embody the Bamileke reputation as the country's trading people par excellence. That reputation rests on business networks, tontines (rotating savings associations), investment and a work ethic that has taken Bamileke entrepreneurs to the top of the Cameroonian economy.
The city is also the starting point for exploring an exceptional cultural heritage. In recent decades, projects such as the 'Route des Chefferies' have turned several royal courts, including Bandjoun, Baham and Bamendjou, into living museums. The aim is twofold: to preserve the masks, thrones and sacred objects, and to open this world to visitors. It is a way of keeping alive, and making known, a system of traditional kingdoms that few places in the world preserve so fully.
Today Bafoussam watches its neighbours with some concern. The English-speaking North-West and South-West regions share its Grassfields roots, and since 2016 they have been caught up in a serious separatist conflict. The French-speaking West region, by contrast, remains one of the most stable and prosperous in the country. Exploring it, with its trading capital, its chefferies, its waterfalls and its food, means discovering one of the most authentic and least-known sides of Cameroon: the land of the kings of the grasslands.
