The lack of jobs after graduation frequently pushes Cameroonian girls into searching for work opportunities, sometimes overseas and sometimes with horrific consequences. Credit: Ngala Killian Chimtom/IPS

By Ngala Killian Chimtom
YAOUNDE, Jul 15 2015 (IPS)

Her lips are quavering her hands trembling. Susan (not her real name) struggles to suppress stubborn tears, but the outburst comes, spontaneously, and the tears stream down her cheeks as she sobs profusely.

The story of this 28-year-old’s servitude in Kuwait is mind-boggling. Between her sobs, she tells IPS how she left Cameroon two years ago in search of a job in Kuwait.

“I saw job opportunities advertised on billboards in town. The posters announced jobs such as nurses and housemaids in Kuwait. As a nurse and without a job in Cameroon, I decided to take the chance.”"We were herded off to a small room. There were many other girls there: Ghanaians, Nigerians and Tunisians … [then] bidders came and we were sold off like property" – Susan, a young Cameroonian women who escaped from slavery in Kuwait

With the help of an agent whose contact details she found on the billboard, Susan found herself on a plane, bound for Kuwait.

She was excited at the prospect of earning up to 250,000 CFA francs (420 dollars) a month. That is what the agent had told her, and it was a mouth-watering sum compared with the roughly 75 dollars she would have been earning in Cameroon, if she had a job.

“We work in liaison with companies in the Middle East, so that when these ladies go, they don’t start looking for jobs,” Ernest Kongnyuy, an agent in Yaounde told IPS.

But the story changed dramatically when Susan, along with 46 other Cameroonian girls, arrived in Kuwait on Nov. 8, 2013.

“We were herded off to a small room. There were many other girls there: Ghanaians, Nigerians and Tunisians,” then “bidders came and we were sold off like property.”

Susan was taken away by an Egyptian man. “I think I got a taste of hell in his house,” she says, tears streaming down her cheeks.

She would begin work at five in the morning and go to bed after midnight, very often sleeping without having eaten.

Very frequently, she tells IPS, the man tried to rape her but when she threatened to report the case to the police, she met with a wry response from her tormentor. “He told me he would pay the police to rape me and then kill me, and the case wouldn’t go anywhere.”

Cut off from all communication with the outside world, Susan says that she found solace only in God. “I prayed … I cried out to God for help,” she recalls.

Susan’s is not an isolated case. Brenda, another Cameroonian lucky enough to escape, has a similar story. She had to wash the pets of her master, which included cats and snakes.

“I was sharing the same toilet with cats … I called them my brothers, because they were the only “persons” with whom I conversed.”

Pushed to the limits, both girls told their employers that they were not ready to work any longer. Brenda says that when she insisted, she was thrown out of the house.

“At that time I was frail, I was actually dying and I didn’t know where to go.” After trekking for two days, she found the Central African Republic’s embassy and slept for two days in front of it before she was rescued.

Susan was locked in the boot of a car and taken to the agent who had brought her from the airport.

“Events moved so fast and I found myself spending one week in immigration prison and an additional three days in deportation prison,” she says.

When both girls were finally put on a flight bound for Cameroon, all their property had been seized, except for their passports and the clothes they were wearing.

The scale of the problem is troubling. According to the 2013 Walk Free Global Index of Slavery, about three-quarters of a million people are enslaved in the Middle East and North Africa.

The report indicates that for the past seven years, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia have been ranked as Tier 3 countries for human trafficking and labour abuses. Tier 3 countries are those whose governments do not fully comply with the minimum standards in human trafficking and are not making significant efforts to do so.

Apart from Africa, people from India, Nepal, Eritrea, Uzbekistan, etc. … “migrate voluntarily for domestic work, convinced of the employment agencies’ promises of lucrative jobs,” said the report.

“Upon entering the country, they find themselves deceived and enslaved – within the bounds of a legal sponsorship system.”

Susan and Brenda are now back home, but they are suffering from the trauma of their horrible experience in Kuwait.

The Trauma Centre for Victims of Human Trafficking in Cameroon has been working to bring relief to the women. “We try to make them feel at home,” says Beatrice Titanji, National Vice-President of the Centre.

“They have been exposed to bad treatment. They have been called animals. They have been told they stink, and when they enter the car or a room, a spray is used to take away the supposed odour … I just can’t fathom seeing my child treated like that,” she told IPS.

She called on the government to investigate and prosecute the agents, create jobs and mount guard at airports to discourage Cameroonians from going to look for jobs in the Middle East.

Edited by Phil Harris   

Bienvienue Taguieke, now 15, who refused to be sold into marriage when she was 12 for the equivalent of 8.5 dollars. Credit: Ngala Killian Chimtom/IPS

By Ngala Killian Chimtom
MAROUA, Cameroon, Jun 10 2015 (IPS)

Twelve-year-old Bienvienue Taguieke was expected to obey her parents and marry a man 40 years her senior, but an association of women in Cameroon’s Far North Region, where child marriages are rife, put a stop to it in a sign that women are starting to speaking out against the practice.

“I was a pupil at a government school in Guidimdaz, a village in the Mokolo area of the Far North Region when a man offered 5,000 CFA francs (around 8.50 dollars) to my mother for my hand in marriage. I refused and alerted some people including the headmistress of my school,” Bienvienue, now 15, told IPS.

Bienvienue believes her mother had considered the offer for economic reasons. “I think my mother wanted to sell me because of poverty. My father had died and there was nobody to pay my school fees and take care of us,” she says.“My daughter will not suffer like me. I will do everything to keep her in school. I am appealing to government to outlaw early marriages, so that girls can go to school, and get married only after their studies” – 15-year-old Nabila who succeeded in escaping from her marital home

However, the school’s headmistress, Asta Djarmi, begged Bienvienue’s mother not to give her daughter away to a much older man. “The headmistress stopped the marriage arrangement my mother had initiated, then the people of ALDEPA, a local civic group campaigning against child marriages, intervened and repaid the 5,000 CFA franc “dowry” to this man. They are also the ones paying my school fees today,” says the grateful schoolgirl.

The 15-year-old says she dreamt of becoming a teacher, and that getting married as a child could have ended that dream. Now that she not had to do so has revived that dream.

Hers is not an isolated case of resistance in the region. Across the Far North Region, teenage girls are resisting what they consider a hurtful culture.  In neighbouring Zilling village, for example, 15-year-old Nabila succeeded in escaping from her marital home.

“I was forced by my parents into marrying an elderly man two years ago when I was only 13. I lived in the man’s house for 14 painful days. I felt as if an evil spirit was haunting me and I decided to run away,” the young girl recalled.

But those 14 days left her pregnant, and the teenager now raises the child by herself. Ironically, the man she was coerced to marry has now filed a court case against her, demanding that Nabila return to her marital home.

“I can’t do that,” she insists. “Not for anything in the world.” The premature marriage spoiled her chances of becoming the nurse she had wanted to be and now Nabila insists that she will never let her daughter go through the same trauma.

“My daughter will not suffer like me. I will do everything to keep her in school. I am appealing to government to outlaw early marriages, so that girls can go to school, and get married only after their studies.”

ALDEPA is now providing legal assistance to the teenage mother, and a senior official of the association, Henri Adjini, told IPS that it is currently paying the school fees of 87 teenagers rescued from early marriages.

Adjini said that forced marriages were part of the culture of the local Mafa and the Kapsiki tribes, explaining that parents marry off their daughters in exchange for dowry payments in the form of money, livestock or goods.

“The wish to strengthen family ties and friendships is very important for people here and they believe marrying off their daughters could do just that. Some other parents simply use their daughters to pay off their debts … the young woman’s choice hardly counts here,” he told IPS.

Marrying daughters off is an income-generating strategy in Cameroon, where almost one-third of the country’s 22 million people are poor, according to the United Nations.

In fact, according to the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), there is a relationship between early marriage and poverty in the Central African country, with 71 percent of child brides coming from poor households. Figures from the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) for 2014 show that 31 percent of teenage girls in the Far North Region fall prey to early marriages.

Cameroon’s Minister of Women’s Empowerment and the Family, Marie Therese Abena Ondoa has publicly condemned these marriages, saying that it is “immoral to sell out girls as if they were property.”

Child marriage is not unique to Cameroon, however. Many countries in the region and in the world face similar, or even worse case scenarios.

According to a 2013 UNFPA report, two out of five girls under the age of 18 are married in West and Central Africa. The worst culprit is Niger with 75 percent of child marriages – the highest rate in the world – followed by Chad with 72 percent and Guinea with 63 percent.

Like most governments in the region, Cameroon does little to protect these girls. The legal minimum age of marriage in Cameroon is only 15 years for girls, and 18 years for boys.  Even then, the legal requirement that marriage should only be contracted between two consenting partners is hardly enforced.

Minister Ondoua has helped launch advocacy campaigns and collaborated with NGOs, community and religious leaders in rural areas to educate the population, but she has not been able to convince government to raise the legal marriage age.

Nevertheless, the campaigns have been bearing fruit, with many girls saying “no” to family attempts to sell them off.

Girls like Abba Mairamou who resisted her father’s attempt to sell her off at the age of 12, are a living testimony to this success.

“I was only 12-years-old when my father pulled me out of primary school in 2004 to offer me to his friend as a wife. I refused and my father got angry and wanted to send me away from the house. I was desperate until I was, introduced to the association that fights against violence towards women in Maroua,” Abba says.

“Later, my father was invited to a meeting and he was persuaded to be opposed to early and involuntary marriage .This completely changed my father and me. I not only refused to be a victim of involuntary marriage, but today, I am a fighter against it.”

Abba formed the Association for the Autonomy and the Rights of Girls, known by its French acronym ‘APAD’, to sensitise teenage girls and parents in her Zokkok neighbourhood in Maroua against early marriages.

“We now offer shelter to many victims of forced marriages, and many girls are now standing up to that hurtful custom,” she beams.

Edited by Lisa Vives/Phil Harris

There is rising anger among trade unionists, environmentalists and civil society groups in Gabon after a wood company, Rain Forest Management (RFM), sacked 38 fixed-term workers last month in Mbomao, Ogooué-Ivindo province.

RFM, a Gabonese wood processing company with Malaysian investment, is one of several exploiting the rich natural forests in Gabon. The forestry sector is the country’s second source of foreign exchange after oil.

RFM and the woodworkers had been locked in a lengthy dispute over working conditions, lack of contacts and legal working hours, among other complaints.

According to the Entente Syndicale des Travailleurs du Gabon (ENSYTG) union, RFM refused to negotiate with them and workers who were planning to take part in trade union meetings were threatened and intimidated.“Although Gabon’s forests are often described as being relatively undamaged and offering great potential for long-term sustainable timber production, it is clear that industrial forestry within the current policy framework threatens their future integrity and the country’s biodiversity” – Forests Monitor

After numerous threats and charges of intimidation, on Feb. 17, as the employees were returning to work, RFM called on police to evict them from their company-supplied dormitories, claiming that the workers had violated company rules.

The dismissals were linked to worker protests over poor working conditions, unsanitary housing infested with rats, cockroaches and snakes, demands for legal working hours and payment of wages on time.

Léon Mébiame Evoung, president of ENSYTG, told IPS that the workers were simply calling on the company to respect basic rights and provide a pharmacy and an infirmary that should be managed by competent Gabonese health professionals.

RFM failed to meet any of these demands, said the union official. Instead, it decided to execute its earlier threat by firing all protesting workers.

The action has provoked the ire of civil society groups and syndicates, including Building and Wood Workers’ International (BWINT), which is circulating an online petition to help the strikers’ return to their jobs.

Marc Ona Essangui, founder of the environmental NGO Brainforest and president of Environment Gabon, a network of NGOs, told IPS in an online interview that he could not accept such “gross suppression” of workers’ rights. “I have signed up to the call to protect the workers,” he said.

“I strongly protest against the dismissal of these workers, which is clearly linked to their strike action,” he insisted. Such anti-union activities, he added, violate International Labour Office (ILO) conventions 87 and 98 (on freedom of association and the right to organise and bargain collectively, respectively).

Along with other environmentalists in the region, Essangui – who once received a suspended sentence for accusing a presidential ally of exploiting timber, palm oil and rubber in Gabon’s “favourable agri-climate” – is troubled by risks to the region’s natural forests due to development activities.

The Gabonese government and international donors, however, regard the exploitation of timber as central to the country’s macroeconomic development.

According to Forests Monitor, an NGO that supports forest-dependent people, “although Gabon’s forests are often described as being relatively undamaged and offering great potential for long-term sustainable timber production, it is clear that industrial forestry within the current policy framework threatens their future integrity and the country’s biodiversity.”

The NGO notes that “production levels are already considerably above the official sustainable production estimates and are set to continue rising”, meaning that “the contribution which forestry sector revenues make to the country’s population as a whole and to people living in the locality of forestry operations is questionable.”

On its website, the World Resources Institute (WRI) notes that “nowhere is the pressure (on resources) more intense than in Gabon, a nation with 80 percent of its territory covered by dense tropical forest. With resource use demands spiralling in recent years, Gabon urgently needs better forest management planning if the government is to achieve its goal of becoming an emerging economy while preserving the country’s natural resources.”

RFM’s woodworking factory lies at the centre of three national parks – Lope, Crystal Mountain, and Ivindo – and to the east of Libreville. The park area is a small fraction of the land marked for development on a WRI map. The wood used by RFM is locally sourced.

Established in 2008, RFM produces windows and doors for the Gabonese domestic market. It exports semi-finished products to Asia, Europe and the Middle East. The company employs more than 700 workers, with a Gabonese majority.

Since November 2009, when log exports were banned, the formal economy production of processed wood has increased significantly.

According to a WRI report titled ‘A First Look at Logging in Gabon’, compiled by seven Gabonese environmental organisations, “Gabon has vast forest resources, but rapid growth of logging activity may threaten those resources. If managed properly, Gabon’s forests could offer long-term revenues without compromising the ecosystems’ natural functions.”

However, the authors continued, “(we) found information about forest development unreliable, inconsistent, and very difficult to obtain. We believe that more public information will promote accountability and transparency and favour the implementation of commitments made to manage and protect the world’s forests, which would significantly slow forest degradation around the world.”

Edited by Lisa Vives/Phil Harris    

A video ad is being screened before every match at the Africa Cup of Nations currently under way in Equatorial Guinea. Part of African Football Against Hunger, a joint initiative by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the Confederation of African Football (CAF), it shows a player dribbling a football, taking a shot and scoring – the winning kick is a metaphor for ending hunger in Africa by 2025.

“Football, like no other game, brings people together, within nations and across country lines. It’s exactly this type of coming together we need to reach the goal of zero hunger in Africa,” FAO Director of Communications Mario Lubetkin told IPS in an online interview.

As part of the African Football Against Hunger campaign, a video ad is being featured at matches throughout the 2015 African Cup of Nations tournament in Equatorial Guinea. Credit: FAO

“Our aim is to harness the popularity of football to raise awareness of the ongoing fight against hunger on the continent, and to rally support for home-grown initiatives that harness Africa’s economic successes to fund projects that help communities in areas struggling with food insecurity and build resilient livelihoods,” he explained.

Last year, African governments came together and undertook to wipe out chronic hunger among their peoples by 2025, in line with the United Nations’ Zero Hunger campaign.

Hunger in Africa is pervasive.  In 2014, some 227 million people across the continent suffered from hunger. According to FAO’s 2014 ‘State of Food Insecurity in the World’ report, one in four people across sub-Saharan Africa are undernourished.“Football, like no other game, brings people together, within nations and across country lines. It’s exactly this type of coming together we need to reach the goal of zero hunger in Africa” – Mario Lubetkin, FAO Director of Communications

And despite its vast fertile lands and a youth bulge, Africa continuous to spend over 40 billion dollars every year on food imports, according to Tumusiime Rhoda Peace, Commissioner for Rural Economy and Agriculture for the African Union Commission (AUC).

“The fact that the continent’s population is growing means that while Africa has made progress in hunger eradication over the last decade, the total number of hungry people on the continent has risen. This brings additional urgency to fund home-grown solutions that allow families and communities to strengthen food security and build resilient livelihoods,” Lubetkin told IPS.

Placing a more direct link between football and the fight against hunger, he said adequate nutrition is essential to both cognitive and physical development and to achieving one’s goals – none of the players in the cup would be able to perform at the level they do without adequate nutrition.

“The human potential that is lost by persistent hunger is still immense. It is in the interest of everybody to join forces to make hunger history. Fighting hunger is a team sport – we need everybody to get involved,” he explained.

It is estimated that over 650 million people worldwide will be watching the African Cup of Nations, which this year sees teams from Algeria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, D.R. Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Senegal, South Africa, Tunisia and Zambia competing for the trophy from Jan. 17 to Feb. 8.

The initiators of the African Football Against Hunger campaign hope that with the enormous number of people exposed to the campaign, more citizens will become engaged in the struggle against hunger.

“History shows that when citizens are engaged governments are encouraged to allocate funding to hunger eradication,” Lubetkin said. “Citizen engagement also often leads communities to come together to find innovative solutions for shared problems.”

He went on to explain that football events are also being used to spread the message about the work of the Africa Solidarity Trust Fund for Food Security, which was set up by African leaders in 2013, and to encourage countries to become involved in the Fund as donors, project partners and sources of local knowledge.

“The on-the-ground work is done through the Fund, through projects that increase youth employment, improve resource management, make livelihoods more resilient and eradicate hunger by building sustainable food production.”

So far the Fund has leveraged 40 million dollars from African countries to empower communities in 30 countries by building job opportunities for young people, help them use their available resources better and bounce back quicker in situations of crisis.

FAO and the Fund are complementing the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAAADP), a continent-wide initiative to boost agricultural productivity in Africa. Launched by governments 10 years ago, CAADP has been instrumental in bringing agriculture back to the discussion table as a priority sector, according to Komla Bissi, Senior CAADP Advisor at the AUC.

“Our governments are recommitting resources, and it’s time to bring the private sector on board,” he told IPS. He said 43 of Africa’s 54 countries have so far committed to the process; 40 have signed the CAADP compact and 30 of them have developed agriculture sector investment plans.

