Ndu
The high-altitude half of Cameroonian tea, several hundred kilometres inland from Tole on the Bamenda grassfields — open, cool, rolling upland on the ridge that continues north-east into Nigeria's Mambilla Plateau. The two districts belong to the same continuous highland system and to the same country, which makes the pair a rare natural experiment: the same corporate operator, growing the same crop for the same market, at sea-level warmth in one place and at genuine altitude in the other.
Elevation
Recorded at 1800–2400 metres.
How firm this is: Inferred from general knowledge of the district rather than measured or taken from a source that states it. Ndu sits among the highest inhabited ground in Cameroon. The band is wide because the estate runs across grassfield ridges rather than sitting on a single contour.
Climate
A tropical highland climate: a long wet season, a pronounced dry season when the harmattan reaches the grassfields, and nights cold enough at this altitude to slow the bush sharply. The dry season is the operative constraint — growth can stall for want of water rather than warmth, which is the reverse of Tole's problem.
How firm this is: Inferred from general knowledge of the district rather than measured or taken from a source that states it.
When it is picked
Growth strongly seasonal despite the equatorial latitude, because altitude and the dry season together do what a temperate winter does elsewhere: a flush through the rains and a marked slowdown in the dry months. That is a real flush structure of a kind Tole does not have, arising from rainfall rather than from temperature.
How firm this is: Inferred from general knowledge of the district rather than measured or taken from a source that states it.
How production is organised
A large plantation and factory of the same corporate estate type as Tole, employing a substantial part of the local workforce, with no meaningful smallholder sector alongside. The concentration of an upland district's employment in a single agricultural operation is the fact worth carrying away from this record.
How firm this is: Inferred from general knowledge of the district rather than measured or taken from a source that states it. As at Tole, the estate structure is well attested and current operating status is not stated here.
Other teas recorded from here
Other growing regions in Cameroon
The neighbouring districts are the useful comparison: they share a country, a grading convention and often a cultivar, so what differs between them is closer to terroir than anything a cross-border comparison can isolate.
Sources
- TeaHQ editorial synthesis — TeaHQ
This page is TeaHQ’s own synthesis throughout. No external document stands behind the elevation band, the climate note or the character described above, which is why each carries its confidence in the open.