The National Emblem must be the living symbol of the fatherland:
orange: recalling the color of our rich and generous earth; it is the meaning of our struggle, the blood of a young people in its struggle for our emancipation;
white: peace, but the peace of right;
green: hope, of course, for others; but for us, the certainty of a better future
The national flag of Cameroon was adopted in its present form on 20 May 1975 after Cameroon became a unitary state. It is a vertical tricolour of green, red and yellow, with a five-pointed star in its center. There is a wide variation in the size of the central star, although it is always contained within the inside stripe.
The colour scheme uses the traditional Pan-African colours (Cameroon was the second state to adopt them). The centre stripe is thought to stand for unity: red is the colour of unity, and the star is referred to as “the star of unity”. The yellow stands for the sun, and also the savannas in the northern part of the country, while the green is for the forests in the southern part of Cameroon.
The previous flag of Cameroon, used from 1961 to 1975, had a similar colour scheme, but with two gold (darker than the third stripe by comparison) stars in the upper half of the green. It was adopted after British Southern Cameroons joined the state of Cameroon.
The national flag of Burkina Faso is formed by two equal horizontal bands of red (top) and green, with a yellow five-pointed star resting in the center. The flag was adopted on 4 August 1984. The flag is coloured in the popular Pan-African colours of the Ethiopian flag, reflecting both a break with the country’s colonial past and its unity with other African ex-colonies. The red is also said to symbolize the revolution and the green the abundance of agricultural and natural riches. The yellow star placed over the red and green stripes is the guiding light of the revolution. The flag was adopted following the coup of 1983 which brought Thomas Sankara to power.