“The job of eradicating hunger and making food production sustainable is a long-haul game and these ongoing projects – along with future ones – are the seeds of progress in the fight against hunger,” Lubetkin concluded.

Edited by Phil Harris    

A group of Nigerian refugees rests in the Cameroon town of Mora, in the Far North Region, after fleeing armed attacks by Boko Haram insurgents on Sep. 13, 2014. Credit: UNHCR / D. Mbaoirem

By Ngala Killian Chimtom
MAROUA, Far North Region, Jan 14 2015 (IPS)

“I’d quit my job before going to work in a place like that.” That is how a primary school teacher responded when IPS asked him why he had not accepted a job in Cameroon’s Far North region.

James Ngoran is not the only teacher who has refused to move to the embattled area bordering Nigeria where Boko Haram has been massing and launching lightning strike attacks on the isolated region.“I looked at my kids and lovely wife and knew a bullet or bomb could get them at any time. We had to run away to safer environments. " -- Mahamat Abba

“Many teachers posted or transferred to the Far North Region simply don’t take up their posts. They are all afraid for their lives,” Wilson Ngam, an official of the Far North Regional Delegation for Basic Education, tells IPS. He said over 200 trained teachers refused to take up their posts in the region in 2014.

Raids by the Boko Haram insurgents in the Far North Region have created a cycle of fear and uncertainty, making teachers posted here balk at their responsibility, and forcing those on the ground to bribe their way out of “the zone of death.”

Last week, Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau threatened Cameroon in a video message on YouTube, warning that the same fate would befall the country as neighbouring Nigeria. He addressed his message directly to Cameroonian President Paul Biya after repeated fighting between militants and troops in the Far North.

Shekau was reported killed in September by Cameroonian troops – a report that later turned out to be untrue.

As the Nigerian sect intensifies attacks on Cameroonian territory, government has been forced to close numerous schools. According to Mounouna Fotso, a senior official in the Cameroon Ministry of Secondary Education, over 130 schools have already been shut down.

Most of the schools are found in the Mayo-Tsanaga, Mayo-Sava and Logone and Chari Divisions-all areas which share a long border with Nigeria, and where the terrorists have continued to launch attacks.

“Government had to temporarily close the schools and relocate the students and teachers. The lives of thousands of students and pupils have been on the line as Boko Haram continues to attack. We can’t put the lives of children at risk,” Fotso said.

“We are losing students each time there is an attack on a village even if it is several kilometres from here,” Christophe Barbah, a schoolmaster in the Far North Region’s Kolofata area, said in a press interview.

The closure of schools and the psychological trauma experienced by teachers and students raises concerns that the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) on education will be missed in Cameroon’s Far North Region.

Although both government and civil society agree that universal primary education could attained by the end of this year in the country’s south, the 49 percent school enrolment rate in the Far North Region, compared to the national average of 83 percent, according to UNICEF, means a lot of work still needs to be done here.

Mahamat Abba, a resident of Fotocol whose four children used to attend one of the three government schools there, has fled with his entire family to Kouseri on the border with Chad.

“I looked at my kids and lovely wife and knew a bullet or bomb could get them at any time. We had to run away to safer environments. But starting life afresh here is a nightmare, having abandoned everything,” he told IPS.

Alhadji Abakoura, a resident of Amchidé, adds that the area has virtually become a ghost town. “The town had six primary schools and a nursery school. They have all been closed down.”

Overcrowded schools

As students, teachers and parents relocate to safer grounds, pressure is mounting on schools, which have to absorb the additional students with no additional funds.

According to UNICEF figures for Cameroon, school participation for boys topped 90 percent in 2013, while girls lagged behind at 85 percent or less. However, participation has been much lower in the extreme northern region.

According to the Institut National de la Statistique du Cameroon, literacy is below 40 percent in the Far North, 40 to 50 percent in the North, and 60-70 percent in the central north state of Adamawa. The Millennium Development Goal is full primary schooling for both sexes by 2015.

“Many of us are forced to follow lectures from classroom windows since there is practically very limited sitting space inside,” Ahmadou Saidou, a student of Government Secondary School Maroua, tells IPS. He had escaped from Amchidé where a September attack killed two students and a teacher.

Ahmadou said the benches on which three students once sat are now used by double that number.

“It’s an issue of great concern,” Mahamat Ahamat, the regional delegate for basic education, tells IPS.

“In normal circumstances, each classroom should contain a maximum of 60 students. But we are now in a situation where a single classroom hosts over one hundred and thirty students,” he said. “We are redeploying teachers who flee risk zones…we are getting them over to schools where students are fleeing to.

“These attacks are really slowing things down,’ Mahamat said.

Government response to the crisis

The Nigerian-based sect Boko Haram has intensified attacks on Cameroon in recent years, killing both civilians and military personnel and kidnapping nationals and expatriates in exchange for ransoms.

To respond to the crisis, Cameroon has come up with military and legal reforms. A new military region was set up in the country’s Far North Region. According to Defence Minister Edgar Alain Mebe Ngo’o, “The creation of the 4th Military Region is meant to bring the military closer to the theatre of threats, and to boost the operational means in both human and material resources.”

Military equipment has been supplied by the U.S., Germany and Israel, according to press reports.

Mebe Ngo’oo said Cameroon will recruit 20,000 soldiers over the next two years to step up the fight against the terrorists. Besides the military option, Cameroon has also come up with a legal framework to streamline the fight against terrorism. An anti-terrorism law was passed by Parliament in December, punishing all those guilty of terrorist acts by death.

But opposition political leaders, civil society activists and church leaders have criticised it as anti-democratic and fear it is actually intended to curtail civil liberties.

Edited by Lisa Vives

Legislators in Cameroon have voted in a draft law proposing the death sentence for all those guilty of carrying out, abetting or sponsoring acts of terrorism. The draft law, which is now being examined by the Cameroon Senate, call for punishment acts of terrorism committed by citizens, either individually or in complicity, with death.

The draft law also prescribes the death penalty for persons who carry out “any activity which can lead to a general revolt of the population or disturb the normal functioning of the country” and for “anyone who supplies arms, war equipment, bacteria and viruses with the intention of killing.”

The same applies for people guilty of kidnapping with terrorist intent, as well as for “anyone who directly or indirectly finances acts of terrorism” and for “anyone who recruits citizens with the aim of carrying out acts of terrorism.”“This [anti-terrorism] law is manifestly against the fundamental liberties and rights of the Cameroonian people … In the guise of fighting terrorism, the government’s real intent is to stifle political dissent” – Kah Wallah, leader of the Cameroon People’s Party

The draft law also punishes people and companies found guilty of promoting terrorism, as well as people who give false testimony to administrative and judicial authorities in matters of terrorism, with various fines and prison terms.

The anti-terrorism law has sparked a wave of criticism across the political chessboard – from opposition political leaders to civil society, church ministers and trade unions.

“This law is designed to terrorise the people and kill their freedoms,” opposition leader, John Fru Ndi told IPS.

Kah Wallah, the lone female leader of a political party in Cameroon [the Cameroon People’s Party], added that “the government is taking us back to the worst days of the most barbaric dictatorship … This law is manifestly against the fundamental liberties and rights of the Cameroonian people … In the guise of fighting terrorism, the government’s real intent is to stifle political dissent.”

For Maurice Kamto, a former cabinet minister who resigned to form the Movement for the Revival of Cameroon (MRC), President Paul Biya – now in power for 32 years – is afraid of any popular up-rising that could put his stay in power in jeopardy.

“The president has certainly learnt from the lessons coming from Burkina Faso. A similar uprising here will sweep his failed presidency under the carpet,” he said. Facing mounting pressure, President Blaise Compaoré of Burkina Faso was forced to resign on Oct. 31 after 27 years in office.

Various opposition political leaders and civil society exponents have vowed to fight the proposed law to its logical end. “Cameroonians must resist and say no to this other manoeuvre … We will fight this law by every means,” Ndi said, without elaborating.

However, Jean Mark Bikoko,  president of the Public Service Workers’ Trade Union, already has an idea on how to proceed. In a strongly-worded statement released on Dec. 3, Bikoko said that the law “is a veritable declaration of war against the people … The anti-terrorism law has provoked the ire of civil society and we will protest on December 10 – International Human Rights Day.”

But the government has said it will not falter in the fight against terrorism. Justice Minister Laurent Esso told MPs that “Cameroon will never be complicit to those whose only agenda is to cause mayhem and destabilise the normal functioning of the state.”

Counting the costs

In the north of the country, Cameroon’s military are combating cross-border raids by Nigeria’s militant Islamist group Boko Haram. On May 17, President Biya along with other regional leaders and French President François Holland said they were declaring war against Boko Haram.

Cameroon has since deployed thousands of troops in the country’s Far North Region and plans to send still more troops. Defence Minister Edgar Alain Mebe Ngo’o and Delegate General for National Security Martin Mbarga Nguele have announced that some 20,000 defence and security forces will be recruited within the next two years to reinforce the fight against Boko Haram.

However, as the security crisis in the country continues to worsen, Cameroonian authorities have been counting the costs, not only in terms of human loss, but also in terms of the impacts of the crisis on the economy.

During a special parliamentary plenary session on Nov. 27, Ngo’o said that since the crisis escalated eight months ago, Cameroon has so far lost some forty soldiers, but killed about one thousand Boko Haram fighters. “Our defence forces have simply been formidable,” he said.

But the economic costs of the war are heavy. According to the Minister of the Economy, Planning and Regional Development, Emmanuel Nganou Djoumessi, “the most affected sectors have been the tourism, transport, trade, agriculture and livestock sectors.”

He said  that “almost all tourism enterprises have been shut down, the number of tourists visiting attraction parks like the Waza National Park and the Rhumsiki Mountains have gone down drastically, and the hotel occupation rate has dropped from 50 percent before the crisis to just 10 percent today.”

In addition, there has been a sharp drop in customs revenue. Although customs officials have not tallied the losses, they say they are astronomical.

“There was a border custom post in the Far North Region that used to give us a monthly income of CFA 700 million (1.4 million dollars).That customs post has been closed down. Can you imagine what the state is losing yearly in customs revenue? It’s enormous,” said the Director-General of Customs, Lissette Libom Li-Likeng.

Government spokesman and Communication Minister Issa Tchiroma Bakary told journalists in Yaounde that in view of the human, economic and psychological losses that Cameroon has been incurring as a result of Boko Haram, a stringent law is necessary to contain the militant group.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

According to an African proverb, “every woman who gives birth has one foot on her grave.” Cameroonians are attempting to make this proverb a historical fact and not a present reality through SMS technology. Credit: Mercedes Sayagues/IPS

By Ngala Killian Chimtom
YAOUNDE, Sep 23 2014 (IPS)

“You can’t measure the joy in my heart,” Marceline Duba, from Lagdo in Cameroon’s Far North Region, tells IPS as she holds her grandson in her arms.  

“I am pretty sure we could have lost this child, and perhaps my daughter, if this medical doctor hadn’t shown up,” Duba says, a smile sweeping her face.

The medic in question is Dr Patrick Okwen. He is the coordinator of M-Health, a project sponsored by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) that uses mobile technology to increase access to healthcare services to communities “when they most need it.”

The World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends that a nurse or doctor should see a maximum of 10 patients a day. But according to Tetanye Ekoe, the vice president of the National Order of Medical Doctors in Cameroon, “the doctor-to-patient ratio in Cameroon stands at one doctor per 40,000 inhabitants, and in remote areas such as the Far North and Eastern Regions, the ratio is closer to one doctor per 50,000 inhabitants.”

Okwen was in Lagdo testing out the SMS system, which was just implemented a few months back, when Duba’s daughter, Sally Aishatou, went into labour.

Okwen and the medical staff at the Lagdo District Hospital received an SMS from Aishatou. She had been in labour for 48 hours with no signs that the baby was about to come.

“What happens when a woman SMSes a particular number, the GPS location blinks on the server, and then the server tries to identify her location, puts it on Google maps; then tells the driver to go there. [The system] also tells the doctor to come to the hospital; tells the nurses to get ready. So everybody gets into motion,” he tells IPS.

Okwen and the ambulance driver traced Aishatou to her home. They found her lying helpless on a mat, almost passed out. By the time the ambulance returned to the hospital, the operation room was ready for her and she was taken into surgery immediately.

Eight minutes later, her 4.71 kg baby boy was born. The midwife Manou nee Djakaou tells IPS: “The joy in me is so great that I don’t even know how to express it. I am so exited; very happy. This system put in place is very efficient. But for this innovation, we stood to lose this baby and its mother.”

Two hours after surgery, Aishatou regained consciousness and named her boy after Okwen.

According to the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF), out of every 100,000 live births 670 women in Cameroon die. UNICEF figures also state that for every 1,000 live births, 61 infants died in Cameroon in 2012.

“Many women are dying from child-birth related issues. Women are dying while giving life. And this is something we are really concerned about, but we also know that with the coming of mobile technology, there is hope for women in Africa,” Okwen says.

“Most of the women in Africa today have access to a telephone. It could be her own, her husband’s own, or a neighbour’s. So if we had a way in which women could reach an ambulance using a phone that would guide the ambulance, it could indeed present hope for African women,” he explains.

Okwen says the project has benefitted “close to one hundred women in terms of information, evacuation, arrangements of hospital visits, deliveries and caesarean sections.”

The project has been dubbed “Tsamounde”, which means hope in the local Fufuldé language.

Mama Abakai, the Mayor of Lagdo, says the project’s impact has been far reaching.

“A lot of our sisters, wives and mothers in rural areas lose their lives and suffer a lot, because there is a communication gap, and a problem of rapid intervention and assistance. With this system, it suffices to send an SMS or a simple beep, and all the actors involved in saving lives are mobilised…its formidable,” Abakai tells IPS.

Dr. Martina Baye of Cameroon’s Ministry of Public Health calls the project a “revolution in Cameroon’s health care delivery system.”

She says that as a majority of women in the country’s far North Region have little access to healthcare services, the M-Health Project comes as a huge relief.

According to the 2010 Population census, the Far North Region has a population of three million people, 52 percent of whom are women.

“We look forward to using this technology in other parts of the country,” she tells IPS.

Edited by: Nalisha Adams

The writer can be contacted at: https://www.facebook.com/ngala.killian

Coffee beans, freshly picked and ready for drying. Credit: Will Boase/IPS

By Ngala Killian Chimtom
KOUOPTOMO, Cameroon, Aug 5 2014 (IPS)

Issah Mounde Nsangou combs his 6.5-hectare Kouoptomo coffee plantation in Cameroon’s West Region, pulling up unwanted weeds and clipping off parasitic plants. For the 50-year-old farmer, the health of his coffee plants are of prime importance.

“I have to prune the farm to make it neat. This will obviously yield good gains,” he tells IPS. Kouoptomo is traditionally a coffee farming village, but like other production basins in this Central African country, production has been on a continuous decline.

Twenty years ago, Nsangou would harvest about 4.8 tonnes (about 80 bags) of coffee from the land. Not anymore.

“Last year, I did not even harvest up to 20 bags,” he says.Coffee contributes about six percent to the country’s GNP and constitutes a lifeline for some 400,000 farmers. The current efforts are intended to raise production to about 120,000 tonnes by 2015.

Coffee production in Cameroon has been plummeting over the years, falling by 56 percent in 2013, with farmers harvesting a mere 16,142 tonnes. It was a dramatic decline from the over 38,000 tonnes harvested the previous year. But the 2012 harvest only represents a third of the 1986 harvest of 140,000 tonnes, according to the Interprofessional Council for the Cocoa and Coffee (CICC) in Cameroon.

Omer Maledy Gaetan, executive secretary of CICC here, points out that Cameroon used to be one of the biggest coffee producers in the world.

“In 1980, we were ranked the 8th [as a] world coffee producer. In 1992, when we liberalised the sector, Cameroon was ranked 12th in the world. Today, we are ranked as 30th,” he tells IPS.

The reasons for the downward trend are many and varied. According to Gaetan, the costs of inputs like fertilisers spiked in the wake of the government’s decision to eliminate subsidies and price protections for the sector in the 1990s.

The increased costs of production, coupled with low market prices at the time, discouraged farmers, many of whom turned to food crop cultivation instead.

“Without fertilisers, insecticides, fungicides and sprayers, it was hard for many farmers to sustain their farms,” Nsangou says.

In addition, farmers complain that erratic rainfall and the absence of technical advice from extension services have combined to hampered the sector.

Still, many are returning to their farms, despite the setbacks.

Issah Mounde Nsangou’s son helps him to weed his Kouoptomo coffee plantation in Cameroon’s West Region. Cameroon is now looking to revive the once-thriving sector. Credit: Ngala Killian Chimtom/IPS

A Ray of Hope

With world demand for coffee rising by about three percent every year, Cameroon is now looking to revive the once-thriving sector. The CICC has launched a project known as “New Generation”, which to attract youths into a sector currently sustained by ageing farmers and ageing farms.

Gaetan explains that “New Generation is a programme for youths. In this programme, we introduce 200 young people every year, and we give them support over three years. From next year, we will be having 600 young people every year. That gives me hope that we will re-launch this sector. It is necessary not only to renew the farms, but also to bring in fresh blood into the sector.”

In February the European Union and Cameroon signed a 30-million euro agreement to boost coffee production here, as part of the “Coffee Sector Re-Start Emergency Plan”. Gaetan says the six-year project that begins this year “aims to get the sector out of its misery, and will involve supporting farmers in a variety of ways.”

He says the objective is to create 3,600 hectares of coffee plantations in six years.

“We will supply farmers with everything they need, except labour,” he says.

”We will supply them with inputs necessary to create plantations; from setting up the nursery to setting up the infrastructure to control post-harvest losses.”

He says the first three years will focus on creating 2,200 hectares of coffee plantations in the production basins of the Upper-Nyong in East Region; Moungo, along the coast; and Noun in West Region.

According to the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Essimi Menye coffee remains a key crop that could contribute to Cameroon’s planned development by 2035.

