Cameroonian Pygmy Communities Left Homeless

Acres of Central African rainforests that indigenous Pygmy people have called home for 5,000 years are rapidly disappearing due to logging and mining.
Thousands of Pygmies inhabiting the rainforests of the Nomedjo region in southern Cameroon, close to the Congolese border, have been forcibly uprooted due to the timber trade.

Integration efforts aimed at settling down the traditionally nomadic Pygmies, barred from forests designated as national parks, have so far proven fruitless.

The inhabitants of the forest, the Pygmies, demand to stay in their homes.

The Europeans referred to the local tribesmen as “Pygmies” a word meaning “dwarf” in Greek with a mythological reference, as they have an average height of 120 centimeters (3.9 feet).

There are currently around 120,000 Pygmies in the world, with most living in Cameroon’s forested region near the Atlantic coast.

Small Pygmy communities also exist in other countries like Rwanda, Burundi, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia, Gabon, and Angola.