THE ORIGIN OF THE NAME, BIAFRA?

THE ORIGIN OF THE NAME, BIAFRA?

The town of Biafara or Biafra comes up in a 1584 map by Abraham Ortelius from Antwerp in modern day Belgium where it is shown to be located on the south bank (some later descriptions say north) of the 'Camarones River' ("Camarones fl." [flumen]). This 1584 edition of an atlas by Ortelius is considered as the first proper atlas, depicting Africa with inland towns named. The Camarones River where Cameroon gets its name (from the Portuguese word for prawns), is known today as the Wouri River, the Portuguese navigator and explorer, Fernão do Pó, whose name was given to Bioko Island in Equatorial Guinea, was the first European up the river in 1472. It was from a town identified as 'Biafra' or 'Biafara' on the river that the area east of the Benin Empire, which it was often visually indicated to be equal to, and down to Gabon was named Biafara and later on the coast of these areas known as the Bight of Biafra.

Biafra was described as the capital of a kingdom with the same name and this town continued to show up on maps in the same location on the same river. This kingdom, however, does not seem to exist today; if these maps are correct in terms of the location of this town, 'Biafra' would be somewhere near the Cameroonian town of Yabassi today, which is also on the Wouri River. Certainly, 'Biafra' would be in the Nkam department of the Littoral Province in Cameroon, which is where Yabassi is today, which is also the Cameroonian department that the Wouri runs through. The exact location of the town, or wether this town existed or not, has not been ascertained, it could be that the town and kingdom were completely made up or was an amalgam of various kingdoms such as the kingdom of Bamum and other territories, in any case, the town and 'kingdom' of Biafra was removed from maps in the 19th century.

In addition, there is also an ethnic group in the Senegambian area called the Biafada which has been compared to Biafra, however, in geographical dictionaries of the 18th century, entries for the Biafada people (as the Biafares) are separate from the supposed 'Kingdom of Biafra', in these dictionaries the Biafada people are described as a people in Senegambia meaning that the Biafra on the Camarones and the Biafada people of Senegambia were not considered to be the same by earlier Europeans.

Also interesting to note is that less than 100 miles from Yabassi and the Wouri River is the town of Bafia of the Bafia or Bekpak people, although the origin of the name Bafia, which is an exonym, is unknown and may have been given to the Bekpak people, who do not seem to have a kingdom, after colonisation by Europeans in the late 19th century.

Credits: Ùkpúrù