The Ambazonia Interim Government says the reported assassination of the great Southern Cameroons fighter and leader of the Red Dragons of Lebialem will not bring security for the occupying French Cameroun soldiers.

Addressing a Southern Cameroons war cabinet meeting on the situation in Lebialem County, Vice President Dabney Yerima said if the killing of the Ambazonian Field Marshal by the French Cameroun military is intended to reinforce the Francophone regime’s position and provide impetus for the continuation of the policy of assimilation and marginalization, the effort is bound to fail.  Yerima observed that the Red Dragons will be installing a new leader soonest.

Cameroon government military through a coded statement announced that its troops deployed to Lebialem have killed the leader of the Red Dragons.

The Ambazonia Interim Government and their supporters have denounced the killing and promised retaliatory attacks in the near future.

Yerima also warned that the Interim Government is keeping a close watch on the developments in Lebialem..

“The recent move against Southern Cameroons Self Defense Forces in Lebialem will be met with Amba decisive reaction” Yerima asserted.

Vice President Dabney Yerima also addressed the issue of the continued detention of Southern Cameroonians including President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and his top aides in French Cameroun jails and reiterated that the Federal Republic of Ambazonia would not row back from its rightful and resistance stance.

Yerima advised French Cameroun military leaders to pay attention to realities in Yaoundé particularly attempts at imposing President Biya’s eldest son as his successor instead of continuing the defeated Southern Cameroons war policy.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Cameroon President Paul Biya says the government will increase funding to grow more wheat after protests over wheat shortages and price spikes sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Before Russia’s Black Sea blockade, Cameroon imported 60 percent of its wheat from Ukraine. The cut-off has led to a nearly 50 percent increase in the price of bread.

Cameroon government says President Paul Biya on Monday ordered an immediate disbursement of over $15 million to grow wheat in the central African state.

Cameroon’s agriculture minister, Gabriel Mbairobe, says Biya responded to pleas from civilians that the cost of living is becoming very high, and many Cameroonians are finding it very difficult to put food on the table.

Mbairobe says Russia’s war in Ukraine has completely disrupted supply chains of consumer goods, especially wheat, which is the main staple food in Cameroon. He says investing in wheat production is a wise decision because each Cameroonian consumes 33 kilograms of wheat each year which is far more than 23 kilograms of rice each Cameroonian eats annually. He says wheat can be grown in several places in Cameroon.

The government says Cameroon produces less than one-fourth of the 1.6 million tons of wheat it needs each year. Last year, the government imported more than 850,000 tons from Russia and Ukraine. Now, according to the Cameroon Importers Union, up to 25,000 tons have been imported since January 2022.

Mbairobe says while the nation waits for its own newly planted wheat to be harvested before the end of the year, local substitutes like sweet potato, cassava and yams should replace the wheat Cameroon imports from Russia and Ukraine.

Cameroon says while baking bread, backers should replace imported wheat with local substitutes such as cassava, yams and potato.

Biya’s instructions for more than $15 million to be invested to grow more wheat comes after several weeks of nationwide protest against cereal shortages. The shortage of wheat has led to a close to 50 percent increase in the price of bread.

Delor Magellan Kamseu Kamgaing, the president of Cameroon’s Consumers League, says his league organized the protests to force the government to take immediate actions that will reduce growing hunger and anger among civilians.

Kamgaing says after COVID-19, Russia’s war in Ukraine is leading to severe food shortages and unprecedented hikes in the prices of imported staple foods like cereals. He says people are hungry and unable to afford bread which is consumed by a majority of households in Cameroon. Kamgaing says the government should dialogue with its citizens and take measures that will stop a looming famine.

Kamgaing said the government should provide fertilizers and subsidies to local farmers to increase plantain, rice, yam and cassava production.

Kamgaing said the war in Ukraine though causing sufferings, should provide an opportunity for Cameroon to invest in its local industries and stop over dependency on imports.

The government says the money ordered by Biya will either be used in buying fertilizers or paid out as subsidies to wheat farmers. Some of the money will be used to purchase tractors.

The U.N. reports that 1.7 billion people in 107 economies including 41 African countries are exposed to either rising food prices, rising energy prices or tightening financial conditions as a result of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Source: VOA

Cameroon’s government has called for emergency food support for more than two million people facing hunger along its northern borders with Chad and Nigeria. At a crisis meeting Monday in Yaoundé, authorities blamed natural disasters, insecurity, and intercommunal clashes in part for causing the food shortage in the nation of 26.5 million people.

Agriculture Minister Gabriel Mbairobe said floods and elephants have devastated several hundred hectares of farmland, poultry farms and crops, and killed an unknown number of cattle, sheep and goats within the past six months.

Mbairobe also said devastating migratory caterpillars, crickets and weaver birds have decimated thousands of hectares of farmland in Cameroon, especially on the border with Chad and Nigeria. He said close to 300,000 people find themselves in extreme or emergency food insufficiency situations and 2.6 million people are not certain they will have a meal each day.

Food insecurity is threatening the lives of 6 million Cameroonians, Mbairobe said.

Speaking in Yaounde on Monday during the crisis meeting, Mbairobe said most poor civilians threatened by food insecurity find it difficult to cope with rising prices caused by Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The Cameroonian government blames the war for a 15 to 30 percent increase in the price of staple food items, especially wheat, maize, sorghum and rice widely consumed in areas along the northern border with Nigeria and Chad.

Cameroon relies on Ukraine for 60 percent of its wheat imports. The war has caused the price of a 50-kilogram bag of wheat to climb from $35 to $60, an amount the government says a majority of the hungry people cannot afford.

Ephraim Chi, who owns a maize plantation in Pousse, a town on the border with Chad, said unpredictable weather conditions and changing climate patterns make it difficult for farmers to know when to plant.

“At times we will go for a long time without rain and at times the rains will become intense, so farmers are now confused when to actually plant their crops and that is why we have a lot of poor yields now,” he said. “People are cutting a lot of trees and these trees regulate the climate. When the soil is so dry because we have cut down a lot of trees, the catchments (water collections) dry up.”

Chi blamed civilians for cutting down trees for firewood and logging companies for what he said is their attitude to destroy the environment.

Cameroonian officials say more than 40,000 people, a majority of them cattle ranchers, farmers and fishers, plan to return to the border region despite fleeing December 2021 bloody clashes over water resources.

The government has not said how much it needs to reduce the food crisis, but that it is in negotiations with funding agencies and friendly countries.

Last week, Japan’s government donated $1.2 million to the World Food Program to assist vulnerable persons, including those threatened by hunger in Cameroon, Chad and the Central African Republic.

In a food analysis in April, the World Food Program said staple food prices, early depletion of household food stocks, and declining incomes from reduced crop sales limit food access for poor Cameroonian households amid low levels of humanitarian assistance.

The report says the ongoing Boko Haram insurgency in northern Cameroon and clashes between government forces and separatist fighters in the Northwest and Southwest regions continue to negatively affect the livelihoods of populations and drive high numbers of acutely food insecure persons. The separatists are seeking to carve out an independent English-speaking region from the rest of the French-speaking country.

Source: VOA