It contributes about six percent to the country’s GNP and constitutes a lifeline for some 400,000 farmers. He says the current efforts are intended to raise production to about 120,000 tonnes by 2015.

Still, current efforts to boost production may not adequately benefit farmers if added value is not brought into the sector. The CCIC says only five percent of Cameroon’s coffee is transformed locally, thereby depriving farmers of a significant mark-up in income.

“Value-addition is the best thing that can happen to coffee farmers and the coffee sector,” Peter Fonguh Minnang, marketing director of the North West Cooperative Association — a farmer’s cooperative involved in coffee marketing, tells IPS.

“If we can transform our coffee, the farm-gate price will automatically go up, because if a kilogram of parchment sells for CFA 500 [about one dollar], we will be paying the farmer at least CFA 1500 [about three dollars] for the same parchment when [value is added],” he explains.

Justifying why it is necessary for Cameroonians to renew their faith in the coffee sector, Gaetan recently told journalists in Yaounde that “all the data and analyses confirm that the future of the global coffee industry is rather promising.”

Edited by: Nalisha Adams

The writer can be contacted at: https://www.facebook.com/ngala.killian

Sheik Oumarou Malam Djibring, a member of Cameroon’s Council of Imams, called on the country’s Muslims to be vigilant against the extremist group Boko Haram and to report any strange and suspicious-looking individuals. Credit: Ngala Killian Chimtom/IPS

By Ngala Killian Chimtom
YAOUNDE, Jul 31 2014 (IPS)

Motari Hamissou used to get along well with his pupils at the government primary school in Sabga, an area in Bamenda, the capital of Cameroon’s North West Region.

In the past, Hamissou also lived in peace with his neighbours. No one was bothered by his long, thick beard or the veil his wife, Aisha Hamissou, wore, or the religion they followed.

According to the 2010 general population census, Muslims constitute 24 percent of this Central African nation’s 21 million people, most of whom live in Cameroon’s Far North, North and Adamawa Regions; all on the border with Nigeria. Cameroon’s north western boarder runs along the length of Nigeria’s eastern boarder, stretching all the way to Nigeria’s predominantly Muslim north — a stronghold of the Nigerian extremist group, Boko Haram.

But the intermittent attacks and abductions perpetrated by Boko Haram in Cameroon’s North West Region has destroyed the peace and accord that Hamissou enjoyed with his pupils and neighbours.

The most recent attack by the group was on Jul. 27 when the wife of Cameroon’s Vice Prime Minister Amadou Ali was kidnapped in the northern town of Kolofata. The group is said to have increased its attacks from Nigeria into neighbouring Cameroon. Since the group first took up arms five years ago for a Muslim state in Nigeria, more than, some 12,000 people in that West African nation have died in the crisis, according to figures from Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan.

Now Hamissou’s own pupils call him “Boko Haram” in reference to the group. The name, Boko Haram, means “Western education is a sin” in the local Nigerian dialect, Hausa.

“They see our beards or the veils our wives [wear] and immediately link us to the sect,” Hamissou tells IPS.

“I am a teacher. I teach Western education. How can I teach Western education and at the same time say that it is forbidden? That’s incomprehensible,” he adds.

Arlette Dainadi, a 12-year-old schoolgirl who attends the same primary school that Hamissou teaches at, tells IPS some of her peers have gone as far as taking off her veil and shouting: “Boko Haram! Boko Haram!”

Aisha Hamissou tells IPS that even adults have taken to name-calling.

“I can’t move and interact freely with other people without being called names. People call me Boko Haram,” she explains, almost bursting into tears.

In a concerted effort to distance themselves from the extremist group, Muslim groups and leaders in Cameroon, including the Association of Muslim Students and the Cameroon Council of Imams, have been organising workshops, seminars and public demonstrations to sensitise the general public about their stance against the extremist sect.

Sheik Oumarou Malam Djibring, a member of Cameroon’s Council of Imams, tells IPS that Boko Haram’s campaign against Western education, as well as the atrocities it exacts on innocent people, has nothing to do with Islam.

“Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance. Departing from these precepts is actually against Islam,” he says.

Members of the Cameroon Council of Imams and Muslim leaders have embraced “Boko Halal”,”an Hausa idiomatic expression which means education is allowed or permitted as contained in the Quran.

Islamic teacher and religious leader Sheik Abu Oumar Bin Ali tells IPS that Muslim scholars have been major drivers of education.

“Abu Ja’far Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi was a leading Muslim scholar who founded the branch of mathematics known as algebra… So it’s stupid for anyone to link Muslim with a hatred for Western education,” he says.

But Ahmadou Moustapha, a traditional Muslim ruler in Cameroon’s Far North Region, tells IPS that Boko Haram has definitely been recruiting young Muslims in the region.

“They come here and forcefully whisk away our young people,” Moustapha explains.

“I believe they go and intoxicate them with their hate beliefs.”

According to Professor Souaibou Issa, from the University of Ngaoundere in Cameroon’s Adamawa Region, the group is even more dangerous because “you never know what their linkages are, you don’t know what exactly their focus is, and you don’t know who the actors are. There is widespread suspicion, and the states are fighting invisible enemies.”

Mallam Djibring called on the country’s Muslims to be vigilant and report any strange and suspicious-looking individuals.

Editing by: Nalisha Adams

Kids from a poor neighbourhood in Yaounde, Cameroon’s capital, kick around a football. They are excited ahead of the the FIFA World Cup, for which Cameroon has qualified a record seven times. Courtesy: Ngala Killian Chimtom

By Ngala Killian Chimtom
YAOUNDE, Jun 11 2014 (IPS)

It is almost 6pm. A group of kids are plying their craft in a dusty, dirty courtyard in a poor neighbourhood in Yaounde, Cameroon’s capital. That craft is football.  They kick the once-white-but-now-brown, aged football around. One child is barefoot, the other wears worn shoes and is dressed in the kit of the national team. 

“I want to play like [Lionel] Messi,” one of kids called Jack tells IPS as his voice rises above the rest of the excited crowd. “I am Eto’o…I am Ronaldo…Pepe…Rooney…,” the kids start shouting, each one of them giving the name of his dream football star.

Samuel Eto’o is Cameroon’s football star, he plays forward for English club Chelsea, and will be leading the national team, known worldwide as the Indomitable Lions, in this year’s FIFA World Cup in Brazil.Football is more than just a game here “it is a religion,” -- sports journalist Fon Echeckiye.

Cristiano Ronaldo, is the famous Portuguese footballer who plays as a forward for Spanish club Real Madrid, and Pepe is the nickname for his fellow club member, Képler Laveran Lima Ferreira. Wayne Rooney is an English football star who punters predict will take the upcoming football world cup by storm.

With just a day to go before the proposed start of the world cup from the Jun. 12 – Jul. 13, Brazilians have begun protests and strikes in demand of higher wages. There have been numerous reports of corruption and rights violations during the public works to prepare for the event.

But here in this Central African nation, the kids are oblivious to this and have big dreams and big ambitions. And this reflects the deeper passions that drive football in Cameroon — a country that will be participating in this year’s World Cup for a record seven times — more than any other African team.

Football is more than just a game here “it is a religion,” sports journalist Fon Echeckiye tells IPS.

A fan of the Indomitable Lions, Cameroon’s national team. This central African nation has qualified for the FIFA World Cup a record seven time. Credit: Ngala Killian Chimtom/IPS

Cameroon for all its football glory has only two standard football stadiums, one in Yaounde and the other in Garoua in the country’s Far North Region. Despite the poor infrastructure here, the love for football runs really deep in Cameroon.

According to the African Economic Outlook, although Cameroon has abundant natural resources “revenues obtained from the exploitation of these resources, and from oil in particular, have not been sufficiently channelled into structural investments in infrastructure and the productive sectors.”

“In our day, each time we were faced with an opponent, we thought about nothing else than the national flag,” Thomas Nkono, the retired ace Cameroon keeper who was once nick-named “the Black Spider,” because of his acrobatic saves, tells IPS.

Of Cameroon’s estimated 20 million people, some 39.9 percent are affected by poverty.

“It was always a good feeling to know that millions of Cameroonians — poor and wretched alike — could abandon their daily bread and butter concerns to support the team. It always gave us an added motivation,” he muses.

That feeling amongst players hasn’t changed much. On the sidelines of the Lions’ last preparatory match for the 2014 FIFA World Cup against Moldova on Saturday, Jun. 7, striker, Achille Webo told IPS “it’s true some of us who play professional football earn a lot of money, but to see crowds like this is not something money can buy. It is highly motivating.”

Ngando Picket, a Lions’ supporter who accompanies the team everywhere, says over the years he’s composed more than three hundred songs in support of the team.

He speaks breathlessly as he strains to sing and dance. Ngando tells IPS: “The boys always need to know that the nation, the people stand behind them and I work daily to fulfil that role. I believe the singing and dancing we put on from the stands fires the boys up and that alone keeps them up to steam.

“We are travelling to Brazil to do so, and I believe Cameroon will create a lot of surprises.”

Across the board, supporters, initially sceptical about the team’s form ahead of the tournament, now seem to have gained in hope, after the tie with Germany in a warm up game.

“That match reminds me of 1990 when the Lions stunned the world with a 1-0 win over Argentina [then holders of the World Cup title] in the opening match of that year’s world cup,” says Benjamin Ngah, a taxi driver in Yaounde. The team eventually became the first African nation to qualify for the quarter final of a world cup tournament.

“I believe we have got the quality to accomplish the same exploit this year, or perhaps go further,” he tells IPS.

Senior defence officials say that Cameroon has been infiltrated by Nigeria’s Islamist extremist group Boko Haram and there are fears that this central African nation, known for its stability, is drifting into chaos.

“Right now, we are being infiltrated by Boko Haram. The military has decided to strengthen the intelligence system to effectively counter this threat, which seems to be gaining local support,” Colonel Didier Badjeck, spokesperson for the Cameroon Ministry of Defence, told IPS.

Governor of Cameroon’s Far North Region, Augustine Awa Fonka, told IPS that the precision with which the extremist group attacked a military post in the region on May 5, lends credence to the fact that the attack was carried out with the help of local informants.“It’s difficult to live in a place where even the rustles of tree leaves jolt you out of a rare sleep, and where you know you and your kids could be killed without warning.” -- Cameroonian El Hadji Numbao

Cameroon’s north western boarder runs along the length of Nigeria’s eastern boarder, stretching all the way to Nigeria’s predominantly Muslim north — a Boko Haram stronghold. In March, the government set up a number of military posts along Cameroon’s northwestern border with Nigeria in response to Boko Haram’s insurgency.

But on 2am, May 5, over 30 suspected Boko Haram insurgents struck the Kousseri military post in Far North Region and killed a Gendarmerie officer and a civilian being held in custody. Several people were wounded as the group freed one of their members, who was also being held at the post.

“In all of the cases [of Boko Haram attacks], especially the attack on the military post, there are quite a number of arrests that have been made. The attack couldn’t have been carried out without local informants and we believe we are going to identify these accomplices,” Awa Fonka said.

He admitted that the attack on the military was spreading fear among locals.

“The forces of law and order are there to protect the population. When they [the military] are now being attacked, it destabilises everyone,” he said.

He described the attackers as “faceless” terrorists would could only be tracked down with help of locals. He added that “every measure will be put in place to track down the attackers, or at least get their accomplices.”

Attacks in Nigeria have also resulted in refugees fleeing to safety in Cameroon. On May 6, Boko Haram — which means “Western Education is a sin” in the local Nigerian dialect, Hausa — raided a market in the Nigerian border town of Gambourou. More than 200 people, including four Cameroonians, died in the attack. Around 3,000 Nigerians, many of whom were wounded during the violence, crossed over to the Cameroonian town of Fotokol.

“The forces of law and order cannot do it alone. They need the population to denounce people of doubtful origin who are in their neighbourhoods. We need to unite, because a nation unified against its enemy is invincible,” Awa Fonka said.

But the readiness of locals to cooperate remains in doubt.

“People are suspicious of each other. You can’t possibly trust even your nextdoor neighbour because you do not know with whom they sit and dine,” Alamine Ousman, a resident of Kousseri, Far North Region, told IPS.

“But we know that Boko Haram members are here among us — they move about like anyone else, and you can’t even tell they are from Boko Haram.”

Many in the region remain afraid for their lives and are reluctant to volunteer any information about Boko Haram’s members.

Hawe Aishatu, who escaped the attacks in the Far North Region and fled to the capital, Yaounde, cast a furtive glance before she spoke in a subdued tone.

“It can mean death talking about these people. They are fundamentally evil,” she told IPS.

The recent attack on the Kousseri military post forced El Hadji Numbao and his family to flee the town. He told IPS that if the insurgents had the nerve to attack military posts, then ordinary people like himself were not safe.

“It’s so scary,” Numbao said just as he stepped off a train at Yaounde station.

“It’s difficult to live in a place where even the rustles of tree leaves jolt you out of a rare sleep, and where you know you and your kids could be killed without warning,” he said.

Adouraman Halirou, a university don and specialist on border issues, told IPS that he feared Cameroon, which frequently prided itself as being a fountain of peace in a troubled African continent, may be drifting into chaos.

He urged the government to make use of all its available human and technical resources to stem the threat.

“The conflicts, the crises and the tensions plaguing the region, particularly Nigeria, have not failed to have repercussions in our country,” Minister of Communications Issa Tchiroma Bakary told IPS.

Military posts have also been set up on the country’s eastern border with Central Africa Republic (CAR) as Cameroon has also faced attack there. In Cameroon’s East Region over 18 locals were kidnapped on May 2 by insurgents from CAR.

“Cameroon is subject to attacks perpetuated from neighbouring countries, and by nationals of those countries,” Tchiroma Bakary added.

Until then Cameroonians like Numbao will continue to flee for safety.

“I have left everything back-my businesses, my cattle…everything. But I am happy my seven children and three wives are safe,” Numbao said. He has relocated to the capital with his entire household.

Téte António, Permanent Observer of the African Union to the UN, briefs the Security Council on the African-led International Support Mission to the Central African Republic (MISCA) on Jan. 6. Credit: UN Photo/Evan Schneider

By Ngala Killian Chimtom
YAOUNDÉ, Cameroon, Jan 13 2014 (IPS)

“I can’t wait to return back home,” Celeste Edjangue, a refugee from the Central African Republic (CAR) now in Cameroon’s East Region, told IPS.

“It’s a wonderful feeling, and I am hopeful this mayhem will finally come to an end, so we can go back home,” said Denise Atteh, another CAR refugee.“You can’t imagine what it means to leave your country, your home and property and run to another country." -- refugee Denise Atteh

Edjangue and Atteh are just two of the 52,000 Central African refugees who have fled sectarian violence in their country.

Their newfound optimism comes in the wake of the resignation of the interim president of the CAR, Michel Djotodia, along with his prime minister, Nicolas Tiangaye. Djotodia had seized power in a March coup.

Both men stepped down on Friday, Jan. 10 during the Extraordinary Summit of the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) held Jan. 9 and 10 in Chad.

“It was long overdue,” Atteh told IPS, a smile on her face.

“You can’t imagine what it means to leave your country, your home and property and run to another country. It’s hard to bear,” she said.

In the capital Bangui, there were celebrations in the streets when the news of Djotodia’s resignation broke.

“People are hopeful that at long last, the killing, the maiming, the horrible bloodshed could be coming to an end,” Cameroon’s interim ambassador to the CAR, Nicolas Nzoyum, told IPS by phone from Bangui.

He said the hopes for a return to peace are heightened by the fact that the Séleka rebels who helped Djotodia to power had long turned against him.

The patience of the international community for Djotodia had also petered out, and he had been under intense pressure to step down.

Announcing Djotodia’s resignation on Jan. 10 in N’Djamena, Chad, Ahmat Allami, secretary-general of the ECCAS, said that “if Djotodia could not succeed in restoring peace, he should make way for someone else.”

Under the Charter of the National Transitional Council or parliament led by Alexandre Ferdinand Nguendet, an interim president to replace Djotodia has to be chosen within 15 days from the day of Djotodia’s departure.

The National Transition Council (NTC), or provisional parliament, will begin consultations on Monday with politicians and civil society members on electing a new interim president.

Deputy NTC speaker Lea Koyassoum Doumtasaid that the new leader “must be someone who can unite Central Africans, restore security, ease tensions, put everybody back to work, and pave the way for free, democratic and transparent elections.”

But Djotodia’s departure could also spell even greater problems for the war-torn nation. With a weak transitional government, the likelihood of a speedy return to peace remains uncertain.

According to Cameroonian analyst Prof. Ntuda Ebode, the nature of the conflict itself will make a return to peace quite difficult.

“The conflict is multi-faceted. Initially it was a political conflict as the Séleka rebels sought to take power by overthrowing president François Bozize,” he said.

“But once the president was overthrown, the new leadership failed to maintain internal cohesion, and the consequence was that the conflict spiralled out of its purely political realm, and became at the same time social and military,” he told IPS. “And the religious schisms are so deep that it will take a lot of time to heal.”

A statement from U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon read out to heads of state and governments of the ECCAS meeting in N’Djamena further confirms these fears.

“The events of last year have caused profound damage in the relationships between Muslim and Christian communities in the CAR. Distrust is high and violence has fuelled anger and a thirst for revenge,” Ban said.

“The security situation has gravely deteriorated in recent weeks, with unprecedented levels of communal violence. The danger of further upheaval along religious lines is real and poses a long-term danger to the country.”

At least 1,000 people have been killed since the crisis broke out last year, and over a million have fled their homes.

The African Union has deployed some 4,000 soldiers to CAR along with 1,600 troops deployed by the former colonial power, France.

Sabina Shey Nkabiy tills land cleared of eucalyptus trees / Stephen Ndzerem

By Ngala Killian Chimtom
Kumbo, Cameroon , Jan 9 2014 (IPS)

A project to reclaim agricultural land lost to eucalyptus plantations is bearing fruit in Cameroon.

