Douala [key], city, Cameroon, on the Wuori River estuary. Cameroon's largest city and major port, it is a commercial and transportation center handling most of the country's exports (chiefly cocoa and coffee) as well as transit trade from Chad. The Bonabéri Bridge across the Wouri connects Duoala with Bonaberi. Douala developed as a center of the slave trade after the Portuguese arrived in 1472. It later became part of a German protectorate (1884) and of the French Cameroons (1919).
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