In 2014, Cameroon’s tourism certainly finished with a less than stellar performance relative to 2013. These were the sentiments expressed by Tourism Ministry officials in Extreme-North which is home to most of the country’s touristic sites.

Indeed, in this region of Cameroon, which is prone to constant attacks involving expatriate kidnappings attributed to members of the Nigerian Islamist sect, Boko Haram, hotel occupancy received a major blow.

According to authorised sources, various reports conclude that a drastic fall occurred “in the occupancy levels of some hotels, falling from 90% to 30%.” These statistics could pull the country from the 912000 that came in 2015 compared to 817,000 in 2012.

With the threat of Boko Haram, which drove several Western consulates and embassies to declare the Extreme-North region a risk for their nationals, the goal announced by Philémon Yang, to welcome 2 million tourists in 2015 seems farfetched.