[podcast]http://traffic.libsyn.com/ipslatamradio07/Eucalyptus_trees_ma10D241A.mp3[/podcast]

Baka children in Cameroon sit in front of a hut called a 'mongolou'. Credit: Ngala Killian Chimtom/IPS

By Ngala Killian Chimtom
MINDOUROU, Cameroon, Dec 30 2013 (IPS)

Essomba Dominique, a Baka man from Mindourou in Cameroon’s East Region, sits dulled-eyed in front of his hut, known in the Baka language as the ‘mongoulou’.

A wood-transporting truck rumbles by, raising billows of dust in its wake. As he watches his seven children play in the courtyard, Essomba’s mind seems consumed with questions about their future."The forest is our pharmacy, our food market, our source of oxygen and the cradle of the one who guides us all." -- Clement Nzito

“These passing trucks mean these children are going to suffer,” he tells IPS.

As if to illustrate his point, Essomba grasps his spear and whistles to a nearby dog. The animal wags its tail obediently and follows its master into the surrounding forest. After three hours of hunting, Essomba comes back, with just one miserable monkey strung on his shoulder.

“Five years ago, I wouldn’t have been able to carry the day’s catch all by myself,” he says. “I would have found it easy killing gorillas, monkeys and even elephants. Now, the animals have all fled.”

In the distance, sawmills are busy, and bulldozers as well, opening up access roads to logging and mining sites.

“Just look at the way they are destroying this forest,” Essomba says.

For the Baka, the forest represents the beginning and the end of life.

The chief of the Baka village of Mayos in the country’s East Region, Clement Nzito, tells IPS that “the forest is our pharmacy, our food market, our source of oxygen and the cradle of the one who guides us all, the Supreme God which we call ‘Jengi’.”

All this has come under threat as Cameroon gets closer to living its dream of becoming an emerging economy by 2035.

Samuel Nnah Ndobe, who directs Pygmy programmes for the Yaoundé-based non-governmental Centre for Environment and Development (CED), recalls that in 1994, Cameroon passed forestry laws “that had the effect of forcing the Baka from primary forests, and these were turned into national parks where they are not allowed to hunt.”

The Baka are allowed to hunt in secondary forests, “but that precisely is where timber companies are also allowed free rein to log, and that’s destroying the forests,” Ndobe says.

He regrets that the fauna-rich parts of the forests where the Baka used to hunt game have now been protected and guarded. “Logging areas are also guarded, and the Pygmies are now found on the fringes,” he says.

Conservation groups have been working with the government to find middle ground between conservation efforts, the rights of the Bakas and the exigencies of development.

One way of integrating the Baka in the development agenda is through education. The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) is working with the government to develop educational strategies. The challenge is getting the Baka into formal school settings while at the same time safeguarding their culture.

“The Baka have strong cultural ties to the forest, and an incredible traditional education: as they grow up, young children learn the nutritional, medicinal, and spiritual qualities of the plants and animals all around them,” Sarah Tucker, senior international consultant for WWF, tells IPS.

“Innovative education approaches must engage Baka children and communities in a way that welcomes their culture.  School must enable them to build skills necessary to flourish in their forest home as well as in the outside world,” she says.

Xenophobic tendencies among Bantu neighbours also keep the Bakas on the fringes.

“Bantu consider Baka as sub-human. They claim Baka kids stink in class,” Alexis Tadokem, head teacher of a government primary school in Ntam Carrefour, a village on Cameroon’s borders with Congo Brazzaville, tells IPS.

“Baka are used as servants to Bantu. They are tortured and sometimes killed in the forest by the Bantu,” he says.

“When our children go to school, they are beaten by the Bantus,” confirms Yana Nicolas, a Baka man in Moloundou.

These constraints have been worsened by the influx of logging and mining companies, as well as the creation of national parks which limit Baka access to the forests they have traditionally considered their natural home.

A research team from the WWF has issued a series of innovative proposals, including adapting the educational calendar to the seasonal movement of Baka, use of the Baka language as co-medium for teaching in school, involving the Baka community in the educational process, and streamlining the content of education programmes to the socio-cultural context of Baka.

“We believe these innovations could help restore the eroding dignity of the Baka, and enhance Cameroon’s drive towards attaining the millennium development goal on universal access to primary education,” Zame Obame, pedagogic inspector in charge of nursery and orimary education at the ministry of basic education, tells IPS.

Women farming on land reclaimed from eucalyptus. Credit: Ngala Killian Chimtom/IPS

By Ngala Killian Chimtom
NSO, Cameroon, Dec 28 2013 (IPS)

Sabina Shey Nkabiy, a farmer in Cameroon’s North West Region, moves around these days with a million-dollar smile on her face. The mother of six, who used to trek 10 kilometres a day to farm, now harvests food in her backyard.

“I can now adequately feed my kids,” she tells IPS. “[And] my farm is less than a kilometre from here.”"Every year, I saw my father dig trenches at the borders with the eucalyptus forest in order to stop the roots from encroaching on his farm." -- Stephen Ndzerem

Nkabiy is one of thousands of women who have benefitted from the Eucalyptus Replacement Project, introduced in 2006 by the non-governmental organisation Strategic Humanitarian Services Cameroon, SHUMAS.

According to its coordinator, Stephen Ndzerem, there was a mad rush for eucalyptus trees when coffee prices plummeted on the world market in the 1970s.

“Men immediately went into planting eucalyptus trees because it was a fast-growing tree and could generate income through the sale of timber and electric poles,” he told IPS. “Seventy percent of the land women used to farm on was lost to eucalyptus plantations.”

Nkabiy is one of these women. “My husband took away the piece of land on which I farmed [to plant eucalyptus], and I had to go 10 km in search of new farmland. I suffered,” Nkabiy said. “Hunger struck us real hard.”

Women not only lost farmland, but fertile soils adjacent to eucalyptus plantations became increasingly arid and barren as the roots of the heavy-feeding tree sucked up underground water.

The result was a generalised water crisis and drops in crop yields in the 1980s, with pipes running dry in many villages.

Nkabiy said that before the eucalyptus trees were planted, she earned about 250 dollars from selling crops, and used the rest of the harvest to feed her family. But as the trees grew, her yield dwindled.

“More than 50 percent of taps in many localities stopped flowing, because the water table had dropped,” Ndzerem told IPS.

Growing up, Ndzerem saw his father struggle to contain the water-sucking tree. Pointing to two hectares of flourishing beans, he said, “This was once a eucalyptus forest that now is home to a lush crop farm.”

The eucalyptus forest belonged to Ndzerem’s uncle. Adjacent to it were his father’s food crops.

“Every year, I saw my father dig trenches at the borders with the eucalyptus forest in order to stop the roots from encroaching on his farm,” he told IPS. “It was a painful, exhausting experience.”

Thirsty eucalyptus trees drain soil fertility. Credit: Ngala Killian Chimtom/IPS

So as Ndzerem went through school, eventually earning a law degree from the University of Yaounde, images of his father’s sweating body in the trenches continued to spur him into action.

“I understood that going into legal practice could be rewarding to me as a person, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the daily pains women and children went through, just in efforts to put food on the table,” he said.

“I started with a eucalyptus removal project, but it did not work because people did not imagine how somebody could be removing trees as an environmental project. So I changed it into a eucalyptus replacement project,” he explained.

Partnering with two UK-based NGOs, Plant a Tree in Africa and Future in Our Hands, Ndzerem effectively began replacing eucalyptus trees in 2000 with more environmentally-friendly indigenous species.

“I came up with more than 60 tree species that could aptly replace the eucalyptus tree,” Ndzerem said. “Most of the species are nitrogen-fixing [a process that helps fertilise the soil].”

These include carica papaya, prunus Africana and psydium guajava.

He said the work was done in cooperation with the councils of Jakiri, Kumbo, Ndu and Nkambe, where nurseries were set up, targeting water catchment and farming areas.

Since then, over a million eucalyptus trees have been felled, including 24 hectares of forest in the Taryap Council forest and the Nkambe water basin.

Locals now say they are seeing a significant boost to their incomes. Nkabiy, who lives in the village of Nso, says as the eucalyptus on her farm was being replaced with the nitrogen-fixing and medicinal plants, her yield began to increase again.

She can now adequately feed her family, and still sell the excess.

Her husband, Amos Ndze, tells IPS that agro-forestry practices are much more rewarding.

“My wife is getting larger yields from the farm than was the case when I planted eucalyptus trees here, and these medicinal plants and fruit trees are giving me better money than what the eucalyptus trees gave. I couldn’t have imagined this some 25 years ago when I planted the eucalyptus forest,” he told IPS.

The fourth deputy mayor of Kumbo in charge of environmental issues, Ibrahim Yufenyuy, said it was a very important project “that has stopped women from long-distance trekking in pursuit of farmland. It has also boosted family incomes and improved living standards.”

For Stephen Ndzrem, “it has been a big success story. When you go around now, you see water catchments being restored, and you see councils, village development associations, and even individuals trying to replicate the project.”

CAR refugees seek safety in a church. Credit: ©EU/ECHO/Ian Van Engelgem

By Ngala Killian Chimtom
YAOUNDÉ, Dec 19 2013 (IPS)

“We couldn’t stand the violence anymore,” said 27-year-old Baba Hamadou shortly after alighting from a chartered flight at the Douala International Airport earlier this week.

Hamadou is one of 202 Cameroonians repatriated from the Central African Republic (CAR) on Tuesday, bringing the total number of Cameroonians who have returned from the war-ravaged country to 896 in four days.“My neighbour was butchered like an animal.” -- David Nchami

As the sectarian violence between Christians and Muslims worsens, Cameroon’s President Paul Biya decided that it was time to evacuate Cameroonian citizens living there. Altogether, there are about 20,000 Cameroonians in the Central African Republic.

The new arrivals have been narrating gory tales of violence they witnessed.

“Four Cameroonians – a man, his wife and two children – were roasted to death in Bangui before my very eyes,” Hamadou told IPS.

“My neighbour was butchered like an animal,” added another Cameroonian, David Nchami, who worked as a builder in Bangui.

“A woman was raped and her genitals removed in the capital,” said yet another, Marie-Louise Tebah.

Divine Abada, a miner from southwest Cameroon, told the Cameroon state broadcaster CRTV that the scale of the violence was so terrible he decided to return home.

“These crazy Séléka rebels caught me in the bush, beat us very well, took everything away from us. The only thing that saved me was that they did not see my passport,” he said.

Identifying Abada’s nationality would likely have made things worse, given the apparent hatred the Séléka rebels have for Cameroonians since President François Bozize was ousted from power in March and sought refuge there. The transitional government that took his place has failed to quell the armed clashes and attacks on civilians.

Séléka has also targeted Cameroon for reprisals. In November, a group of suspected rebels crossed over from CAR and attacked military installations at Biti, a border village in Cameroon’s East Region.

A firefight between the rebels and Cameroon’s security forces led to the deaths of seven people, two of them Cameroonians.

The African Union is boosting its troop levels in CAR to 6,000 soldiers, who join 1,600 French soldiers already on the ground in the former French colony.

The governor of Cameroon’s East Region, Samuel Dieudonne Ivaha Diboua, also says his own government has strengthened security along the border.

“We have deployed troops along the 800-km-long border line that divides the two countries,” he told IPS.  “We can’t afford to leave our compatriots at the mercy of evident death.”

Even as Cameroonians at the CAR border live in perpetual fear of attacks by Séléka rebels, thousands of Central Africans are flocking into Cameroon, escaping the violence and bloodshed in their own country.

In early November, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees announced that Cameroon was already host to some 90,000 Central African refugees.

Thousands more fled last weekend by boat across the Oubangui River to Zongo in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), even though the border is officially closed and they risked being shot at.

According to U.N. figures, some 210,000 people have been forcibly displaced by violence in the last two weeks in the embattled capital, Bangui.

The rather large influx of CAR refugees into Cameroon has been causing a lot of unease among the local population.

In September, hundreds of the refugees abandoned their camp in Nadoungué, a small village in Cameroon’s East Region, and relocated to a nearby village in search of better services.

“All we are looking for is water, healthcare, food…these things are not found here,” Dominique Mendo, a CAR refugee, told IPS.

But the continued influx has brought them into conflict with the local population, sometimes necessitating the intervention of security forces.

The Cameroonian government has committed over 500 soldiers to join the AU peacekeeping force, according to Defence Minister Edgar Alain Mebe Ngo’o.

In addition, the 1,600 French troops used Cameroon as a transit port, along with ammunition, bound for Central Africa.

Mebe Ngo’o said Cameroon cannot stay indifferent to the mayhem that is affecting millions of people in CAR.

According to the United Nations, over 500 people have been killed in the capital Bangui alone since Dec. 5.

The U.N. also says the conflict has affected the entire 4.6 million population, with one in 10 fleeing their homes and a quarter of the people going hungry.

And conflict between the Mbororo pastoralist herders and sedentary farmers often occur in Cameroon’s North West Region. Credit: Ngala Killian Chimtom/IPS

By Ngala Killian Chimtom
NDOP, Cameroon, Oct 16 2013 (IPS)

Adamou Harouna’s herd of cattle grazes leisurely on lush green vegetation in Ndop, a small village in Cameroon’s North West Region.

“We were born to this. Our fathers and forefathers were born to this. A Mbororo man cannot survive without rearing cattle,” he tells IPS.

The cattle herder is one of almost 2.5 million indigenous Mbororo people in this Central African nation of about 21 million people. Traditionally, the Mbororo are pastoral nomads.

Almost a century ago, when the Mbororos first came to the area of Bamenda, in the North West Region, there was enough grazing land and water here for their cattle.

But over the years as more people ventured into farming, the Mbororos’ grazing land began to diminish and it invariably led to violent clashes between the nomadic Mbororos and the sedentary farming population.

According to a U.S. Agency for International Development report on Cameroon titled “Property Rights and Resource Governance”, disputes over access to land are relatively common. And conflict between pastoralist herders and sedentary farmers occur as “farmers have encroached on traditional grazing lands, desertification has pushed herders south and cattle numbers have increased.”

As the planting season approaches, Harouna is a worried man. Soon he will have to move his cattle away from the local farms to prevent them from being attacked and killed by farmers.

“In 2012, I lost 50 cattle,” he explains.

It is no secret that the local farmers want the pastoralists to leave the area.

“Before these nomadic herders came to this place, we were already here. Our forefathers were here long before they came,” Divine Che, a local farmer, tells IPS.

“I don’t know why they really think that we must give them room for accommodation. Their cattle destroy our crops all the time. I think it makes sense for them to look for another place where people are not already settled,” he says, adding that it would be “very complicated for us to co-habit with them.”

But Harouna does not know what to do.

“Where do we go now? This is where I was born; this is where my father was born. So when people say that we should go away, where do they really expect us to go?” he asks.

The Mbororos are hoping that the government’s draft Pastoral Code will soon be passed into law and that this familiar conflict will soon become a thing of the past.

In 2010, Cameroon’s ministry of livestock, fisheries and animal husbandry began consultations with civil society to revise the 1974 land tenure ordinance.

Under the 1974 Land Law, all unregistered land in Cameroon is classified as national land, which belongs to the state. This includes farmland and communal land held under customary law.

The outdated legislation also contains long, complicated and expensive procedures for obtaining land titles, making it difficult for the largely uneducated Mbororo people to obtain title deeds.

The recently drafted Pastoral Code, among other things, deals with the demarcation of boundaries between pastoral land and farmland.

“The code is going to make corridors for cattle…the trans-human corridors have been traced and water sources where animals can go have been identified,” minister of livestock, fisheries and animal husbandry, Dr. Taiga, tells IPS.

Fon Nsoh, the president of local NGO Cameroon Movement for the Right to Food, which campaigns for land reforms, tells IPS that the Pastoral Code outlines “procedures for the establishment and management of community pastures.” It also contains “guidelines on the establishment of communal and inter-communal pastures.”

According to officials from the ministry of livestock, fisheries and animal husbandry, the new code will be tabled before parliament for debate in November.

If passed into law, it will give the Mbororo the right to the land they have been using for close to a century. While the Mbororo have always been traditionally nomadic, as their population rises and grazing land becomes more limited, they are increasingly being forced to settle down.

President of the Mbororo Cultural and Development Association, Hawe Bouba, knows just how hard it has been for her people to obtain land titles. She vividly remembers how her father spent over two decades to get one.

“I really love the Pastoral Code that is in the making. If it is voted [into law], it is going to be a solution for the pastoralists; for the Mbororo people because this particular code will really demarcate in a definite way grazing land from farm land,” Bouba tells IPS.

She adds that the Mbororo people should not be forced to move after living on their land for so long. “The Mbororo have come to stay, they have not come to go as some people thought.”

Amadou hopes that if the draft Pastoral Code is adopted, he will at last be able to lay claim to the land he and his family have occupied for several decades.

The Bakassi Peninsula, an area bordering Nigeria and Cameroon, lacks basic resources. Although primary education is free, enrolment rates are less than 50 percent. Credit: Ngala Killian Chimtom/IPS

By Ngala Killian Chimtom
BAKASSI PENINSULA, Cameroon, Sep 18 2013 (IPS)

Thomas Effiom, a 35-year old fisher in Jabane, a small locality in Cameroon’s Bakassi Peninsula, scoops off floodwaters from the muddy floor of his house. It is a ritual he performs each time the Atlantic Ocean overflows.

“It’s a huge problem here,” he tells IPS. Very often, floodwaters wash away the homes of residents here as the stick structures offer very little resistance to the forces of nature.

It has been a little more than a month since Cameroon took full sovereignty over the Bakassi Peninsula, a 665 square kilometre territory consisting of a number of mangrove-covered islands.

Effiom, like some 90 percent of the 300,000 people here, is Nigerian and was born and raised in Bakassi, an oil-rich territory in the Gulf of Guinea, over which Nigeria and Cameroon have had a long-standing dispute.

And while he is uncertain of how the Cameroonian government will accept and provide for the Nigerians living in the area, he is reluctant to return to Africa’s most populous nation of over 168 million people.

Head of the Bakassi Association of Fishermen James Nnandi told IPS that he was uncertain of his future here under Cameroon rule. But while he would have loved to go back to Nigeria, he said he has two wives and seven children to feed.

