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Yaunde


The Beti-Pahuin are a Bantu ethnic group located in rain forest regions of Cameroon, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and São Tomé and Príncipe. Though they separate themselves into several individual clans, they all share a common origin, history and culture.

Estimated to be well over 3 million individuals in the early 21st century, they form the largest ethnic group in central Cameroon and its capital city of Yaoundé, in Gabon and in Equatorial Guinea. Their languages, from the Bantu subgroup of the Niger–Congo language family, are mutually intelligible.

The Beti-Pahuin are made up of over 20 individual clans. Altogether, they inhabit a territory of forests and rolling hills that stretches from the Sanaga River in the north to Equatorial Guinea and the northern halves of Gabon to Congo to the south, and from the Atlantic Ocean to the west to the Dja River in the east.

The first grouping, called the Beti, consists of the Ewondo (more precisely Kolo), Bane, Fang (more precisely M'fang), Mbida-Mbane, Mvog-Nyenge, and Eton (or Iton). The Eton are further subdivided into the Eton-Beti, Eton-Beloua, and Beloua-Eton.

The Ewondo, or Yaunde, are centred on Yaoundé, Cameroon's capital, which was named for them. They also populate the eastern Mefou division and the Mfoundi and Nyong and So divisions in the Centre Province. The remainder of their territory lies in the northern portions of the Ocean division in the South Province. Their language (or Beti dialect), also called Ewondo, is the most widely spoken of the Beti languages in Cameroon, with an estimated 1,200,000 speakers in 1982. It serves as a lingua franca in Yaoundé and much of the rest of Cameroon's Centre and South Provinces.


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