Ten thousand three hundred and ninety-five. That is the number of French-speaking Cameroonians admitted as permanent residents in Canada outside Quebec in 2024, up from 2,530 two years earlier, according to Statistics Canada data relayed in early February 2026 by Radio-Canada. This surge puts Cameroon at the top of source countries for Francophone immigration outside Quebec, accounting for 34% of all French-speaking permanent residents admitted outside the province that year.
This is no statistical accident. Ottawa launched a Policy on Francophone Immigration in January 2024, with rising annual targets for provinces and territories outside Quebec: 4.4% for 2023 (already reached in 2022), 6% targeted for 2024 but 7.21% actually achieved, then 8.5% targeted for 2025 with a final result of 8.9%. The target climbs to 9% for 2026, with a goal of 12% set for 2029. Cameroon's bilingual education system, which produces graduates fluent in both French and English every year, matches almost point for point the criteria this program is looking for.
On the ground, the increase is also measurable at the scale of a single city. In St. John's, Newfoundland, a province where a Cameroonian presence was almost nonexistent until recently, the Cameroonian Association of Newfoundland and Labrador describes a community that grew from about fifteen people in 2018 to roughly sixty today. A modest figure in absolute terms, but one that shows how a federal policy plays out concretely in Atlantic provinces unaccustomed to African Francophone immigration.
This movement is distinct from other diaspora dynamics already documented elsewhere, such as financial transfers to Cameroon or expatriate voter mobilization ahead of 2027. What is at stake here is a choice of long-term settlement, driven by a Canadian immigration policy that explicitly seeks to strengthen minority Francophone communities in majority English-speaking provinces.
The true size of the Cameroonian diaspora in Canada, however, remains difficult to pin down precisely. Cameroon's High Commissioner in Ottawa, Ngole Philip Ngwesse, put forward an estimate of about 50,000 people in 2024, while acknowledging to Cameroon Tribune that the figure remained shaky: few nationals register with the diplomatic mission to obtain a consular card, in the absence of a reliable census. Statistics Canada's admission data, by contrast, has the merit of being based on immigration files that were actually processed.
The next milestone to watch is the 9% target set for 2026: admission figures for the current year, which will only be finalized once it ends, will show whether the Cameroonian trend holds at the pace seen since 2022, or whether it slows as the federal target edges closer to its planned 12% ceiling for 2029.
