Cameroonian acronyms

How would you like to say you graduated from BUST? No joke; the acronym for Bamenda University of Science and Technology is BUST.

Another of my favourite acronyms, one which shows great marketing sense, is the First Investment for Financial Assistance bank: FIFFA. In a country obsessed with football (soccer), who wouldn’t want to leave their money with a bank sharing the acronym of the world football association!

Many Cameroonian acronyms are not letter for letter, however; many take more letters to make interesting words. Some examples:

FuGoSec: Full Gospel Secondary School
FINI Hotel: First International Inn
SeHeCo: Women’s Self Help Cooperative
MoHerb: Modern Herb Pharmacy
SOACAM: Societe Alimentaire de Cameroon
FINUTRASU: Fako Inter-Urban Transporters Union
Cofinest: Communautaire Financier de l’Estuaire

And then there’s the abbreviations of missionary life in Cameroon. I suppose they abound in any organization, but it’s fun to see how many you can string together and still be coherent to those on the “in.” This sentence makes perfect sense to us here:

The BGC, NAB, and WT members of the MCEC met in the ERC on the CBC compound to discuss FES, RFIS, and the CMF hostel at CTC and SIL.

Comments

Anonymous said…

I can't tell you how much I miss those acronyms. Surprised I found them on the Internet. I attended RFIS 6 years ago as a MK. My mom worked in the ERC. And Dad helped build the new CABTAL Center across from CTC. Hopefully we'll head back to Cameroon. Thanks again for your funny article.

December 3, 2008 at 1:09 PM

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