About soter

Posts by :

25, August 2025

US trades military support to African leaders for access to mineral wealth ⁰

Under President Donald Trump the United States has reset relations with west Africa’s military leaders on a mutual back-scratching basis, bartering help fighting jihadists for the Sahel region’s mining riches, experts say.

While Joe Biden was in office the US suspended most of the development and military aid it sent to Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger in the wake of the rash of coups that brought juntas to power in the three restive countries between 2020 and 2023.

Trump’s return to the White House has shifted the US away from that stance, as part of a wider pivot in Washington’s African foreign policy and its attempts to counter Russia and China’s influence on the continent.

“Trade, not aid … is now truly our policy for Africa,” Troy Fitrell, the State Department’s top official for African affairs, told an audience in Abidjan, Ivory Coast in May.

In recent weeks several other senior American figures have paid visits to the capitals of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, which have all been struggling to root out jihadists linked to al Qaeda or the Islamic State group for more than a decade.

In early July, Rudolph Atallah, a security and counterterrorism adviser to Trump, visited Mali to offer the “American solution” for the unrest.

“We have the necessary equipment, the intelligence and the forces to stand up to this menace. If Mali decides to work with us, we’ll know what to do,” Atallah was quoted as saying by the country’s state newspaper.

Several days later, William B. Stevens, the State Department’s deputy assistant secretary for West Africa, likewise raised the possibility of private American investment in the anti-jihadist fight to an audience in the Malian capital Bamako, after stop-offs in Ouagadougou and Niamey.

“Washington offered to kill the leaders of jihadist groups, in exchange for access to lithium and gold for American businesses,” said Ulf Laessing, head of the Sahel programme at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, a think tank affiliated with Germany’s conservative CDU party.

Trump has brought US access to key minerals front and centre of his negotiations with foreign countries, including in his attempts to end the Russia-Ukraine war and the long-running conflict between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Lithium, gold, uranium

Mali is among Africa’s top producers of gold and lithium, a key component in the electric car batteries necessary for the transition to a low-carbon economy in the age of climate change.

Burkina Faso likewise possesses rich veins of gold, while Niger’s uranium deposits make the desert nation among the world’s top exporters of the radioactive metal.

Although all three Sahel juntas came to power while promising the people greater control and sovereignty over their country’s mineral wealth, the officers in charge have welcomed Washington’s change in tack.

“We have to look at investment, the potential of our countries,” said Mali’s Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop in July, hailing “today’s convergence of viewpoints between the American administration and the government of Mali”.

Laessing argued that “some officials in the State Department, worried about the end of USAID and the closure of embassies, pointed out Mali’s rich resources to the Trump administration as a way to encourage it to remain engaged and keep the American embassy in Bamako open, at a point where Russia and China are expanding their influence in the region.”

But for Liam Karr, an analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, any critical minerals deal would be “a much longer-term project”.

“The terrorism threat is the biggest issue … stabilising the region is key to any investment hopes,” Karr argued.

‘American mercenaries’

Washington’s courting of the Sahel states comes despite the juntas pivoting towards Russia, having cut ties with the West and former imperial ruler France in particular since the coups.

Moscow has sent mercenaries from the infamous Wagner paramilitary organisation, and its successor the Africa Corps, to help the Sahel countries’ armies push back the jihadists.

After Niger nationalised the local branch of French uranium giant Orano, the Kremlin, which commands the world’s largest arsenal of nuclear weapons, said it wished to mine the radioactive metal in the west African country itself.

So far, Russia’s foothold in the region has yet to provoke the White House’s ire.

In his visit to Mali, security adviser Atallah said he saw no problem with Moscow’s presence in the region, insisting that the country was “free to choose its partners”.

“Since the French were kicked out … and Russia welcomed into the region, Trump sees no problem in accompanying and/or supporting Russian efforts in the region. The fact that the Russians eschew democratic values and human rights promotion also aligns with the Trump administration’s transactional approach to relations between states,” Bisa Williams, a former US ambassador to Niger, told AFP.

Williams, now a consultant and academic, said Trump could strike an agreement that “would guarantee majority or near-majority ownership and a high percentage of extracted minerals in exchange for support fighting terrorism”.

That could involve the deployment of American mercenaries, along the lines of how Russia used Wagner, Williams said.

