Muslims predominate in the north and Christians in the south. Cameroon contains about 200 ethnic groups who speak 24 major languages. Among the more important ethnic groups are the Bamileke, a Bantu-speaking people, and the Fulani , a Muslim people. French and English are both official languages. Education Cameroon has achieved one of the highest rates of school attendance in Africa, although the literacy rate is still just 54 percent.
Mission schools play an important role in education and are partly subsidized by the government.
In the early 1990s total annual enrollment in primary and preprimary schools was about 2.1 million, and in secondary schools, about 410,000. A total of more than 64,500 students are enrolled in institutions of higher education. While agricultural activities are the main occupation of about 60 percent of the population of Cameroon, petroleum products constitute more than half of all exports. The principal commercial crops in Cameroon are cacao, coffee, tobacco, cotton, and bananas. In the early 1990s yearly production of cacao and coffee, the leading agricultural export commodities, was about 94,000 metric tons for the former and 85,000 tons for the latter.