By Hans Ngala
‘The first Europeans to arrive in Cameroon were the Portuguese, and they named Mount Cameroon as ‘Chariot of the Gods ‘ or ‘The first missionary to Cameroon was Alfred Saker’.
‘The first Europeans to arrive in South Africa named it ‘the Cape of Good Hope’
‘David Livingstone named the giant waterfalls Victoria Falls. ’
This is the way our history in African countries has been taught for a long time. We were handed down colonial narratives, which we have largely not questioned even to this day. How is it reasonable that Cameroon’s history begins with what the Portuguese thought or felt? And the fact that Cameroon is derived from the Portuguese word for prawns is also troubling. Never mind that the Portuguese arrived on the coast of Cameroon and found the Duala, the Bakweri, and other tribes already living there, but a Western-centric history erases these people and doesn’t care what their beliefs or views were.
Same with South Africa, a where Dutch and Portuguese settlers arrived to find various indigenous African tribes also living there, but the narrative chooses to go with what the Europeans chose to call these places, disregarding the locals whose land it is and who had their names for these places, like the Cape.
The case of English missionary David Livingstone choosing to name the falls in Zambia after an English queen in far-away England is as hilarious as it is stupid. The locals called it the “Smoke That Thunders” in their local language, but instead, history has chosen to go with a European narrative.
While a good number of African countries decolonized by changing their names to African ones such as Upper Volta becoming Burkina Faso (or the land of upright people), the Gold Coast becoming Ghana, South West Africa becoming Namibi, a and Southern Rhodesia becoming Zambia, other countries like Cameroon simply kept their colonial names.
What does this do to Africans’ self-worth?
The message that these European narratives indirectly cement into the minds of Africans is that Europeans are to be glorified even when the facts speak to the contrary. Take the case of the Belgian Congo, today’s DRC, where Leopold II ruled brutally over the country, plundering its wealth for the enrichment of his native Belgium. Locals were expected to harvest rubber for Leopold, and those who were unable to meet the daily quota had their hands chopped off. Many died as a result of such brutality. But this aspect of Belgian rule is often carefully sanitized, and one wonders if Belgian students ever learn of their king’s animalistic rule in Central Africa,o r do they twist the narrative to be one of “civilization”, “educatio,n” and “development” as has often been the case?
Do English students know of Winston Churchill’s role in the Bengal Famine that caused the deaths of millions of Indians as Churchill blocked food from reaching Indians whom he accused of “breeding like rabbits”?
Do students in France know of how brutal the French were in places like Cameroon, Ivory Coast and Haiti and that France to this day, continues to demand reparations from its former colonies, requiring them to store a large portion of their foreign reserves in France and failure to do so is met with swift assassinations or political destabilization?
This is the danger of having Europeans continue to be the ones telling the story. They will sanitize it and avoid the inconvenient parts like slavery and colonization. We see how such ignorance is playing out in present-day America, where the country refuses to acknowledge its dark past and systemic slavery and Jim Crow-era laws, resulting in a white elite that feels that, even after years of oppressing Black Americans, somehow, white Americans are the victims.
This recently played out in South Africa, too, where so-called “Afrikaners” claim that they are being targeted simply because the government there is taking careful steps to reverse the injustices of Apartheid and hundreds of years of colonial oppression.
In Cameroon and the broader West African region, the danger with leaving colonial and Western narratives unchallenged is that the Western world continues to feel that it did “good” for Africa by pillaging its people, its art, and its resources – the last part continuing to this very day.
True enough, there is corruption on the part of selfish and greedy African leaders in people as Paul Biya, who align themselves with these Western power structures, allowing them to continue pillaging Cameroon for their benefit, and they ignore their excesses and gross human rights violations. How is it sensible that Biya, after 40 years in power, is still allowed (with the support of so-called ‘democratic’ countries) to run for office again at 92?
Cameroon must reclaim the power to tell its own story, not as a reaction to Europe, but as a celebration of its agency, identity, and resilience. Continuing to rely on European frameworks to define our past limits our imagination of the future. It entrenches a colonial inferiority complex, where even leaders judge success based on how well they please foreign powers.
Our educational systems must be the first battleground in this fight for narrative sovereignty. We must decolonize curricula to reflect pre-colonial achievements, indigenous philosophies, and African resistance to oppression, not merely list what European powers did to or for us. For instance, we should teach about figures like Rudolf Douala Manga Bell, who resisted German colonialism, and delve into the spiritual systems, architectural feats, and trade networks that thrived before contact with Europe.
Cameroon also needs cultural institutions—museums, publishers, filmmakers, scholars—that challenge dominant narratives. History must no longer begin with Alfred Saker’s arrival or the Portuguese sailing past the Wouri River. It must begin with the people: their struggles, beliefs, and contributions to humanity.
Furthermore, if names shape identity, then the very name “Cameroon” must be interrogated. What would it mean to rename the country to reflect its people and not a Portuguese misinterpretation of crustaceans? Burkina Faso, Ghana, and Zimbabwe made such bold choices—why not us?
Cameroon’s future hinges on how it understands its past. A nation that cannot define itself is vulnerable to being defined—and exploited—by others. However, by reclaiming our history, we reclaim our power too. We make space for a proud generation, not because Europe noticed them, but because they know who they are. Until then, independence will remain cosmetic, and true liberation (mental, cultural, and economic), will elude us.