“We survive here on fishing. It is with fish that I am able to feed my family, and I can’t be sure to get another job in Nigeria,” 50-year old Nnandi told IPS.

In 2002, the International Court of Justice had ruled that the peninsula belonged to Cameroon. But it took a further four years before Nigeria agreed to hand over the territory to Cameroon.

Two years later, in 2008, a five-year transitional period began, which ended on Aug. 14 with Cameroon finally taking full sovereignty of the area.

According to the terms of the Greentree Agreement negotiated between Cameroon and Nigeria with United Nations backing on Jun. 12, 2006, Nigerians in the area could choose either to return to Nigeria or stay in Bakassi. Those who chose to stay could maintain their Nigerian citizenship or naturalise as Cameroonians.

In either case, the accord requires that Cameroon respect the fundamental rights of Nigerians here.

But staying in Bakassi also means living without access to healthcare and basic services like electricity and running water. And the central African nation of Cameroon still has much to do to improve the lives of those living here.

Glory Benson, a 40-year-old Nigerian teacher from Bakassi Peninsula, said that the healthcare system in the area was precarious.

“For women to deliver here is not an easy task. So we want the government to provide a midwife in the hospital here that can be helping us,” she told IPS.

Access to primary education is just as difficult.

Pierre Mufuh Chong, head teacher of the Wabane Government Primary School, said he has a hard time convincing parents to send their kids to school.

Although the government has long made primary education free, Chong estimated that enrolment rates could stand at less than 50 percent.

“The parents are very mobile. They travel with their children to sell [mainly smoked fish]. When they struggle to bring up the children, the parents take them to Nigeria at times. When we find it very difficult to get the children [to attend] school, I personally and my staff go from door to door. We do what we call educational evangelism, so as to encourage the children to come to school,” he told IPS.

For Cameroon’s control of the area to be effective, it needs to have a more efficient development policy for the Bakassi Peninsula, according to Professor Ntouda Ebude, an expert in geo-strategy and a lecturer at the University of Yaounde.

Ebude told IPS that it is unlikely that Cameroon will meet the U.N. Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in the Bakassi Peninsula. The goals include access to education, reducing maternal mortality and poverty.

He said although official statistics on maternal and infant mortality were hard to come by, simple observation indicated that many women in the peninsula die while giving birth, and many children die in their infancy.

Since 2010 the Cameroon government has set aside about eight million dollars for development projects in the area.

But even governor of Cameroon’s South West Region, Bernard Okalia Bilai, admitted in August that the Bakassi Peninsula lacked basic resources of electricity and water despite the government’s investment. He also noted that civil servants from the area did not always reside in Bakassi, and asked them to remain there.

“The government is working to improve life here, but you need to persevere for a while, because that could also be your own patriotic contribution to the development of the area,” he had said.

But according to Bertha Ndoh Bakata from the Co-ordinating and Follow-up Committee of the Implementation of Priority Projects for Bakassi, the government has been able to construct schools, health centres, administrative buildings and fishing infrastructure for locals.

“Two well-equipped health centres have been constructed, and there is a primary school in each of the four sub-divisions that make up the Bakassi area,” she told IPS by phone.

However, the area has only two medical doctors who have to span the four sub-divisions that make up the area.

“Take child mortality and maternal health for instance. It’s true we are seeing some health centres being constructed, but where are the medics? Where is the equipment?

“And then there is malaria, which is so rampant here since people stay in tattered structures built with sticks and therefore cannot even protect themselves from mosquitoes. So it’s very unlikely that Bakassi can ever meet the [MDGs] targets in the health sector by 2015,” Ebude said by phone.

However, Bakata said that this year the Co-ordinating and Follow-up Committee of the Implementation of Priority Projects for Bakassi would begin construction on a road to Bakassi “and this will be a huge relief to people in this area.”

Bordered by Chad, Cameroon, Niger and Nigeria, Lake Chad once spanned 25,000 square kilometres but in the last half century it has shrunk by 90 percent. Credit: Mustapha Muhammad/IPS

By Ngala Killian Chimtom
GULFE, Cameroon, Feb 9 2013 (IPS)

Approaching the Lake Chad basin from Gulfe, a small locality 45 kilometres from Cameroon’s Far North Regional capital Maroua, the atmosphere of despair is palpable: dusty air, fierce and unrelenting winds, wilting plants and sand dunes suggest that this once lush area is undergoing a terrible change.

Nothing breaks the expanse of sparse vegetation but the occasional withered tree and some scorched shrubs.

Bordered by Chad, Cameroon, Niger and Nigeria, Lake Chad once spanned 25,000 square kilometres but in the last half century it has shrunk by 90 percent, its total surface area now covering a mere 2,500 square kilometres.

As a result of feeble rainfall, the Chari and the Logone – the two main rivers that feed the lake – are bringing less and less water each year.

Herders, fisherfolk and farmers who have relied for generations on the rich soil of this basin are now struggling to survive, as the great lake dries up before their very eyes.

On the banks of the lake, Mahamat Aboubakar is disentangling a tiny black catfish from a large net.

“Before, you needed to cast the net just a few times to get thousands of fish,” Aboubakar tells IPS. “But today, it may require a whole day’s work to get this,” he says, pointing to the miserable catch, which is worth about two dollars and is likely to be his only income for the day.

Back when the lake was healthy and teeming with life, the 64-year old fisherman could earn as much as 50 dollars. Now, he can only expect his catch to get smaller – and himself poorer – as the lake’s waters continue to recede.

“This is a disaster,” Sanusi Imran Abdullahi, executive director of the Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC) – a regional body created by the countries bordering the lake with the aim of regulating water use and other natural resources in the basin – tells IPS.

NASA satellite imagery shows desert land around a shrinking Lake Chad. Credit: Goddard Space Flight Center/CC-BY-2.0

“It is already taking its toll on residents around the lake,” he adds. In order to prevent a potentially catastrophic situation, “we are working to save Lake Chad and the 30 million people whose livelihoods depend on the natural resources” of this water body.

It is impossible to blame the crisis on one single factor, experts say.

Environmentalist Paul Ghogomou of the University of Yaounde in Cameroon tells IPS, “Desertification, climate change as well as the continuous diversion of water from the rivers that feed the lake are responsible.”

He explains that water from Cameroon’s Chari River – which, fed by its tributary, the Logone, provides over 90 percent of Lake Chad’s water – is being diverted to irrigation projects in the surrounding area.

Meanwhile, dams built along the Jama’are and Hadejia Rivers in northeastern Nigeria are “partly responsible for the shrinkage”, he says.

LCBC’s Abdullahi adds that population pressure is also stretching the lake to breaking point.

“Forty years ago, the population within the Lake Chad area was about 17 million. Now, we number about 30 million. So rising demand by the population, the rising numbers of livestock as well as massive evaporation as a result of climate change have all combined to shrink the lake,” he notes.

For the time being, farmers and fisher folk are showing resilience, adapting as best they can to a looming crisis.

Ahmadou Bello, a fisherman in Gulfe, has simply turned to farming, producing such crops as cowpea, maize, rice and peppers without using fertilisers.

Showing off this thriving farm with a wave of his hand, he tells IPS the disappearing lake has “left behind very fertile land”.

But if the lake does not return, even the remaining humidity left by its receding waters will evapourate, and farmers will be left with few options for a livelihood.

Can the waters be replenished?

In an effort to implement more sustainable solutions, member countries of the LCBC – Chad, Cameroon, Niger, Nigeria and the Central African Republic (CAR) – have developed an ambitious plan to replenish the lake with water from the Obangui, a tributary of the Congo River.

Abdullahi says the project will involve the “construction of a retention dam at Palambo (upstream of the CAR’s capital Bangui) to serve as a catchment area. The high flow through pumping will then enter River Fafa – a tributary of Ouham – and by gravity through a 1,350-kilometre-long feeder channel (flow) in to the River Chari in Cameroon and then to Lake Chad.

“There is so much water in the Congo that goes into the ocean. We are just going to take a fraction of it to save the lives of 30 million people who depend on the lake for their survival,” he says.

He further explained that the project would also extend the electricity supply, ensure river transportation in order to move goods from east to west across Africa and develop irrigation and agro-industry in the region.

“So the programme isn’t only (designed) to bring water to Lake Chad, but also to improve economic activity and the livelihoods of people within the Congo Basin,” he tells IPS.

But a dearth of financial resources is likely to delay the project’s implementation – according to Abdullahi the scheme will cost a staggering 14.5 billion dollars

While heads of state in the region have shown some political commitment, the LCBC is primarily looking to the global community for help.

“We will host an international donors’ conference early this year to see what we can get, and from there we will (assess) what the member states will contribute,” he explains.

The bulk of the financing is likely to come from the private sector, as long as funders are guaranteed a return on their investment. “I am sure they will be interested,” says an optimistic Abdullahi.

The cost of the project may look frightening, but the cost of inaction could be even more devastating, experts say.

According to the Canadian firm CIMA-International, which carried out feasibility studies on the water transfer project, Lake Chad could disappear altogether by 2025 if nothing is done to save it.

Cultural practices in Cameroon’s patriarchal society could prevent women from registering to vote in the country’s February 2013 elections. Courtesy: Ngala Killian Chimtom

By Ngala Killian Chimtom
MORA, Cameroon, Nov 7 2012 (IPS)

Cameroon’s new biometric registration of voters may end up disenfranchising many potential voters, especially women in the country’s predominantly Muslim north where cultural practices may prevent them from having their photos taken.

“This is a sticky issue,” Adji Massao, the Far North regional representative of the country’s elections management body, Elections Cameroon (ELECAM), told IPS.

Biometric voter registration, which involves the use of fingerprint scanners and digital cameras to capture the bio-data of applicants, began in this west Central African nation on Oct. 1 in the country’s capital Yaounde and will be introduced to all 360 council areas across Cameroon.

In order to register to vote in the February 2013 parliamentary and local council elections, citizens are required to have or obtain a national identity card, which requires a photograph. In addition, passport-sized photographs must be taken of people registering to vote and people are not allowed to wear caps, lenses, veils or anything that could distort their facial identity.

In this part of the country, women are hardly allowed to go out, let alone remove their head-concealing veils as their husbands do not allow them to, even if the women themselves are willing.

Aisha Ibrahim, a housewife in Mora, a small locality in Cameroon’s Far North Region, in all probability will not be able to register to vote in February 2013.

Her husband, Alhadj Moustapha, told IPS that he was not comfortable with his wife removing her veil in the presence of another man.

“It’s risky,” he said.

“A true Muslim lady must cover her hair and her face,” he said with an air of finality, sending a clear message that he would never allow his wife to unveil in public.

Cultural practices in this patriarchal society tend to confine women to the home, preventing them from fully participating in society. Allowing women to get national identity cards could also be potentially upsetting for men who want absolute control over their wives.

Moustapha puts the situation rather brusquely: “Women with a national identity card could be difficult to control. Remember this is a key document required for anyone to travel … and your wife may just escape from home and go elsewhere … I can’t take such a risk.”

Ibrahim, however, has voted a couple of times in Cameroon’s various elections without an identity card.

“When it came to voting, the law at the time provided that any voter without a national identity card could present themselves with at least two witnesses,” Massao said.

Ibrahim was able to vote in accordance with these procedures.

“My husband and his friend flanked me as we went to the voting centre,” Ibrahim told IPS in a whisper. And casting a furtive glance around, as if she was about to betray a prized secret, she said, before moving quickly away: “They instructed me to vote for the ruling party.”

And she was not the only one. According to Massao, 40 percent of people who registered for the 2011 presidential election in the region did so without an identity card. Most of them, he said, were women.

It is no wonder that John Fru Ndi, the leader of the country’s main opposition party, the Social Democratic Front (SDF), called that registration process a “gigantic fraud”.

“The method did not have the inbuilt mechanism for detecting multiple registrations and therefore there were several instances where some unscrupulous individuals registered more than once,” he told IPS.

“That is why the SDF fought relentlessly for the introduction of a biometric system in voter registration.”

Meanwhile, the elections governing body is already taking measures to ensure that cultural practices do not infringe on women’s right to vote.

“We are definitely worried by the situation,” Thaddeus Minnang, chief of operations at ELECAM, told IPS.

“As for women who would not take off their veils in the presence of men and do not even leave their homes, we plan to get female ELECAM officials to go to those homes and do the registration. This way, we will ensure the full participation of women in the process,” Minnang said.

But his optimism is tempered by the fact that many women in this part of the country also do not have a national identity card and would need to apply for that first in order to register.

“Women should register to vote. For that, they first need to get their official documents. Yet, there are still among us women without proper identification,” Minister of Women’s Empowerment and the Family Cathérine Abena told IPS.

Minnang said the electoral commission planned to work with political parties, civil society and the government to encourage all Cameroonians of voting age to acquire national identity cards. A special focus would be given to the northern parts of Cameroon, where ELECAM plans to sensitise husbands on the need to allow their wives to have a national identity card.

“We are ready to accept receipts testifying that someone is in the process of acquiring a national identity card,” Minnang said.

That women in the north of the country could find it hard to register on the voter rolls could worsen an already bad situation of electoral apathy in Cameroon, according to Owona Nguini, a professor of political science at the University of Yaounde.

Of the roughly 7.5 million people who registered for the 2011 presidential election, only 4.9 million voted. Observers have said that in a country where close to 11 million people have already reached voting age, such a turnout gives elected officials very little legitimacy.

Smallholder women farmers around the Yaounde city centre farm on urban wastewater sites. Only two percent of women own land in Cameroon. Credit: Monde Kingsley Nfor/IPS

By Ngala Killian Chimtom
YAOUNDE, Oct 16 2012 (IPS)

Clarisse Kimbi barely ekes out a living from a tiny parcel of land in Kom village in the North West Region of Cameroon. Today, the mother of six finds it hard to put food on the table for herself and her children. But five years ago she, her husband and children were considered well-off.

In 2007, farming on five hectares of land, Kimbi could comfortably feed her family, and still have enough surplus food to sell. In a country where 40 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, her family was counted among the wealthy.

But things changed when her husband died five years ago. Almost everything was taken away from her and her children.

“Just one day after my husband was buried, my in-laws confiscated the five hectares of land my husband and I had farmed for 27 years,” she told IPS. Traditional practices in the area give the right to inherit land exclusively to men.

“Things have become so difficult that I have had to take some of my kids out of school,” she said. 

Two of her children are no longer attending secondary school, and three others are struggling through primary school. President Paul Biya decreed free primary education in Cameroon in 2004, but parents are still required to pay fees to help poorly-equipped schools function.

Kimbi’s problem is not an isolated one. Figures from the National Institute of Statistics for 2010 indicate that women constitute 52 percent of Cameroon’s 20 million people.

And although women produce 80 percent of Cameroon’s food needs according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, they own just two percent of the land, according to 2011 statistics from the Cameroon Gender Equality Network.

“If we are talking about a just and equitable society, then women should be able to control at least 35 percent of the land,” Judith Awondo, the coordinator of the network, a non-governmental organisation that works for women’s empowerment, told IPS.

Although the 1974 Land Tenure Ordinance in Cameroon guarantees equal access to land for all citizens, customary laws and practices that discriminate against women’s land rights prevail over statutory laws. This has taken its toll on the economic wellbeing of women.

“The inability of women to freely access and control productive resources places them in a weaker position in terms of agricultural productivity and economic growth, food security, family income and equal participation in governance,” Fon Nsoh, coordinator of the Cameroon Movement for the Right to Food, a local NGO, told IPS.

According to the 2007 household survey, 52 percent of people living in Cameroon’s poor households are women.

The problems of access to land for women and communities have been worsened by the land grab perpetuated by multinationals and society’s wealthy, according to Nsoh. He particularly cited the case of Herakles Farms in Cameroon’s South West Region as the “hottest and the most contested.”

On Nov. 7, 2011, the High Court of Kupe-Muanenguba Judicial Division in the South West Region ordered that the project be halted. But Nsoh expressed concern that the company was going ahead with the creation of a 73,000-hectare palm oil plantation with a 99-year lease based on “scandalously negotiated conditions”.

The U.S.-based Oakland Institute and Greenpeace, the international environmental watchdog, released a report suggesting that the project, situated in what is described as a biodiversity hotspot between four major conservation zones, could negatively impact up to 45,000 people.

Environmental groups are accusing the New York-based agricultural company Herakles Farms of going forward with plans despite two court injunctions and a lack of government authorisation, and in the face of significant community opposition.

“There are thousands of people there who might lose their farmlands, particularly women who were not part of the negotiations,” Nsoh told IPS.

He is now working together with other NGOs and civil society organisations to effect reforms on the 1974 Land Tenure Ordinance that regulates land issues in Cameroon.

“The 1974 Land Tenure Ordinance is obsolete. It was enacted about 38 years ago and no longer corresponds to modern-day reality,” Nsoh said.

Article 1:2 of the 1974 Land Tenure Ordinance says “the state shall be the guardian of all lands. It may in this capacity intervene to ensure rational use of the land or in the imperative interest, defence or the economic policies of the nation.”

Nsoh contends that such a clause excludes communities from land negotiations, citing several cases where the state has expropriated land for purposes of investment, without consulting with the communities that lived on the land.

Along with other NGOs and civil society organisations, Nsoh’s movement is pushing for more inclusive legislation, advocating that the law should not only specify that communities be involved in land negotiations, but that a very high premium should also be placed on women and vulnerable groups when it comes to negotiations on land issues, so that they can at least “have access and control”.

Since last year, these groups have been working on a draft land rights bill that should help break the barriers to women’s access to land. The proposed legislation seeks to ensure that the law prevails over the discriminatory traditional practices that constrain women’s access.

“Land certificates for matrimonial property should be instituted in the joint names of the husband and wife so as to do away with the patriarchal system of inheritance practiced in most of Cameroon,” Nsoh said. He added that such a requirement would make it difficult for women like Kimbi to be deprived of their land by other family members if a spouse dies.

Besides the call on women to be included in all committees that deal with land issues, civil society organisations in this West Central African nation are also pushing for a simplification of the rather long and cumbersome procedures for acquiring land certificates, and for the cost of acquiring such land titles to be brought down to levels attainable by women, typically impoverished over time by existing policies.

