The national flag of Cameroon was adopted in its present form on 20 May 1975 after Cameroon became a unitary state. It is a vertical tricolor of green, red and yellow, defaced with a five-pointed star in its center. There is a wide variation in the size of the central star, although it is always contained within the inside stripe.
The color scheme uses the traditional Pan-African colors (Cameroon becoming the second state to do so). The center stripe is thought to stand for unity: red is the colour of unity, and the star is referred to as "the star of unity". The yellow stands for the sun, and also the savannas in the northern part of the country, while the green is for the forests in the southern part of Cameroon.