Far North Region

Cameroon's Far North Region is not the periphery its name implies — it is the chokepoint through which most manufactured goods from Nigeria reach Central Africa. At least 29 attacks on trade vehicles were recorded along the Amchidé-Limani corridor in just three months in late 2024, illustrating what happens when a keystone trade route becomes contested ground. The hubs of Limani, Fotokol, and Amchidé funnel enormous transit volumes through this 34,000-square-kilometre strip of Sahelian savanna, connecting Nigerian goods to Central African markets. The regional capital, Maroua, anchors an area of over 1.8 million people and dozens of ethnic groups — all competing for water, pasture, and arable land in a semi-arid zone where climate stress narrows options year by year.

Lake Chad oscillates seasonally between approximately 14,000 and 24,500 square kilometres today, despite shrinking from roughly 25,000 square kilometres in the 1960s to as low as 2,000–2,500 square kilometres by the mid-1980s. This volatility defies the simple "vanishing lake" narrative. The lake fluctuates rather than follows a single trajectory, creating boom-bust cycles for the fishing and farming communities that depend on it: in the Far North alone, roughly a million people face food insecurity in any given year, with cereal prices running 30–40% above five-year averages.

That economic fragility is what makes the region exploitable. Boko Haram and its successor factions do not simply destroy the border economy — they feed off it. Insurgents purchase food on local markets, infiltrate smuggling networks that use the same corridors as legitimate trade, and extract revenue from traders through extortion and taxation. The system exists in metastable equilibrium: a small loss of trade volume triggers famine; a loss of state authority at the border converts informal economy into insurgent revenue. The Far North is a keystone corridor — remove its trade function and the regional economy restructures around the vacuum.