“We need to revise this law and give it a gender twist,” Nsoh said.

He said that although the government has not yet reacted to the demands of civil society, he is hopeful that this will be done eventually. During the 2011 Agro-Pastoral show organised in Ebolowa in Cameroon’s Southern Region, President Biya underscored the need for a revision of the law.

“It may take a long time, but coming from the country’s highest political authority, there is no doubt that it will be done,” Nsoh said. However, he is still frustrated at the slow pace at which events are unfolding, because this means more years of suffering and deprivation for Cameroonian women.

Victorine Fomum, Cameroon’s 2005 African table tennis champion, was given 25 dollars by the government for her achievement. Credit: Ngala Killian Chimtom/IPS

By Ngala Killian Chimtom
YAOUNDÉ, Aug 22 2012 (IPS)

Victorine Fomum is Cameroon’s 2005 African table tennis champion. She often used to “train without rackets, without balls, without appropriate clothing and without good tables.” But despite this, she won gold at the 2005 African Nations Championship. And as a reward for her achievement the government handed her a cheque – for 25 dollars.

“You can imagine what happens at local level. I used to frequently earn 10 dollars as prize money – for winning gold! If I was not also a civil servant, maybe I might have fled too,” she told IPS.

She was referring to the seven Cameroonian athletes who disappeared from the London Olympic Games on Aug. 7. Fomum understands first hand why they did so.

“Training conditions here are horrible,” she said, “The athletes certainly have a right to desire better conditions.”

The athletes – five boxers, a swimmer and a footballer – disappeared from the Olympic village, and later resurfaced requesting asylum in the United Kingdom. They said they did not wish to return to their West African home nation because of the difficult training conditions.

One of the boxers, Thomas Essomba, told the BBC that his country was not able to offer him the opportunities that the UK can. “All we demand is to become champions. England offers the best opportunities for us. The most important issue now is to find sponsors and join boxing clubs,” he said.

Even football, the country’s most popular sport – in 1990 the country became the first African team to reach a football World Cup quarterfinal – has bad infrastructure and suffers from a lack of funds.

Cameroon is currently ranked 59th in the world by the International Football Federation, FIFA – eight spots ahead of South Africa, which has significantly more resources. South Africa will host the 2013 African Nations Cup at a cost of 400 million dollars, 300 million of which will be paid for by the country’s Football Association.

But back in Cameroon, Simon Lyonga, a sports analyst with the state broadcaster Cameroon Radio Television, told IPS that local football players earn a mere 25 dollars a month.

And while other athletes do not earn salaries here, local competitions award low prize money. Gold medallists in Cameroon frequently earn as little as six dollars.

Even in a country where, according to the World Bank, 40 percent of Cameroonians live below the poverty line of 1.25 dollars a day, six dollars in prize money is considered very low.

“These are not conditions that would keep any youth around,” Fondo Sikod, a professor of economics at the University of Yaounde II, told IPS.

Fomum knows all about the limited financial reward. She pointed to her display shelf of more than 50 trophies, most of them awards for winning first place.

“On the basis of all this, you may think that I am rich. But I tell you, all the training only ended with the glory of winning. It has very little to do with financial reward, which is quite frustrating.”

The president of the Cameroon Olympic Committee, Kalkaba Malboum, admitted that the country lacked good training facilities.

“We don’t have good training conditions as in other countries. As a result, our athletes will not hesitate to leave for other countries with better training conditions that can improve their performance, meet their dreams of becoming professional and earn more money to improve their living conditions as well as those of their families,” he said on state television on Aug. 10.

One example of a lack of good infrastructure is the Ahmadou Ahidjo Stadium, which was constructed to host the African Nations Cup in 1972. It is still Cameroon’s main stadium, even though it is frequently suspended from international use by FIFA because it has not been maintained.

“The failure to build sport infrastructure in the country is just a result of the lack of political will, and not the absence of financial resources,” Lyonga said.

He said sports, particularly football, brought financial resources into the country. Part of these resources, Lyonga said, is meant to go towards the construction and maintenance of local sports infrastructure.

“In 2010, Cameroon got 800,000 dollars from its participation in the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. How the money was used is anyone’s guess,” he said.

Cameroon is expected to register economic growth of 5.2 percent for 2012, up from 4.8 percent in 2011. And Malboum hopes that the government will invest more in the sports sector.

Currently, the Chinese government is co-financing the 661-million-dollar construction costs of four stadia. In addition, there are plans to construct a National Olympics Preparation Centre in Obala, on the outskirts of the country’s capital Yaoundé.

Meanwhile, athletes here hope that the mindset towards sport sponsorship will change. Currently local athletes do not receive sponsorship.

“Each athlete struggles on his or her own,” Fomum said. She added that while Cameroonians loved sports and winning, they balked at the idea of investing in it. So she had to use her own money to pursue her sporting career.

“My dad told me that achievers must always brave the odds.”

Baka from Ngoyla, near Cameroon’s Nki National Park, hold up a map of the forest. The dark red areas are those they have been restricted from entering which are of social, economic and cultural interest to them. Credit: Ngala Killian Chimtom/IPS

By Ngala Killian Chimtom
YAOUNDE, Jun 28 2012 (IPS)

As Lysette Mendum listens to the sound of bulldozers crashing through the forest clearing a road to a mining site near her small village of Assoumdele in the Ngoyla-Mintom forest block in Cameroon’s East Region, she has never been more fearful in her life.

The forest block is 943,000 hectares of relatively intact forest that straddles part of eastern and southern Cameroon. And it is Mendum’s home.

But all the indigenous Baka widow thinks about when she hears the bulldozers is how uncertain the future is for her three kids. The indigenous Baka, historically called pygmies, are an ethnic group of about 35,000 people who have traditionally lived within the forests of southeastern Cameroon.

But now they have been displaced from their traditional homes in the government’s bid to develop this West African nation into an emerging economy.

“The government of Cameroon and some white people moved us out of the heart of the Ngoyla-Mintom forest block and resettled us in this village in the precinct of it. Now we go into the depths of the forest in the day and return in the evening. We are not allowed in there at night,” Mendum told IPS.

As logging and mining companies are granted concessions to large portions of the country’s forests, environmental agencies have expressed concern about the situation.

Of Cameroon’s 22.5 million hectares of forest area, 17.5 million or roughly 78 percent are classified as productive forests and are being allocated to logging companies, according to statistics from the Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife (MINFOF).

Out of the 17.5 million hectares of productive forests, the government has already granted logging concessions for 7.5 million hectares. In the Ngoyla sub-district where Mendum lives, an Australian iron ore exploration and development company has been granted mining rights.

A source at the MINFOF told IPS that a modest 20 percent of the 17.5 million hectares of productive forests has been classified as wildlife reserves, which include national parks, game reserves, botanical and zoological gardens, sanctuaries and hunting zones.

“Government has been dishing out logging and mining permits since the early 2000s to various companies in an effort to generate wealth and become an emergent economy by 2035. But this has had the effect of depriving the Baka Pygmies of access to the forests they have always considered their natural home,” David John Hoyle, director of conservation at the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), told IPS.

This is because the 1994 Wildlife, Forestry and Fishery law prohibits human settlement inside protected areas, which include areas marked for logging and national parks. The law also restricts access to these areas.

So from 2000, the government began moving the Baka out of the productive forests and attempted to integrate them into society.

Mfou’ou Mfou’ou, the director of conservation at the MINFOF, told IPS that the government was working with its partners to ensure that the forests are managed in a sustainable manner.

“This means also protecting the rights of the Baka,” he said.

He said his ministry signed a 1.7-million-dollar accord with the Ministry of Social Affairs to enable it to implement best practices in the socio-cultural and economic integration of the Baka into mainstream society. But it has been against their will.

“The Baka have been living in the forests of southern Cameroon for thousands of years, and they have lived in total harmony with the forest,” Hoyle said.

For the Baka, it has been a devastating exclusion from their traditional land and its resources.

“At first we thought our people would benefit from all these companies coming here, but all we got at the end was an interdict asking us not to go into some parts of the forest near the Boumba Bek National Park,” said Ernest Adjima, president of Sanguia Bo Buma Dkode, a Baka association, which translated from the original Bakola means “One Heart”.

Samuel Naah Ndobe, coordinator of the Cameroonian Centre for the Environment and Development, told IPS that the government now wants to settle the Baka on agricultural land along the country’s main roads.

“But the Baka have to burrow the forest for game … and agricultural lands along the main roads are generally considered to belong to the dominant Bantu tribes. So when the Baka come out of the forest to settle here, the Bantus simply tell them ‘You don’t have land here, this is ours.'”

But now when they return to the forests they are treated like unwelcome visitors.

“We can’t help being afraid because everyday strangers come to us preaching a new gospel of mining. And as the days go by, we see systematic restrictions on our rights,” Mendum told IPS.

Naah Ndobe said that when the Baka attempt to access the forests, game rangers and conservators routinely evict them.

“With no land to call their own, these first settlers are now very vulnerable. They no longer have rights to the land which they have enjoyed and considered home for centuries,” he told IPS.

Government’s user rights policy for the forests has also sidelined the Baka.

The policy allows the Baka the right to retrieve non-timber products from the forests like medicinal herbs, wild fruits, tubers, honey, and game for personal consumption. But the Baka have not been allowed to sell any of the items they collect from the forest.

“The Baka can only hunt game for family consumption, for instance. So they cannot sell the game to send their children to school,” Naah Ndobe said.

Now, there is a deep sense of defiance among the Baka and an urgency to share in the resources of their traditional land.

“If they come for us we shall not run away, we shall wait for them to come and kill us here because we rely on this forest for our basic needs,” Mendum told IPS.

But they are not struggling alone.

In 2000, the WWF began its Jengi Southeast Forest Programme, which aims to negotiate access rights for the Baka into protected forest areas, among other things.

Hoyle said progress has been made, with some logging companies committing to protect the forests.

“WWF has been assisting logging companies that have embraced Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification standards and, along with the Baka, mapped out areas of social, economic and cultural interest to the Baka within logging concessions with guarantees that they can harvest wild tubers, honey and medicinal plants and carry out fishing in such areas,” Hoyle told IPS.

The FSC is a non-governmental organisation established to promote the responsible management of the world’s forests.

He also said a memorandum of understanding has been reached with the government to guarantee the Baka access to the Boumba Bek National Park. It not only enables the Baka to gather food, it also allows them to perform their traditional Jengi rites, which usually take place at night. Jengi is the Baka god or spirit of the forest.

Mfou’ou said that while efforts are being made to guarantee the Baka access rights to national parks, social infrastructure like schools and health centres are also being constructed.

However, Naah Ndobe said it was urgent that Cameroon develop more specific support structures and policies to cater for the rights of the Baka.

Olivier Forgha Koumbou washes some freshly picked carrots in a small brook and eats them with relish. His thriving farm in Santa, in Cameroon’s North West region, looks like a miracle in the midst of surrounding farms where carrots, lettuce, potatoes and leeks have withered and died.

Olivier Forgha Koumbou’s son waters his thriving farm in Santa, in Cameroon’s North West region. Credit: Ngala Killian Chimtom/IPS

Rains fell lightly here in early March, but it was not enough to prevent the sun from withering the crops as traditional methods of irrigation failed because of the low rainfall. In the North West region the average annual rainfall stands at just 380 mm, but it is meant to be between 1,000 to 2,000 mm. “The farms have failed me this year,” 43-year-old farmer, Tembene Tangwan, tells IPS.

He explains that because of the low rainfall he cannot use his traditional method of irrigating his crops.

“We used to pipe water from a higher altitude to our farms, and used sprinklers for irrigation. But now, the water sources are drying up, and the low pressure in the system cannot carry water through the pipes,” he says.

“We can only pray that the rains will come back,” he adds.

But his neighbour, 32-year-old Koumbou, is not sitting back and putting his hands together in prayer to ask that the rains return. As he weeds through his crop of carrots, he proudly says: “We develop new strategies when we are faced with an additional challenge.”

Instead of standing back and watching his crop wither, Koumbou began water harvesting.

“I discovered that during the night, the volume of water in the nearby stream increases. So I bought containers to store water in, and at night I take my farm workers to collect it. The water is then used during the day to irrigate the crops,” he tells IPS.

Koumbou is already setting a trend, and other farmers are now starting to follow his methods. “It’s the only way out,” says Christopher Neba, who has also begun water harvesting.

Koumbou has been cultivating carrots, potatoes, cabbages, lettuce and leeks for the past 25 years. He says that his mother introduced him to farming at a tender age.

“When I turned seven, I began accompanying my parents to the farm. I have remained a farmer ever since.”

Today, he makes an average profit of just under 5,000 dollars annually. But this year he believes he will make even more.

“The fact that many farmers lost hope and abandoned their farms means that prices will rise significantly this year, and that means more profit for me. I do sympathise with my neighbours, but that is how things stand for now,” he says.

While there are no concrete figures available of how many farmers have given up on farming, it is not a welcome development in a country that largely relies on food imports.

Cameroon spends an average of 122 million dollars a year to import rice, sorghum, and millet. Last year, shortfalls in rice production led to the importation of 80,000 tonnes, which cost 240 million dollars.

This comes amid rising food insecurity in the country. The United Nations World Food Programme says that 400,000 people in Cameroon’s north require 40,000 tonnes of food aid to avoid going hungry.

Meanwhile, the North West regional delegate for agriculture, Cletus Awah, blames the water shortages on reckless agricultural practices.

“We have told farmers to limit their farmlands to at least 15 metres away from water sources. But very often, they farm right on the riverbeds, destroying the vegetation that protects these water sources and, therefore, water levels are bound to drop,” he tells IPS. Awah believes a solution to the dwindling water supply will come when farmers begin to protect water sources. “Farmers must immediately stop farming too close to streams, brooks or wetlands,” he says.

Koumbou has heeded the appeal.

“It is our fault that water sources are drying up,” he says. “We discovered that the marshy lands here were so fertile that we cultivated them without thinking of the consequences. Gradually, the water receded, and now we are paying the price. This year, I did not cultivate the marshy land on my farm and that is why I still have some water.”

Meanwhile, the regional department for agriculture also believes water harvesting is a short-term solution for farmers.

“As a matter of urgency, we plan to construct water storage facilities so that the little available water can be harvested and stored for eventual use by farmers to irrigate their crops,” Awah says. He adds that a long-term strategy is to plant trees that can help protect water sources.

By Ngala Killian Chimtom and - -
UPPER NYONG DIVISION, Cameroon, Mar 22 2012 (IPS)

Kokpa Pascale Moangue, a Baka Pygmy in southeastern Cameroon, has given his children the one thing he always longed for, but his parents could not give him – an education. And he was able to achieve it by obtaining a simple piece of paper: a birth registration certificate.

Some 98 percent of Baka Pygmies do not register their children at birth, according to the international development charity Plan International. Credit: Ngala Killian Chimtom

A smile lights Moangue’s face as his four children chatter on their way back home from school in Lomie, a town in Cameroon’s Upper Nyong Division, East Region. “I never went to school, but I have big dreams for my children,” he tells IPS.

Moangue’s next-door neighbour, Anzuom Clarisse, has a similar story. She wanted to go to school when she was younger, but could not because she does not have a birth certificate.

But the 19-year old expectant mother says life for her unborn child will be different. “The child I am carrying in my womb will go to school,” she affirms. “I will make sure that my babe gets a birth certificate.”

However, unlike Clarisse and Moangue, not many Baka are willing to register their children at birth.

In 2003, Plan International began its Baka Rights and Dignity Project here. The organisation’s local country director, Barro Famari, says that the project is intended to sensitise Baka Pygmies about their rights and to work with local authorities to ensure that those rights are respected.

While there is no legal discrimination against the Baka, there have been reports of inferior treatment, especially in labour practices, according to the International Women’s Rights Action Watch.

Central to the project is the “Universal Birth Registration Campaign” that seeks to establish birth certificates for all Cameroonian children. Working together with the Ministry of Social Affairs, heads of civil status centres, mayors, and other non-governmental organisations, Plan International helped 12,000 Cameroonian children receive their birth certificates in 2010 and 2011.

Its 2011 Annual Report states, “during the campaign this year (2012), Plan International intends to register and distribute 20,000 birth certificates throughout its six programme units.”

“Plan helped to get birth certificates for my kids,” Moangue beams. “I know their future is brighter now.”

Still, about 98 percent of Baka are not registered at birth, according to statistics from Plan International’s local office. The reasons for this range from the distances to civil status registries, to the ignorance of the need for birth certificates.

“I don’t have a birth certificate any more because my father used it like any other piece of paper, to roll a cigarette,” says 14-year-old Sandra Neckmen. However, she was fortunate this happened after she enrolled in school. Neckmen is now a third-year pupil in the Mindourou government school in East Region.

Denis Njanga’s attitude is typical of some Baka. Njanga, from Yokadouma in East Region says, “that piece of paper cannot put food on the table.”

However, the issue of birth registration is a national one. Less than 34 percent of births are registered in Cameroon. According to a 2007 report on the Cameroon civil status system by the Institut de Formation et de Recherche Démographiques (IFORD), Cameroon faces a real problem of not fulfilling every child’s right to a name and nationality.

The study indicates that the situation is even worse in the northern and eastern parts of the country, where nine in 10 births are not registered within the requisite 30-day period stipulated in Cameroon law.

The low national rate of birth registration is attributed to a general lack of awareness and the mismanagement of civil registration centres, where a simple registration process usually takes longer than 30 days.

“It’s a very dicey situation,” says Kaldaussa Faissam, the sub-director for administrative affairs, the service directly in charge of birth certification in the Ministry of Territorial Administration and Decentralization.

“Most births in rural areas take place at home. Birth certificates are issued only in the hospitals and the procedure is long,” he says.

Kaldaussa says his ministry is formulating new laws to make the birth registration process easier. However, he would not comment on the substance of the new legislation.

“A birth certificate is the first link a citizen has with its government. It shows where a child was born and who its parents are, and defines the child’s nationality,” Kaldaussa says. He adds that the lack of a birth certificate could lead to the abuse of children in instances of early marriages and child labour.

