This province has a surface area of 114 721 Kilometers and has less than a million inhabitants. Its headquarters is Bertoua. This is an important agro pastoral zone for cattle, sheep and goats. The main food crops grown here are cassava, cocoyam, banana, sweet potatoes and groundnuts.
This province is very enclave and suffers from a very bad communication network. It is however served from a train station from Belabo. In spite of the poor road situation, this province has a number of forest exploitation companies e.g. Sfid, SEBC,EFC, Alpicam, Sifobel, Safor etc. This is due in part to the presence a large expanse of equatorial province here. Tobacco is also cultivated and processed here.
The literacy level in this province is very low and the health care situation is even worse. It has only about 227 health units and only about 2000 beds. It is also an area where large parts of the population are not socially integrated. The Bakas pygmies are a good example of such a non integrated class of people. The dense and almost impenetrable forest is a home of these pygmies.
The East province has a surface area of about 114 721 sq kilometers and a population density of 4 inhabitants per sq kilometer. This province is a great producer of timber and attracts a lot of multinational companies involved in forest exploitation. Some of the exploited wood is transported by trucks to the Belabo train station meanwhile the rest is transformed on the spot to planks. Forest exploitation has been responsible for several conflicts in this area between the locals and forest exploitation companies who at times fail to meet up with their promises made before carry out their activities. It also originates from the fact that these people see exploitation forests as taking away their cultural heritage.