The story
Festival du Cheval de Garoua in Garoua
Garoua, capital of Cameroon's North Region on the Benoue River, hosts a horse festival celebrating the equestrian traditions of the Fulani and other Sahelian peoples of northern Cameroon, featuring mounted parades, decorated horses, and displays of horsemanship rooted in the region's historic emirates.
Northern Cameroon's savanna, drier and more open than the forested south, has long supported a horse culture tied closely to the Fulani people and the Islamic emirates, known locally as lamidats, that they established across the wider Sahel during a series of nineteenth-century religious and political movements.