Excerpt:

By Ngala Killian Chimtom and - -
YAOUNDE, Feb 29 2012 (IPS)

Sala Aminata, a housewife from the Logone and Shari Division in Cameroon’s Far North Region, looks at her six kids with apprehension as she tries to figure out how to feed them with her meagre salary.

A nutritionist assesses the health of a child: red indicates severe malnutrition. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

The rising food prices come after a drought late last year destroyed the majority of the harvest in the Sahel – the arid zone between the Sahara desert in North Africa and Sudan’s Savannas in the south. Rural populations throughout the region have started to run out of food since early February, six months before the next harvest is expected. And all governments in the Sahel, except for Senegal, have appealed for international assistance as 12 million people in the region are threatened by hunger. 


The World Food Programme (WFP) has warned that some 400,000 people could be affected by hunger in the North and Far North Regions of Cameroon if emergency food supplies are not received by the end of March. In a survey carried out on the food security in the two regions, the

WFP says at least 40,000 tonnes of food will be required to save hunger- threatened people.

“Cereal production fell by 30,000 tonnes in 2011, compared to 2010,” the director of Food Security in the North Region at the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Ilonga Lazare, says. He blames the shortfall on the drought that hit the region in 2011.

“In the Logone and Shari Division, there wasn’t a drop of rain last year and in other parts of the North and Far North Region, slender rains came only in early October. So crops did not have enough water to grow,” Lazare says. He adds that Garoua, a port city in Cameroon’s North Region and the country’s political and industrial capital, receives between 500mm and 1,000mm of rain every year. “But last year, there were areas where rain did not fall at all.”

Lazare adds that government’s food stocks in a warehouse in Garoua need to be increased from six tonnes to eight tonnes before the end of March to prevent children from becoming malnourished and dying.

“For now, we need to target vulnerable groups like children who cannot stand famine for over a day,” he said. He explained that the additional two tonnes of food would help save the lives of children and pregnant women while the country waited for international aid agencies to deliver food relief.

Hunger and malnutrition are endemic in the northern part of Cameroon, located in the Sahelian and Sudano-Sahelian agro-ecological zones. This region has suffered from food crises for the last three decades as a result of natural and man-made disasters.

A Food Security and Vulnerability Analysis conducted in 2007 by the WFP found that poor agricultural production, low education and income levels, and inadequate infrastructure are responsible for vulnerability and food insecurity in this region.

The looming food crisis also raises security concerns. In 2008, about

100 people died in clashes with as poor nations across the world protested against rising food prices. “We have to avoid a repeat of the 2008 scenario,” North Region governor, Gambo Haman, told IPS by phone.

Cameroon spends on average 122 million dollars every year to import rice, sorghum, and millet. Last year, shortfalls in rice production led to the importation of 80,000 tonnes valued at 240 million dollars.

It may come a little too late, but at the start of the year Cameroon’s government announced it will be investing in the agricultural sector.

During a meeting of top officials of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, the minister, Essimi Menye says it is high time Cameroon makes strides in the agricultural sector.

“We need to see the impact of agriculture in our economy,” he says.

He says it is shocking to hear about Cameroonians “who go hungry when we have an arable land surface of 7.2 million hectares.”

But very little has been invested in the sector, with only 26 percent of total arable land currently being cultivated.

Excerpt:

Sala Aminata, a housewife from Logone and Shari Division in Cameroon’s Far North Region, looks at her six kids with apprehension as she tries to figure out how to feed them with her meagre salary.

“I used to buy a bag of maize for 24.5 dollars,” she says. But now it costs 34.5 dollars, which is almost one third of her monthly income of just 101 dollars. And it is not just maize that has gone up in price. A bag of red sorghum has increased to 28.4 dollars from the 20.4 dollars it sold at last year. “Food prices are just rising and we are too poor to afford it,” she laments.

The rising food prices come after a drought late last year destroyed the majority of the harvest in the Sahel – the arid zone between the Sahara desert in North Africa and Sudan’s Savannas in the south. Rural populations throughout the region have started to run out of food since early February, six months before the next harvest is expected. And all governments in the Sahel, except for Senegal, have appealed for international assistance as 12 million people in the region are threatened by hunger.

The World Food Programme (WFP) has warned that some 400,000 people could be affected by hunger in the North and Far North Regions of Cameroon if emergency food supplies are not received by the end of March. In a survey carried out on the food security in the two regions, the WFP says at least 40,000 tonnes of food will be required to save hunger-threatened people.

“Cereal production fell by 30,000 tonnes in 2011, compared to 2010,” the director of Food Security in the North Region at the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Ilonga Lazare, says. He blames the shortfall on the drought that hit the region in 2011.

“In the Logone and Shari Division, there wasn’t a drop of rain last year and in other parts of the North and Far North Region, slender rains came only in early October. So crops did not have enough water to grow,” Lazare says. He adds that Garoua, a port city in Cameroon’s North Region and the country’s political and industrial capital, receives between 500mm and 1,000mm of rain every year. “But last year, there were areas where rain did not fall at all.”

Lazare adds that government’s food stocks in a warehouse in Garoua need to be increased from six tonnes to eight tonnes before the end of March to prevent children from becoming malnourished and dying.

“For now, we need to target vulnerable groups like children who cannot survive without eating for over a day,” he said. He explained that the additional two tonnes of food would help save the lives of children and pregnant women while the country waited for international aid agencies to deliver food relief.

Hunger and malnutrition are endemic in the northern part of Cameroon, located in the Sahelian and Sudano-Sahelian agro-ecological zones. This region has suffered from food crises for the last three decades as a result of natural and man-made disasters.

A Food Security and Vulnerability Analysis conducted in 2007 by the WFP found that poor agricultural production, low education and income levels, and inadequate infrastructure are responsible for vulnerability and food insecurity in this region.

The looming food crisis also raises security concerns. In 2008, about 100 people died in clashes in Cameroon as people here and in poor nations across the world protested against rising food prices. “We have to avoid a repeat of the 2008 scenario,” North Region governor, Gambo Haman, told IPS by phone.

Cameroon spends on average 122 million dollars every year to import rice, sorghum, and millet. Last year, shortfalls in rice production led to the importation of 80,000 tonnes valued at 240 million dollars.

It may come a little too late, but at the start of the year Cameroon’s government announced it will be investing in the agricultural sector. During a meeting of top officials of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, the minister, Essimi Menye, says it is high time Cameroon makes strides in the agricultural sector.

“We need to see the impact of agriculture in our economy,” he says.

He says it is shocking to hear about Cameroonians “who go hungry when we have an arable land surface of 7.2 million hectares.”

But very little has been invested in the sector, with only 26 percent of total arable land is currently being cultivated.

Ahmadou Lamine has been forced to close his business selling fuel imported from Nigeria, known locally as “zoa-zoa”, because of the Islamic extremist group Boko Haram.

A farmer in Cameroon. The closure of Nigeria's border with northern Cameroon has had a negative economic impact on this region. Credit: Fanny Pigeaud/IRIN

Lamine, from Maroua, the capital of Cameroon’s Far North Region, ran out of stock after Nigeria temporarily closed its border with Cameroon’s northern region. The move came after the Christmas Day bombings of Nigeria’s churches by Boko Haram, which killed dozens of people.

“Motor bike riders who used to supply us with zoa-zoa from neighbouring Nigeria couldn’t do so anymore. I was forced to shut my business premises,” Lamine told IPS. “I don’t know how I am going to cope with paying the rent on my house, let alone feed my family and pay my children’s school fees,” he added.

The closure of the border has had a negative economic impact on this region. Fuel prices here have doubled, jumping from fifty cents a litre to about one dollar. And a similar trend is recorded with other imports from Nigeria like sugar, milk, flour, beverages, sweets and oranges.

“It’s difficult,” Alima Aissatou, a housewife in Maroua told IPS. She pointed to her near-empty basket that would have previously been filled with food purchased from Maroua’s main market. “How do you feed a family with this?” she asked.

The closure of the border is not only affecting businesses and households, it has also led to a reduction in customs revenue. The interim Customs Bureau Chief for Maroua, Philemon Tamfu, told IPS that the impact of the border closure was most felt “in Limani, Fotokol, Kolofata and Kouseri, all border towns in the Far North Region where all (customs) entries and exits are recorded.”

Speaking to IPS by phone, the Customs Bureau Chief for Limani, Alain Symphorien Nzie, said that the area used to receive 239,000 dollars every 10 days in customs revenue, averaging 718,000 dollars a month. But a few weeks after the border was closed, it could barely manage to generate 50,000 dollars. Limani, a border town, is home to citizens of Cameroon and Nigeria.

“I had to improvise all means possible to come up with the 50,000 dollars. This amount is likely to keep on dropping if the blockage continues,” he said of the minimum quota that customs departments need to meet.

A similar trend has been noticed in the border town of Fotokol. Instead of the 40,000 dollars that is usually collects over the first 10 days of January, only 4,000 dollars was received.

International news agency CNN quoted trade and customs officials in Maroua as saying that nearly 80 percent of its regional economy has shrunk since the closure of the borders.

Nigeria’s borders with Cameroon remain sealed as Africa’s most populous nation fears that the extremist group Boko Haram might be using the northern parts of Cameroon as a base.

This comes after the unearthing of a cache of arms, suspected to have been smuggled in from Cameroon, in Borno State, Nigeria. The arms included AK47 rifles, pistols, rocket launchers, bombs, and detonating bomb cables.

Cameroon’s government is concerned that the extremist group could be infiltrating and establishing itself in the country. Wikileaks revealed that President Paul Biya raised the concerns in a conversation with United States Ambassador to Cameroon, Janet Garvey.

“Biya was concerned about the threat of Islamic extremism …He was beginning to worry about Islamic extremists infiltrating Cameroon from Nigeria through Cameroon’s mosques,” Wikileaks stated.

The former minister for Territorial Administration and Decentralization, Marafa Hamidou Yaya, also expressed similar fears to the ambassador. He reportedly said: “there were a lot of desperate people among the Muslim communities in the North, and Douala in particular, and some of them had unexplained money.” Douala is the country’s economic capital.

Evidence on the ground suggests that Boko Haram has already infiltrated Cameroon. In Lagdo, a locality in the Far North Region, villagers have reported that people with long beads and red or black headscarves have been combing the area and spreading the group’s extremist doctrine.

“They came here and told me that all our problems are caused by western education and western ideas,” a resident of Lagdo told IPS, as he cast a furtive glance around. “They also said they will give me a lot of money if I joined their group. They looked dangerous, so I lied that I would consider their proposal. I am afraid that they may come again.”

The threat of the group’s infiltration of Cameroon has put security, political and traditional authorities on the alert.

On. Jan 19, the governor of the North Region, Gambo Haman, said: “the Boko Haram being chased from Nigeria’s northeast, as well as thousands of runaway Chadian soldiers in irregular situations here, must be closely monitored to avoid unwanted trouble throughout the national territory.”

He said surveillance has been reinforced and many Quran learning centres were shut down, and their teachers are being closely monitored by security intelligence.

The Nigerian newspaper, Sunday Tribune, reported on Jan. 29 that Cameroon security forces had recently blocked an attempt by 25 itinerant Arabic teachers to cross into Cameroon. “We stone-walled them,” the source reportedly said.

Meanwhile, government authorities are liaising with religious groups to guard against the group. The senior Divisional Officer for Wouri in Douala, Bernard Okalia Bilai, convened a meeting of Imams and Muslim community leaders to jointly come up with strategies to stop the group’s infiltration of Cameroon.

“Their doctrine is anti-social,” Bilai said. “It is a doctrine that persuades young graduates to rip up their degrees…It is a doctrine that condemns what today constitutes the values of our society. Top authorities of the country don’t accept that such hateful dogma is established in our communities…we must be vigilant.”

But these efforts may be too little, too late. In an exclusive interview with the UK-newspaper The Guardian on Jan. 27, a senior member of Boko Haram disclosed that recruits from Cameroon, Chad and Niger have already joined the group.

When Cameroon’s President Paul Biya announced that the 50th anniversary of the reunification of French and British Cameroon will take place later this year, it resurrected bitter feelings among Anglophone Cameroonians who say they do not feel like equal partners with their Francophone counterparts.

The reunification monument in Yaounde. Anglophone Cameroonians say they do not feel like equal partners with their Francophone counterparts. Credit: Ngala Killian Chimtom

Jannette Ngum, a primary school teacher from the English-speaking Northwest Province, said she would love to never have anything more to do with Francophones in Cameroon. In this West African nation, Anglophones make up a minority, about 20 percent of the country’s 20 million people, and most live in the country’s two English-speaking regions, Southwest and Northwest Provinces.

Ngum’s frustration comes after the shabby treatment she received at the Ministry of Public Service and Administrative Reform when she went to Yaoundé to follow up on her job application to the public service.

“When I spoke in English the lady frowned and said ‘Je ne connais pas votre patois –la’, which literary translates into ‘I don’t understand that dialect of yours.’’’

“Instead of serving me, she continued playing cards on her computer. But when a colleague of mine came in and spoke in French, he got what he wanted in seconds. Yet the constitution clearly states that English and French are the official languages in Cameroon, and therefore equal in status,” she told IPS.

But Ngum’s experience is a common one among Anglophone Cameroonians. Michael Ndobegang, a history lecturer in the University of Yaoundé, said that Anglophones in Cameroon feel “reduced from partners of equal status to a subjugated people.”

According to Ndobegang, Anglophones have been systematically removed from the centres of power, with unwritten laws making it impossible for them to hold certain key government positions. Since independence, no Anglophone has ever been a Minister of Defense, Finance, Education or even Foreign Affairs.

“Anglophones have been appointed mainly into subordinate positions to assist Francophones, even where the latter have been less qualified or incompetent. This is the dilemma of the Anglophone in Cameroon”, Ndobegang told IPS.

In June 1990, J.N.Foncha, the main architect of the federal state, resigned from government saying that “the constitutional provisions which protected the Anglophone minority have been suppressed, their voice drowned…”

Economically, Anglophones also feel exploited. “Cameroon’s oil comes from the Southwest Provincce. How come the road network in the region has been abandoned?” Fru Ndi, the Anglophone opposition leader of the Social Democratic Front (SDF), asked during a rally in Buea, in the run-up to the October 2011 presidential election in Cameroon.

He also blasted successive Francophone administrations for killing the vibrant economy of the British Cameroons. “Small- and medium-sized enterprises in the region, such as the West Cameroon Development Agency, Power CAM, and the West Cameroon Marketing Board have been destroyed,” he told his supporters during the rally.

Ndi, initially opposed to the idea of secession from Francophone Cameroon, seems to have changed his mind. “If the SDF is again denied victory during this year’s parliamentary elections, then I will be left with no other option than to join the SCNC,” Ndi told members of the SDF’s National Executive Committee on Jan. 19. The SCNC or Southern Cameroons National Council is a secessionist movement.

Anglophones are also at odds with what they perceive as discriminatory practices when it comes to recruitment into the civil service.

The historians, Nantang Jua and Piet Konnings, said that in “February 2003, it was announced that there were only 57 Anglophone youths among the more than 5,000 new recruits into police academies. The next month, records show that there were only 12 Anglophones among the 172 recruits into the customs department.”

Years later, not much has changed. Statistics from the Ministry of Public Service and Administration Reform indicate that of the 25,000 young certificate holders recruited into the public service last year, less than 2,000 were Anglophones.

This, the authors say, has created an Anglophone consciousness of “the feeling of being re-colonised and marginalised in all spheres of public life and thus being second-class citizens in their own country.” Government though denies the fact that there is an Anglophone problem in Cameroon. Instead, its strategy has been to use state violence against secessionist groups. And some of the Anglophone elite have been co-opted into government to down play the existence of a problem.

But Cameroon’s scholar and political scientist, Emmanuel Tatah Mentan, has described such elite as “impostors, unrecognised leaders and emissaries of “La Republique du Cameroun.”

Meanwhile, the celebration of the 50th anniversary of Cameroon’s reunification will take place in Buea, the capital of the southwest region.

“It is just natural; it is true to the history of this country,” says Mbella Moki Charles, the Mayor of Buea, of the celebration that will be hosted by his town. But the national communication secretary for the SCNC has said that Biya will be attending the celebrations in Buea as a foreign head of state. “We have been inviting other heads of state and Biya, the president of La Republique du Cameroun, is also invited,” he told IPS.

Political Punch, a regional newsletter with SCNC sympathies, has called for the president to apologise to Southern Cameroonians before going to Buea.

“For the past 20 years, over 700 Southern Cameroonians have been arrested, dragged to court and charged for secession for simply honoring the date of Oct. 1 as a historic and most important date in this country,” the publication said, revealing that over 100 lives have been lost in the process.

The Cameroon government is increasingly turning to China as a privileged partner in its development efforts. But there are many discordant voices who say the long-term effects of China’s economic relations with Cameroon could be disastrous for domestic industry.

“We are inviting Chinese firms to come in numbers and invest in Cameroon in all sectors, especially hydrocarbons, mineral exploitation, and wood extraction.” That invitation was extended by President Paul Biya in January 2007 when Chinese President Hu Jintao paid the first-ever visit by a Chinese president to Cameroon.

The Chinese president said on that occasion that Chinese relations with Cameroon and Africa were built on “sincere friendship, equality, reciprocal benefit and “win-win cooperation.”

Trade between the two countries leaped to more than 170 million U.S. dollars in 2000, up from only 85 million dollars in 1999. And according to the Chinese leader, by 2006 bilateral trade had climbed to 340 million dollars.

Figures from the National Institute of Statistics indicate that prior to 1999, Cameroon’s exports to China were almost negligible, but jumped by more than 170 percent to 123 million dollars in 2000. This represented seven percent of Cameroon’s total exports, up from barely 2.5 percent in 1999.

By the same token, Cameroon’s total imports from China increased by 110 percent between 1999 and 2005. In 2005, imported goods from China – basically cereals, manufactured goods, machinery, transport and equipment – cost Cameroon 144 million dollars, up from just 39 million dollars in 1999.

