The paper begins from the premise that the efforts of the two regimes of Cameroon to
manage ethnic diversity on the basis of a multicultural public policy, known as “balanced regional
development”, constitutes an acute problem, exacerbating rather than attenuating the struggles that
are often associated with ethnic diversity in postcolonial states in Africa. The purpose of the paper is
to examine this public policy in the broader context of the inter-linkages between ethnicity and politics
in Cameroon.