West

According to UNESCO, Nchare Yen, the son of a Tikar chief, founded the Bamum kingdom at Foumban, which became one of the most structured kingdoms of the western Cameroonian highlands; seventeen rulers, known as mfon, succeeded him there, including Sultan Njoya at the end of the nineteenth century. From the sixteenth century, about a hundred Bamileke chiefdoms formed on the western plateau, following population movements that pushed groups of Tikar origin already settled in the Grassfields further south; each kept its own ruler (fo) and its own political organisation, while sharing a similar cosmology and social structure.