The dilemma of what museums are and what they ought to be in African settings, has continued to sustain scholarly debate for over two decades. Animated by African and western schools of thought, this debate centers on three main questions: do African collections actually qualify as museums? Are western-style museums suitable for Africa? Can Africans actually sustain museums on the western model? It is on the sidelines of this debate and attempts to provide responses that hinge concerns of survival for these museums. In Cameroon where the museum institution is fairly young, questions continue to linger as to whether her over thirty collections actually qualify as museums. Ever since the establishment of the nation’s earliest museums in the 1920s, these institutions have indeed survived in precarity owing to a litany of obstacles. In these circumstances, public access has thinned rapidly, outreach and clientele satisfaction have remained elusive and the primary missions of preservation and conservation are shadows of their mission statements. Created after the year 2000, the community museums of Babungo, Oku, Bafut, Mankon, Bandjoun, Batoufam and Baham bear testimony to this. The present paper examines the nature and categorization of Cameroon museums, identifies major threats to their survival, examines reasons for their resilience, and proposes a plan for their sustenance. In this endeavor, four questions beg for answers: what is the typology of Cameroon museums? Why has their survival been precarious? What factors account for their resilience this far? And what can be the way forward? A methodology based on oral tradition, qualitative research and sample surveys, analyzed on the basis of content and chronology provided grounds for our findings. Cameroon’s museums are dominantly historical and ethnographic. They are essentially public, private, missionary and community museums. Their major challenges have centered on natural and human factors. The elaboration and scrupulous respect for collections management policies and the ICOM code of ethics (2007) remain crucial for their survival and sustenance.