South Region
The Bagyeli have occupied Cameroon's southern coastal forests for centuries. There are roughly 3,700 of them left, and the forest they depend on is being replaced — by a deep-water port, a gas power plant, a floating LNG terminal, and a refinery — without the compensation they were promised. Their displacement is not incidental to the South Region's development strategy; it is the strategy, because the region's value lies in what can be extracted from its 47,000 square kilometres of equatorial forest and offshore gas fields, not in the seven people per square kilometre who live there.
Timber has been the primary extraction for decades. The South Region accounts for 40% of national logging concessions allocated over the past ten years, with 70% of Cameroon's wood exports flowing to China and Vietnam. Between 2013 and 2021, the country lost 1.26 million hectares of forest cover, and the South Region is a primary driver. What leaves the forest does not return as primary growth.
Into this extraction economy, the state has inserted Central Africa's largest infrastructure bet. Kribi deep-water port, built by China Harbour Engineering Company and operational since 2018, serves as a transshipment hub connecting the CEMAC economic zone to global shipping routes that Douala's shallow estuary cannot accommodate. A 216-megawatt gas plant feeds the port complex. Offshore gas from the Sanaga Sud field supplies a floating LNG terminal. A refinery designed to process 30,000 barrels per day is under construction. Each investment depends on the others: port needs power, power needs gas, industrial zone needs both. The result is path-dependent lock-in — failure in any single element cascades through the system.
Meanwhile, Campo Ma'an National Park, a 2,680-square-kilometre reserve sheltering western lowland gorillas and 18 primate species, faces pressure from port expansion, illegal logging, and hydroelectric development simultaneously. The South Region is being built into something — but what it was is being extracted faster than what it becomes can replace it.