The government says China is a good partner for cooperation, not only because of the much vaunted “win-win” approach, but also because China, unlike the West, does not impose conditionalities.

Secondly, the Chinese ask very little for contracts, compared to Western companies. For instance, the China Road and Bridge Corporation won a bid to construct a 13 km road in Cameroon’s economic capital Douala for 18 million dollars, beating out rival bidders who were asking for 30 million dollars. And the project was successfully completed one month ahead of schedule.

Mixed reactions

Meanwhile, many ordinary Cameroonians see cheap Chinese goods as a valid alternative. “With just 2,000 CFA (about four dollars), I can afford a pair of shoes…the Chinese are helping people like us,” says Christian Njah, a security guard in Yaoundé who draws a monthly salary of about 50,000 CFA (100 dollars).

Official figures indicate that 40 percent of Cameroonians live below the poverty line.

But not everyone in this West African nation is happy about the Chinese presence. In Cameroon’s North West region, small-scale traders have expressed anger.

“We are not against the Chinese investing in Cameroon, but when they come to compete with us in roasting and selling simple items like corn, plantains and barbecue on the road-side, then there is a big, big problem,” complains Elizabeth Neh, a roast-corn vendor in Bamenda.

It is a feeling that sweeps across the community of smaller businesspeople in Cameroon, some of whom have wound up selling the same cheap, Chinese products.

Fondo Sikod, a professor of economics at the University of Yaoundé II at Soa, says “Chinese goods provide poorer Cameroonians with cheaper access to more goods and services. This is good for the well-being of the people.

“But this is bad in the long term because it destroys local manufacturing capabilities and competitiveness…Besides, there is little or no technological transfer because the Chinese frequently bring along their own labour, with Cameroonians confined to peripheral positions as drivers and sweepers.

“This is not good at all, and that is why the Chinese are still doing maintenance work at the Yaoundé Conference Centre, constructed way back by the Chinese in 1982,” he said.

The competitive threat is best illustrated in a report submitted to the African Economic Research Consortium in 2008 by Sunday Aninpah Khan and Francis Menjo Baye, both of them lecturers at the University of Yaoundé II.

“A comparison of the prices of made-in-Cameroon and made-in-China batteries can better illustrate this competitive threat. In Cameroon, a pack of four size AA batteries made in Cameroon (Hellesens) costs 67 cents of a dollar, while those imported from China (Royal) sell at just 22 cents – almost 67 percent less, despite incurring additional costs like customs duty, insurance, transport, etc.”

The low cost of Chinese products is having a significant impact on Cameroon’s exports to the Central African sub-region, with sales of industrial products falling by 42 percent between 2003 and 2005, and earnings dropping from four million dollars to just 1.3 million dollars.

“Cameroon firms are not only losing market at home, but also in their backyard,” the report states.

In addition, Cameroon suffers a significant trade imbalance in its relations with China. According to Professor Fondo Sikod at the University of Yaounde II, China was responsible for 23.5 percent of Cameroon’s total trade deficit of 48 million dollars in 2004. And the situation worsened in 2005, with China accounting for 75 million dollars of Cameroon’s 91 million dollar deficit.

President Biya recognised this when he told his Chinese counterpart in February 2007 that “we wish to benefit from export quotas for some of our products like coffee, cotton, cocoa, banana, just to name a few; so as to re-equilibrate as much as possible the trade balance between our two countries.”

So China’s interest in Africa may not be based so much on “sincere friendship, equality, and reciprocal benefit.” China’s economy is growing at a perky 10 percent.

And Sikod says China’s push in Cameroon and Africa is fuelled “by a desperate need to find oil and raw material to fuel its fast-growing industry” – a situation that has created serious trade imbalances, and has had the effect of strangling domestic industries.

Cameroonian political economist Emmanuel Tatah Mentan, now a lecturer at the College of Saint Benedict in the U.S. state of Minnesota, has described Sino-African relations as “a wedding with uncertain prospects.”

Maya Stella, a restaurant manager in the capital of Cameroon, no longer uses plastic to wrap the corn-fufu that she sells to her customers. She now uses banana or plantain leaves instead, because these are “natural and it is our African culture to use leaves in wrapping food.”

BPA-free baby bottle. Credit: Photostock

Food wrapping practices in Cameroon have changed over time. Traditionally, Cameroonians used banana leaves to wrap corn-fufu, egussi pudding and pounded yams. The slick surface of the leaves keeps things from sticking to them.

But plastic has in recent years replaced the use of leaves. The aroma of banana leaves that gives a specific taste to corn-fufu is now gone, and the taste has become rather bland.

“The food really has a nice flavour when it is wrapped in banana leaves,” says Professor Agatha Tanya, a nutritionist at the University of Yaoundé 1.

The secretary general at the Ministry of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Patrick Akwa, has lauded the gradual return to the use of leaves as an important step towards environmental protection.

“Used plastics very easily degrade the environment if not properly disposed of, but used banana leaves can be thrown away to decay naturally,” he says.

But the immediate reason why Stella has gone back to these “traditional wrapping papers” is because of a news report she heard on state radio to the effect that using plastic to wrap food is dangerous to human health.

“I heard over the radio that plastic papers are not good for wrapping food because they can cause cancer, and I heeded that warning because I have to protect my customers,” she told IPS.

The warning note came from Maurice Dikonta, a chemistry lecturer and researcher at the University of Yaoundé 1. He has been carrying out research on plastics and polymers for the past 15 years. Initially driven by academic interest, Dikonta now believes what he has found out could help save lives.

“When you want to make those plastics have a nice, smooth form, you add what is called plasticisers. These are molecules that make them either soft or smooth or pliable, like the ones you use in wrapping food. And these plasticisers will not stay in the plastic once you put them…in a microwave oven or if you use them to wrap hot food.

“The plasticisers will evaporate under such conditions and then enter your food. And so each time you eat food that is wrapped in plastic paper, you are actually consuming those plasticisers, which are toxic.”

Dr Henry Besong, a medical practitioner at Hope Clinic in Yaoundé, says the toxic chemical substance found in plastics is bisphenol A (BPA).

BPA is an organic compound in polycarbonate plastics used to produce baby bottles, water bottles, can linings, sports equipment, dental sealants and kitchen appliances.

“BPA mimics an estrogen that is found in females, and could cause breast cancer and low sperm count in men,” Besong says.

A report by the United States-based Environmental Working Group lists some of the dangers that could result from exposure to BPA.

“Trace BPA exposure has been shown to disrupt the endocrine system and trigger a wide variety of disorders, including chromosomal and reproductive system abnormalities, impaired brain and neurological functions, cancer, cardiovascular system damage, adult onset diabetes, early puberty, obesity and resistance to chemotherapy,” the report says.

But exposure to the toxic substance does not only come from consuming food wrapped in plastic. Because the ester bond that links BPA monomers to one another to form a polymer is not stable, the polymer easily decays with time, releasing BPA into the materials with which it comes into contact like food and water. That means using baby bottles that contain BPA expose children to health risks.

Consequently, many countries are finding ways to deal with the problem. South Africa has become the first African country to ban the “manufacture, importation, exportation, and sale of baby bottles,” while Malaysia plans a total ban on BPA this year.

China, once the world’s leading manufacturer of baby bottles, banned the use of BPA in the production of baby bottles in June, and banned the import and sale of products containing the substance.

The EU and countries like Brazil, Canada, Costa Rica and Turkey have already banned or restricted products containing BPA. And in April, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will decide whether it will restrict BPA in food packaging.

Professor Tanya says Cameroonians need to stop wrapping food in plastic because “it’s not healthy.” She recommends that banana and plantain leaves be used instead, as they “are not only risk-free, but food wrapped in banana leaves has a very nice flavour.”

Some community radio stations in Cameroon have picked up the warning and are carrying out mass campaigns against the use of plastic to wrap food. In Oku, a locality in Cameroon’s North West Region, the response to the campaign conducted by “The Voice of Oku” has been tremendous.

“I can’t use plastics to wrap food anymore,” says Marceline Yula, a homemaker in Oku, adding that the health of her family must not be compromised.

But there is still a lot of resistance to the warnings. Dikonta says even his wife has been resisting his warnings. “She argues that food looks more presentable when packaged in plastic papers.”

Dikonta says the press, government agencies, and political, religious and traditional authorities must carry out awareness-raising campaigns on the dangers of using plastic to wrap food, especially when it is hot.

Mama Rosalie of Damas quarter in the capital of Cameroon trudges down a narrow, winding footpath, headed for a narrow stream running far below, a 20-litre water container in her right hand.

The sight of women and children trekking long distances in search of water is a familiar one across Africa. But Mama Rosalie did not imagine she and her six children would be rejoining this daily journey.

“More than five months ago, the pipes in my house ran dry. Now I have to trek five km every day to this valley to fetch water,” she tells IPS.

Basile Atangana Kouna, the minister of energy and water resources, who is also director-general of the Cameroon water utility CAMWATER, says there are several reasons why neighbourhoods like Mama Rosalie’s have lost their water supply.

Higher-lying neighbourhoods in Yaoundé like this one have seen their pipes dry up, as water pressure has dropped due to the growth in demand. Credit: Sustainable Sanitation/CC BY 2.0

“The city of Yaoundé with its over three million people requires a daily water supply of 311,000 cubic metres,” said Atangana Kouna, “but the Akomnyada treatment station which supplies the city has a daily production capacity of only 100,000 cubic metres.”

The minister told IPS that the shortfall is explained by the fact that for the past 20 years, no investments have been carried out in the water sector in Cameroon, and the existing water infrastructure has been neglected.

According to Atangana Kouna, the lack of investment in water infrastructure was caused by the World Bank and IMF-imposed structural adjustment programmes that practically put a freeze on government spending

“In addition, the flow of water in the Nyong River on which the treatment plant draws is falling, while the population of the city is steadily increasing,” says Joseph Kemogne, chief of the CAMWATER distribution division.

As urban growth places higher demands on water supply, water pressure in the system has gone down, and neighbourhoods on higher ground like Damas have been cut off.

“The current system did not take into consideration the fact that the city would be expanding so rapidly,” Kegmone says, explaining that as more people flock to the capital, it is becoming increasingly difficult to get water up to higher-lying areas like Damas, even if water initially flowed in the pipes in such quarters.

He further told IPS that the falling levels in the Nyong River are caused essentially by the diversion of the rivers’ waters for irrigation schemes in the arid northern parts of Cameroon, but also by the troubling phenomenon of climate change.

According to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), mean annual rainfall in Cameroon has decreased by 2.9 mm per month since 1960.

The failing urban water supply has proved profitable for some. Damas residents like Pierre Kwekam now ferry truck-loads of water from a public borehole about 10 km away in Obobogo for sale in his own neighbourhood.

“Every day, I make about 10,000 CFA (approximately 20 dollars) from water sales”, he tells IPS with a smile.

“But the primary goal has not been to make a profit,” he is quick to add.

Kwekam sells 20 litres of water for 100 CFA, the equivalent of 20 cents of a dollar. His customers complain that this is too expensive, but they have little choice. “Water is life, and even if he were selling a 20-litre jug at 200 CFA (40 cents), we would still buy,” says Jessica Mdzeka, another resident of Damas.

She spends at least four dollars a day to meet the water needs of her family of seven – a significant sum given that she earns just 200 dollars a month as a primary school teacher. The water is nearly eighty times more expensive than what residents previously paid for piped water: 63 CFA (slightly over 10 cents), for 1000 litres.

The government’s emergency response

Since October 2011, a mixed commission set up by President Paul Biya has been distributing water to 17 neighbourhoods in Yaoundé, including Damas, that have been badly hit by the water crisis. The commission is comprised of representatives of the fire fighters brigade, the police, the Yaoundé city council and CAMWATER.

“We have established a daily calendar for distributing water to these water-bankrupt neighbourhoods,” says fire brigade captain Herve Samnick.

“We target two or three neighbourhoods each day, supplying them with a total of 120 cubic metres of water.” He says the distribution team returns to each neighbourhood after four or five days to re-supply them.

Residents generally seem satisfied with the emergency measures. Many have purchased additional containers so they can store more water each time the commission makes deliveries.

“Each time the commission comes, I make sure I fill all the containers in my house, which hold about 170 litres,” Mdzeka says. “This is certainly not enough to meet the needs of my family for the three or four days we have to wait for the commission to return, but the situation could have been worse if no deliveries were made at all.”

Long-term solutions

The ministry of energy and water resources estimates that by 2015, Yaoundé will need a daily water supply of 400,000 cubic metres. The government plans to build the Mefou Plant with funding from the African Development Bank. But this will only provide an additional 50,000 to 60,000 cubic metres of water a day.

Repair works on the Akomnyada treatment plant will lead to an additional output of 35,000 cubic metres, but the total production will rise only to 185,000 cubic metres – which means there will still be a daily deficit of 200,000 cubic metres.

In the face of this dire situation, the government has launched an 885 million dollar mega-project to pipe water from the Sanaga River to Yaoundé. This is expected to result in daily water production of between 300,000 and 400,000 cubic metres which, added to the existing supply, will largely satisfy the needs of the country’s capital.

Government officials say about half of the financing will come from the Exim Bank of China, while the rest of the money will be raised locally through the issuance of treasury bonds.

But Cameroon’s capital city is not the only problematic spot. Official statistics indicate that only 29 percent of the population has access to safe drinking water – a situation that frequently contributes to outbreaks of water-borne diseases in the country.

In 2010, for instance, over 400 people lost their lives to cholera in the country’s North and Far North regions – a disease whose spread is usually the result of inadequate access to good drinking water and poor sanitation.

The government plans to step up national access to potable water from 29 percent to 60 percent by 2015, in efforts toward meeting the Millennium Development Goal on water, which is to reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water.

In January, the government signed agreements with a consortium, including the French Development Agency and the European Development Bank, worth a total of 130 million dollars.

The money will be used to improve water supply to five municipal areas: Yaoundé, Douala, Bertoua, Ngaoundere and Edea. The project to pipe in water from the Sanaga River is in addition to this scheme.

But until the projects are implemented, Mama Rosalie will continue to plod down the slope to the brook in search of water – in a country that has the second largest hydroelectric potential in Africa, after the Democratic Republic of Congo.

By Ngala Killian Chimtom
YAOUNDÉ, Dec 6 2010 (IPS)

These are awkward times for the men in the middle in Cameroon’s Western Highlands. A profitable niche buying produce cheaply on farms, and supplying farmers with seed and fertiliser at premium prices has been shattered by the sound of a cellphone ringing.

Mama Therese was typical of farmers in Santa commune – dependent on brokers to purchase her potatoes, and the same people took quite a lot of her money back as payment for badly-needed sprayers, pesticides and improved seed.

She could never know the prices her potatoes fetched in distant markets, or the mark-up the traders were putting on the farm inputs.

“This has been our biggest problem,” she said.

Then Thierry Njepang showed up. Njepang is a resource person with a project funded by GenARDIS (Gender, Agriculture and Rural Development in the Information Society).

“We thought that in this fast-moving world, it was necessary to put at the disposal of these village communities, a communication tool, namely, the mobile telephone,” said Njepang.

GenARDIS teamed up with the SB Mathur Foundation in a six-month project to provide women farmers in Santa district in the North West, and in Bangang, Bafoussam and Kamna districts in Cameroon’s West Region with cellphones with which to gain access to valuable market information.

“We taught them how to make a call and how to send an SMS in order to get vital information in real time,” said Njepang.

“They were interested in knowing how much what they produced sold for in the national and international market; and how much farm inputs like fertilisers and pesticides cost; how much they could pay to get their produce to some markets and so on.”

The GenARDIS project identified existing groups of women farmers in Cameroon’s Western Highlands, as well as people in the cities of Douala and Yaoundé, far to the south, where the women’s produce – chiefly potatoes and maize – is ultimately sold.

The project began with a survey of the women’s use of information and communications technology; it was discovered that while men made decisions over purchasing things like phones and radios, women dominated the actual use of these items. None of the 100 women surveyed had used ICTs to ease their access to farm inputs, track market information or get advice from agricultural extension workers.

The potential usefulness of a mobile phone was explained, and the women were put in contact with the city-based resource people.

Ma Theresa says the farmers quickly came to understand the role farm traders had been playing in separating the women’s hard work from the full value of the fruit of their labour.

According to Theresa, they found the quality potato seed they were paying brokers the equivalent of 40 cents a kilo for, was available directly from government extension services for half the price. The cost of other inputs was a similar story, especially when the groups could coordinate placing bulk orders for fertiliser, or rely on their contact in town to find the best available deals for them.

“When people come from town claiming that the prices of foodstuffs have dropped in the market, I just make a phone call to the specific market to demonstrate that the person is telling a lie,” she says.

“Instead of giving away a 15-litre bucket of potatoes for the usual 2,000 CFA francs (a shade under $4), we will now only part with our potatoes at CFA 3000, because those who buy from us to sell in Yaoundé or Douala will get at least CFA 5,000 for them ($10.50).”

Njepang boasts that the project is steadily improving livelihoods in these communities. “The systematic elimination of middlemen who used to exploit the farmers is effectively putting more money in the pockets of the farmers.”

There are concerns that the gains could be short-lived because many farmers are be too poor be able to afford a phone of their own. Njepang said only a handful of the women who took part had mobile phones during the six months pilot programme, with a phone belonging to one member of the group often serving all of them.

He said that SB Mathur Foundation staff have encouraged women to set aside money each week to buy mobile phones, a basic handset being available for little more than $40.

“If you have a group of 20 women who decide that every week, each of them will contribute CFA 1000 ($2) and the pot will be used to purchase a cell phone for one of the members,” he says, “by the end of a month, four members would be mobile phone owners.” In five months, all twenty will be equipped.

The value of being connected is apparent in the lengths the women go to use their phones. Some of them live in areas where there is no cell phone coverage or electricity. They trek long distances to recharge their battery or pick up a signal to make a call.

The project has made a tangible difference in the lives of the five districts.

“Rural farmers in these village communities are now increasingly using the mobile phone and other ICTs to access agricultural information,” said Njepang.



The only losers? The middlemen who now find themselves on the fringes…

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