“That way, he wouldn’t have to defend the policy before Congress or his MAGA base.”

Source: AFP

24, August 2025

Obala: Bishop Sosthène Leopold Bayemi will be cleared of harassment charges ⁰

His Lordship Bishop Sosthène Leopold Bayemi of the Obala Diocese is reportedly implicated in a sex scandal by a dodgy Francophone so-called whistleblower. An audio recording circulating on social media accuses the Roman Catholic cleric of sexual harassment.

Our senior correspondent in Yaoundé the nation’s capital reported late today that the Bishop of Obala will be cleared of charges of sexual harassment soonest and that the Diocese of Obala will emerge stronger and united.

“Bishop Sosthène Leopold Bayemi will be acquitted of making sexual advances against members of his community as alleged by a person operating deep within a political space in Yaoundé” Rita Akana said.

Rita Akana pointed out that the Roman Catholic Church in the Centre and South regions has been standing shoulder to shoulder with the corrupt ruling CPDM party and that Bishop Sosthène Leopold Bayemi is simply paying the price of trying to maintain the status quo.

“The Vatican is very much aware that the Roman Catholic Church in Cameroon does not have kissing and hugging issues! let alone porn videos,” Rita Akana furthered.

Bishop Sosthène Leopold Bayemi is heading a very poor diocese in the outskirts of Yaoundé that relies on financial donations coming mainly from senior political elites running state affairs in Yaoundé.

The allegations, reported by N’zui Manto, are causing uproar in the Christian community, especially as the bishop was among those at the Unity Palace to support the 93 year old President Paul Biya for the October presidential election.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

24, August 2025

Battle for Etoudi: Yagoua Catholic Diocese directs daily Angelus Prayer for peace ⁰

Bishop Barthélemy Yaouda Hourgo of the Catholic Diocese of Yagoua in Cameroon has directed daily Prayer of Angelus and other forms of prayer for peace as the Central African nation approaches October presidential election.

In a statement shared with ACI Africa on Thursday, August 21, Bishop Hourgo invites all institutions in his Episcopal See, including Parishes and communities of women and men Religious to unite in prayer to be marked by bells scheduled to “ring each day at 12:30 p.m. sharp.”

“As the Pastor of this Diocese, concerned for peace, justice, and the unity of our nation, considering the gravity of the moment our country is experiencing as the presidential election… I decide and ordain that at the signal of the bell, all the faithful are required to recite the Angelus Prayer, in unity with the entire Diocesan Church,” he says.

The Cameroonian Catholic Bishop recalls that the mission of the Christian is to be a peacemaker and a witness of hope in the world and directs that the Angelus prayer be said at the end of each Eucharistic celebration.

The particular intention of the Angelus Prayer, he says, is “to implore from God the precious gift of true peace for our country and to entrust to the Virgin Mary, through her grace, the hope of a peaceful and just political alternation.”

Bishop Hourgo explains that the Angelus Prayer seeks to ask for the “Lord’s blessing so that our Nation remains stable before, during, and after the presidential election of October 12, 2025.”

“I recommend to Priests, men Religious, women Religious, and leaders of Christian communities to ensure the strict application of this decision and to raise awareness among all the faithful,” he says.

He appeals, “May each of us take to heart this spiritual endeavour, convinced that peace is a gift from God but also the fruit of our daily commitment.”

Catholic Bishops in Cameroon have been vocal in expressing their concerns for peace as the country heads for the presidential election.

Source: aciAfrica

24, August 2025

More than 30 jihadists killed in air strikes, Nigerian military says ⁰

Nigeria’s military has killed 35 jihadists in a series of air strikes near its north-eastern border with Cameroon, it said in a statement.

The strikes were carried out in four areas to thwart an attempt by the jihadists to attack ground troops, the military added.

Nigeria has been battling jihadist groups for more than a decade, as well as violent criminal gangs, sectarian conflict and widespread kidnappings for ransom.

On Saturday, a group of prominent Nigerians, including ex-government ministers, business persons and civil society activists, issued a statement, raising concern that parts of Nigeria were enduring “war-time levels of slaughter”, while the country was officially at peace.

The group cited a report released in May by rights group Amnesty International, which said that at least 10,217 people had been killed since President Bola Tinubu took office two years ago.

