Ambazonia — De Facto Map

Ambazonia — Separatist insurgency · Cameroon · Declared in 2017, recognised by no state.

Ambazonia: the name separatists give to Cameroon's two English-speaking regions, the North-West and the South-West, once the British Southern Cameroons, which joined Cameroon in 1961. Separatist leaders declared independence on 1 October 2017, and no state recognises it. The war since has killed more than 6,500 people and displaced some 584,000. There is no single command: many armed groups, often rivals, live on levies, kidnapping and ransom, and enforce Monday "ghost towns" and longer lockdowns. The map stripes about 4,900 km², some 12 per cent of the claim, where reporting from 2025 and 2026 shows fighters' hideouts, roadblocks or levies, or repeated attacks: the highlands round Bamenda and in Bui, a corridor north of Wum, and the cocoa belt from Mbonge to Muyuka. The army holds the towns, which are cut out of the stripes, and the separatists hold none. The dashed line is the limit of the claim. Remote places where little is reported are left blank, which does not mean they are quiet. Bakassi, in the south-west corner of the claim, has a different problem: pirates based mostly across the border in Nigeria, and Biafran groups.