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.
When Francois Biloa fell ill with malaria, his family did what they had always done in the past – they gave him anti-malaria drugs and antibiotics bought from the local market. Only when his condition worsened and he became bedridden and fell unconscious, did his family take him to a local clinic in Cameroon’s capital Yaoundé.
Uncertainty over property rights and access to forest land is potentially a major stumbling block for implementing the United Nations collaborative initiative on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation in Cameroon.
The Kribi Seaport on the coast of southern Cameroon is destined to become a mega harbour to serve all of Central Africa. But there is little chance that locals, particularly engineers and scientists, will benefit much from the 567 million dollar development.
At the Garoua Regional Hospital’s Paediatric Feeding Centre in northern Cameroon, Aicha Ahidjo* is relieved to hear that her one-year-old son will survive. The child was suffering from chronic malnutrition, and other children have died of it.
Ismaela Muhamadu was six years old when he lost his parents and siblings in a poisonous gas explosion at northern Cameroon’s Lake Nyos. The blast killed more than 1,800 people, and 3,000 cattle and wildlife over a 25-km radius.
In Maleke village, western Cameroon, an oil palm tree is considered to be “black gold”. At least, that is what Joseph Tesse, the local processor of oil palm, tells IPS.
Marlyse Aboui, a 40-year-old nurse, has still not gotten over the astonishment she felt when she heard that Cameroon’s President Paul Biya had nominated her to the senate.
After coming under fire from environmental and social justice organisations for violations of land protection laws, Herakles Farms, a New York-based agricultural company, has suspended a large, controversial palm oil project in Cameroon.
Bordered by a rubber plantation in the west, a forestry plantation in the east and a palm oil farm in the south, the 18 local communities that live in Ocean Division, southern Cameroon, have had an uphill struggle for the rights to their land.
The fruit farmers in Njombe, a small town in the coastal Littoral Region of Cameroon, learned a life lesson about “making lemonade out of lemons” - or rather “dried fruit out of fruit” when their land was taken from them by the government and leased to an international farming company.
The fruit farmers in Njombe, a small town in the coastal Littoral Region of Cameroon, learned a life lesson about “making lemonade out of lemons” - or rather “dried fruit out of fruit” when their land was taken from them by the government and leased to an international farming company.
In the small farming village of Sabongari, in Cameroon’s North West Region, the need for kerosene to light bush lamps and petrol to run electric generators has been replaced by the need for something much cheaper and cleaner: sunshine.
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.
“One in eight people goes to sleep hungry every day,” according to the ‘State of Food Insecurity in the World 2012’, a document released annually by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
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.
Environment groups are accusing a New York-based agricultural company, Herakles Farms, of going forward with plans for a 73,000-hectare palm-oil plantation and refinery in southwest Cameroon despite a lack of government authorisation, two court injunctions, and in the face of significant community opposition.
Cameroonian urban famer Juliana Numfor has six plots of land where she grows maize, cassava, sweet potatoes and leafy vegetables, including cabbages, wild okra and greens.
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.
For nearly two years, not a single child with HIV has been born at the public hospital in the Cité-Verte district of Yaoundé, the capital of Cameroon. Dr Emilien Fouda, the hospital's director, says this proud record is the result of combined effort by his staff and community support groups.