It called for the formation of a Presidential Task Force with wide-ranging powers to end the numerous conflicts – including the resurgence of the militant Islamist group Boko Haram and the breakaway Islamic State West Africa Province (Iswap) in the north-east.

Last week, the army reported killing nearly 600 militants in eight months in the region. There is no independent confirmation of the claim.

The Nigerian Air Force said it would continue to provide air cover to ground troops dismantling jihadist bases in the north-east.

More than 35,000 people have been killed and two million displaced in the conflict, according to the UN.

The Institute for Security Studies think-tank said that at least 15 jihadist attacks had been recorded so far this year in areas near Nigeria’s border with Cameroon and Niger.

The jihadists were using modified commercial drones to strike at army bases, and were making it difficult for the military to send reinforcements, it added.

Earlier this month, the US State Department approved the sale of weapons worth $346m (£256m) to Nigeria.

Source: BBC

21, August 2025

Buea: Nigeria Consul-General Obasanjo Coker dies ⁰

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has announced the sudden death of Ambassador Taofik Obasanjo Coker, Nigeria’s Consul General in Buea, Republic of Cameroon.

According to a statement issued on Wednesday by the Ministry’s Spokesperson, Kimiebi Imomotimi Ebienfa, Ambassador Coker passed away on Saturday, August 16, following a brief illness.

Ebienfa described the late envoy as a hardworking and dedicated career diplomat who served Nigeria with distinction and professionalism in different capacities.

“His untimely death, therefore, is a great loss to the diplomatic community and the nation at large,” the statement read.

The Ministry noted that before his appointment as Consul General in Buea, Ambassador Coker had served Nigeria meritoriously in the country’s Missions in Conakry, Guinea, and Shanghai, China.

“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs extends its heartfelt condolences to his immediate family, colleagues and friends at this difficult time and prays for the peaceful repose of his soul,” the statement added.

Source: Vanguard News

21, August 2025

Cameroon and France: Telling the necessary truth ⁰

This was arguably the most glaring “memory gap” in French colonial history. Between 1955 and 1970, France waged war in Cameroon against independence and later opposition movements, resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands and helping to install an authoritarian regime loyal to Paris. The silence that surrounded this “dirty war” was both an insult to the victims and a historical failure, as well as a major unspoken issue in relations between the two countries.

This is why we should welcome the move by French President Emmanuel Macron who, in a letter to his Cameroonian counterpart Paul Biya made public on August 12, acknowledged that a “war” had been waged in Cameroon by “the colonial authorities and the French army,” and stated that he acknowledged “France’s role and responsibility.”

It took many years before the reality of this brutal “pacification” carried out in secret, but long well-documented by writers, journalists and historians, was officially recognized. The “counter-revolutionary warfare” techniques first tested in Indochina and then in Algeria – destruction of villages, assaults on unarmed civilians, forced regroupment camps, torture, targeted assassinations – were used against supporters of the Union of the Peoples of Cameroon (UPC, a pro-independence party) and to crush the uprising of the Bamileke people. By delegating repression to local actors, France turned a colonial conflict into a civil war.

Macron’s initiative began in 2022 with the creation of a commission of French and Cameroonian historians tasked with “shedding light” on this chapter of history. The report from this commission, delivered in January 2025, found that the violence in Cameroon “transgressed human rights and the laws of war.”

While President François Hollande had merely referred in 2015 to “particularly violent repression,” Macron acknowledged, as the commission suggested, that France fought a true “war” in Cameroon. The president is thus continuing the necessary process of truth-telling that, from the genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda to the Algerian War, must fill the gaps of amnesia – and even lies – that still weigh on French society and diplomacy, without any notion of “repentance.”

Of course, his gesture remains incomplete – the “violations of human rights” are not clearly defined – and ambiguous in form: It came as a letter addressed to Biya, who is himself the heir to autocrat Ahmadou Ahidjo (installed by France in 1960) and has ruled the country since 1982.

This is where the particular sensitivity of Macron’s attempted truth-telling operation regarding Cameroon lies. The “decolonization war” did not end with independence; Paris continued to repress opponents of the regime that had been put in place. Forgotten in France, this endless war continues to poison the political and social climate in Cameroon. As the end of Biya’s reign approaches – despite being 92 years old, he plans to seek an eighth presidential term in October – and as the demand for historical truth is stirring throughout Francophone Africa, it is time to put an end to the unspoken truths between France and Cameroon.

