[7][8] Naturalization can be granted to persons of the age of majority and legal capacity who have resided in the territory for a sufficient period of time to confirm they understand the customs and traditions of the society.

Besides foreigners meeting the criteria,[6] other persons who may be naturalized include: Nationality may be renounced in Cameroon by following the proper registration procedures.

[18] The territory between the Mandara Mountains, which today form the northern Cameroon–Nigeria border, and Lake Chad was populated by diverse people who had different cultural and political structures.

[27] From the beginning of the eighteenth century, some of the vassal states of Bornu began to press for autonomy because stress for sharing resources created conflict.

People from the Sultanate of Baghirmi and nomadic Tuareg groups raided Bornu territories and by 1759, the empire had lost control of the salt mines at Bilma and trade routes through the Sahara.

[30] New polities emerged from the former Hausa states, which now were aligned with the Sokoto Caliphate, and included the Adamawa, Bauchi, Gombe, Muri and Nufe Emirates.

[34] In 1874, Woermann's son, Adolph, joined the business and began implementing plans to expand their enterprise by eliminating his competitors, the native people.

[33] Chancellor of Germany, Otto von Bismarck was reluctant to grant the request, believing that business enterprises should finance colonization efforts rather than the state.

[35] Thormählen then formed with Wilhelm Jantzen, Woermann's agent in Liberia, their own trading company operating between Hamburg and West Africa.

[36] In 1883, Woermann used his influence to persuade the Hamburg Board of Trade to allow him to send warships to protect German merchants and together with Jantzen & Thormählen secured agreements with the chiefs along the Cameroonian coast to cede their sovereign rights to Germany.

[37] He continued the practice of obtaining treaties with chiefs in the colony, but at the end of that year, resistance to German occupation resulted in attempts by natives to disrupt trade.

[41][42] In 1914, during World War I, Belgian, British, and French colonial troops, made up of mostly Africans launched the two-year Kamerun campaign.

[53] For those born abroad on or after the effective date, legitimacy was still required, and could only be derived by a child from a British father (one generation), who was natural-born or naturalized.

[60] Because of a rise in statelessness, a woman who did not automatically acquire her husband's nationality upon marriage or upon his naturalization in another country, did not lose her British status after 1933.

[61] The 1943 revision allowed a child born abroad at any time to be a British national by descent if the Secretary of State agreed to register the birth.

[66] Under a plebescite held on 11 February 1961, the inhabitants of southern British Cameroon, voted to join an independent French Cameroun by a margin of 7 to 3.

[74] This meant that from 1848 when the Civil Code was extended to all of the French nationals in the colonies, women were legally incapacitated and paternal authority was established over their children.

[83] It also allowed children born in France to native-born French women married to foreigners to acquire their nationality from their mothers.

[86] After World War II, France strove to create policies which would integrate the inhabitants of its trust territories into the French Union.

France also created a Territorial Assembly of locally elected members; however, only French nationals and elite native persons were given the franchise.

[91] A decree issued on 30 April 1946 eliminated the Indigenous Code, making all inhabitants of Cameroun were now subject to French criminal and penal law.

[93] In 1957, Cameroun was granted internal autonomy[94] and by a Decree issued on 16 April (Décret N° 57-501) defined the institutions and individual status of Camerounians.

[93][92] Faced with continual upheaval, in 1959, France recognized that the African states could have separate nationality codes and still be part of the French Union.

Children born to two foreign parents in the territory and who had lived there for at least five years as a minor in Cameroun could acquire nationality at majority.

[109] According to Marie-Thérèse Abéna Ondoa, Minister of Women and the Family, the proposed draft was sent for review by the Ministry of Justice prior to final legislative deliberations.