Cameroon–Equatorial Guinea border

River and parallel

Germany proclaimed a protectorate over Kamerun in July 1884. A Franco-German protocol of 24 December 1885 ran the boundary between Kamerun and French territory inland from the Bight of Biafra along the Campo river and then east along a parallel of latitude. A Franco-German commission of 1900–03 fixed that parallel at 2°10′20″N, the so-called Campo parallel.^[1]

The land south of the line became Spanish Guinea, now Equatorial Guinea’s mainland region of Río Muni. Its eastern edge, the meridian of 11°20′E, was set by a Franco-Spanish convention of 27 June 1900, and where that meridian meets the Campo parallel is today the tripoint with Gabon.^[1]

The wall

In July 2019 Cameroon’s army accused Equatorial Guinea of sending soldiers across the Ntem to put up boundary markers one to two kilometres inside Cameroon, in the town of Kye-Ossi, and its army chief spoke of Equatorial Guinea’s “expansionist ambitions”. People on the Equatoguinean side said land along the border had been cleared for a wall. Equatorial Guinea had been especially watchful on the border after arresting some 30 foreign armed men there in December 2017 in what it called a foiled coup.^[3]

In June 2020 the two defence ministers met in Yaoundé. A Cameroonian official said Equatoguinean president Teodoro Obiang Nguema had told Paul Biya that the wall was planned to stop illegal migration but had been suspended; an Equatoguinean delegate said no wall had been built, only work to locate the border line.^[2]

“There is no work at the moment. We have not built a wall.”^[2]