Source: Le Monde

21, August 2025

Pope Leo XIV ‘seems to be enjoying’ the papacy ⁰

As Pope Leo XIV passed the 100-day mark in his pontificate, one native Chicagoan – Leo’s own older brother, John Prevost — said the new pontiff is having a good time of it in the job so far.

“He seems to be perfectly at ease,” the 71-year-old John Prevost told Chicago local NBC affiliate 5 Chicago television in an exclusive interview that aired this week. “He seems to be enjoying it,” the middle brother of the three boys – Louis Jr., John, and Robert – born to Louis and Mildred Prevost said, “this is a natural.”

John Prevost, a retired school principal, told 5 Chicago life has been busy for him since his baby brother’s election on May 8th.

“It’s non-stop,” Prevost said. “People know who I am when they see me. They seem to think I look like him,” he said, admitting “there might be a family resemblance.”

Prevost told 5 Chicago much of the attention has been good, and some of it – like constant prayer requests – sometimes difficult. “It’s been – some of it – good,” he said. “Some of it’s been kind of sad, a lot of it unexpected,” he continued.

“I get letters almost daily,” Prevost said, “to ‘please, have your brother pray for my son, who has got a debilitating disease, we’ve tried – we’re looking for a miracle.’ Those things are sad.”

The election of John Prevost’s brother, Robert Francis Prevost, has also been an occasion for discovery of the family’s history.

Prevost said it was news to him when the family tree compiled by the eminent Harvard historian and genealogist, Henry Louis Gates Jr. Henry, American Ancestors, and the Cuban Genealogy Club of Miami, discovered his family’s Creole roots.

“We knew nothing of that,” Prevost said, quickly adding, “let me change that – I knew nothing of that. When we talk about, that this is a pope of the people, boy, is he a pope of the people!”

Leo still makes time for his brother, too.

“We do the Wordle and we do the Words With Friends, and now I usually ask him, ‘Who did you meet [who is] famous?’”

Asked whether he has any inside knowledge of Leo’s plans to visit his native city, John said, “The only thing we know for sure is, he’s going to be here for my funeral,” making sure to add that he isn’t sick.

To hear John Prevost tell it, his baby brother responded playfully.

“They may have to keep the body on ice for a while,” John recalled his brother the pope telling him, “but I’ll get there.”

The brothers’ sense of humor was on display in the interview, with John – the middle brother – giving Leo, the youngest, as good as he got.

“The oldest is an experiment,” Prevost said. “The youngest gets spoiled,” he continued. “The middle,” he concluded, “comes out right.”

John Prevost also said he is more careful of his privacy these days.

“I no longer answer the phone unless I know who it is,” he said. “I try to behave a bit better, maybe,” he also said.

Prevost did tell a story about a call he placed to a kind Chicagoan who had Aurelio’s pizza – his famous brother’s favorite – sent to Rome, with the phone number in the order. “Let’s call him,” Prevost recalled Leo suggesting.

“So, we did dial that number, and the man answered the phone, and I said, ‘Is this Mr. —–? Because I don’t remember the name, and he said, ‘Who’s calling?’ and I said, ‘John Prevost.’ ‘Who?’ ‘John Prevost.’ ‘Are you, by any chance, the brother of the pope?’ And I said, ‘Yes, sir, I am.’ He said, ‘Oh, my gosh!’ [And I said,] ‘On the line to talk to you is the pope’.”

John Prevost also showed he could have the sort of keen eye that makes for a good Vatican analyst.

“Pope Francis gave him another title just before his death,” Prevost said, remembering how Francis raised his brother to the rank of cardinal bishop mere months before he passed. “He’s signaling something here,” Prevost said.

Prevost also recalled a particular of the 2023 consistory in which Francis created his brother a cardinal. “Why was my brother named first?” Prevost wondered. “What was the pope saying by calling him up first? It wasn’t alphabetically, it was – so, those things signaled to me.”

“[They were] very close,” Prevost also said of the relationship between his brother – now Pope Leo XIV – and Pope Francis. “They were very good friends,” he said.

Having a brother become pope may well be the archetypical “hometown boy makes good” story, but John Prevost suspects the brothers’ parents would be quietly proud of their son, were they alive.

