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Yaoundé, 
Cameroon
5,106,087 people lived in Yaoundé in 2025. It is the 79th largest of the world's 12,138 cities, and the largest in Cameroon, where it is the capital.
This is the UN's built-up area, drawn from satellite pictures and census maps rather than from the city limits, and the two can be a long way apart. The rule behind it.
Verified 2026-09-30 · 73 canaries
People · every five years · 1975 to 2050
How Yaoundé grew
Count 10 people in Yaoundé in 1975 and the same count gives 112.2 in 2025.
On the UN's projection it will have 8.7 million people in 2050. It passed five million people between 2020 and 2025.
projected (after 2025) · how sure the UN is: high moderate low
How to read this: one column every five years, 1975 to 2050; its height is the number of people. Hatched columns are the UN's projection. The thin strip beneath says how sure the UN is of each figure: the stronger the colour, the surer. A blank means the place was not on the UN's list of cities that year.
People · your family's years · 1975 to 2050
Yaoundé through your family’s years
Put in the years your family were born. You’ll see how many people lived in Yaoundé in each of those years, and when each of them turned 30.
Cameroon · every city · 2025
Where it is
How to read this: Cameroon and its 44 cities in 2025, each a dot whose area is its number of people. Yaoundé is ringed, in colour; the other cities are grey. Neighbouring countries are outlines.
Area and built-up land · km²
How much land it covers
In 2025, Yaoundé covered 334 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 89 km² of it. That is 17 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 4 by 4 metres. Since 1975, its built-up land has grown to 2.6 times its size, and its people are 11.2 times as many.
How to read this: the outer pale square stands for all the land the city covers, and the solid square inside it for the part with buildings, roads and the like on it. All three squares share a scale, so you can compare them by eye. A hatched one is a year the UN has projected.
Of every 100 people in Cameroon
Its share of Cameroon
Of every 100 people in Cameroon in 2025, 17 lived in Yaoundé, which is 5.1 million people.
How to read this: shrink Cameroon to 100 people and this is what you get. The coloured squares are the ones who would live in Yaoundé; the grey ones are everybody else, in other cities, in towns and out in the country.
Ranked by people · 2025
Cities of a similar size
In the world, 2025
- 75 Mashhad Iran5,398,248
- 76 Dubai United Arab Emirates5,283,789
- 77 Xi'an China5,231,053
- 78 Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte - Colombo Sri Lanka5,223,838
- 79 Yaoundé5,106,087
- 80 Kochi India5,077,670
- 81 Hanoi Vietnam5,068,414
- 82 Lucknow India5,052,444
- 83 Chattogram Bangladesh4,983,553
In Cameroon, 2025
- 79 Yaoundé5,106,087
- 109 Douala4,104,516
- 797 Garoua678,769
- 1052 Maroua526,702
- 1442 Bamenda394,155
- 1658 Ngaoundéré345,148
- 1745 Kumba329,340
- 1789 Bafoussam321,489
- 2389 Kousseri244,247
How to read this: the figure in front of a name is where that city stands among the 12,138 cities the UN counted in 2025, and each bar is its people, on one scale per list. Numbers are missing where a city has fewer than 300,000 people and so has no page of its own.
Apparatus
Sources and method
The figures for Yaoundé are the UN's own, at five-year steps: an estimate for each of 1975 to 2025, then projection to 2050. Projected years are drawn hatched, and the UN publishes no range of uncertainty for a city. What a city means here, how the UN measures one, and why that number can differ from the one Yaoundé publishes about itself: how the figures here are put together.
Sources: UN WUP 2025 · Natural Earth · flag-icons. Every source, its licence and how to cite it →
Verified 2026-09-30 · 73 canaries