“I don’t know that they would go around bragging, because they weren’t bragging people, you know? I don’t think you’d see my mom saying, ‘Well, my son is the pope.’ I don’t think that would happen,” Prevost said.

Prevost said he thinks his brother is doing a good job so far.

“Oh, I definitely think the Church is in good hands,” he said. “I think, what people don’t know is, he’s taking this very seriously.”

“It may not look look [like it] when you see him enjoying himself,” Prevost said, “but this is quite a burden on his shoulders and he’s praying for the world.”

Source: Crux

21, August 2025

Southern Cameroons Crisis: Catholic schools pivot to technical education ⁰

As Cameroon’s English-speaking regions grapple with a devastating separatist violence and economic collapse, Catholic schools are launching a bold shift toward technical education to transform jobless graduates into community “problem solvers.”

The Bishops and Catholic Education Secretaries of the Bamenda Episcopal Province – which covers the Anglophone regions – announced the strategic pivot during their August 18 Provincial Council of Education meeting that was held on the sidelines of the 78th Ordinary Meeting of Bishops of the Episcopal Conference taking place in Bamenda from Aug. 16-22.

Moving away from theoretical curricula that “churn out job seekers,” Catholic schools will now prioritize technology and engineering, which emphasize hands-on, problem-based learning that encourage students to apply their knowledge to real-world situations.

Father Charles Ngouobi, the Catholic Education Secretary for the Archdiocese of Bamenda said the diocese has opted for that shift that could “bring major change in the country by introducing technical and tertiary education into our secondary schools.”

His words echo the desperation of university graduates who told Crux they “live hand to mouth, barely able to feed themselves.”

Alphonse Mbidzenyuy, a lay Christian youth in the same diocese graduated from the University of Yaoundé with a master’s degree in history. Today, he washes cars to survive.

“Academic degrees don’t mean a thing in Cameroon today,” he told Crux. Earlier this year, some 200 PhD holders staged a demonstration in the capital Yaoundé, complaining that they hadn’t been recruited into the civil service. Many, like Mbidzenyuy, have deferred to doing menial jobs to keep body and soul together.

The rate of unemployment in Cameroon looks low, at just 3.51 percent. In urban centers, however, the situation is dire, with between 24 percent – 35 percent of youth unemployment. All of these still mask a deeper problem of under-employment and a large informal sector.

“If you look around town today, in Bamenda, for example, you find that we have many boys who are bike riders. And it will embarrass you to know that some of these boys have master’s degrees,” Ngouobi said.

“Therefore, we have decided to go technical with the belief that when these children graduate, they will be able to employ not just themselves but also create jobs for others. And we want to implement a system also that will be able to enable students who are in the general education, especially the science students, to be able to make a bridge from general education to technical education,” the priest said.

Father Edward Siani, the Catholic Education Secretary for the Mamfe Diocese in the country’s South West region, explained further that Catholic education “is about the formation of the whole person.”

“And we are trying as much as possible, be it from the kindergarten, to form kids, to form people who will be catalysts of change in the community where they find themselves. That is, we start helping them to be problem solvers in the community,” he said.

The radical switch to technical education, according to Archbishop Andrew Nkea of Bamenda came because he listened to the Christians and they said they wanted to pivot from grammar schools to technical schools.

“The people told me, Bishop, we don’t want any more grammar schools here. We want technical schools. So I have St. Andrew’s Technical College. We have opened St. Peter and Paul Technical College in Ndop. We are opening another technical college in Bambui. And we are adding a technical section to St. Joseph school, Mankon,” Nkea told Crux.

“My focus in this diocese is on technical education. I keep insisting that China and the other developed economies did not develop because they knew History and Geography. They made progress because they trained the children to use their hands and create employment for themselves,” he explained.

The archbishop said it was critical for Cameroon as a country to rethink its educational system, noting that Catholic schools in his diocese will start producing engineers “at very young ages.”

He cited the case of a young boy who used bamboo to make his car powered with batteries, and which he used a remote control to drive it.

“These are brains wasting in Africa, and yet our educational system cannot tap these brains and that is why my focus in the archdiocese of Bamenda is technical education,” Nkea said.

The Provincial Council of Education meeting was also used to assess the performance of Catholic schools in the Episcopal Province over the past year.

Bishop George Nkuo of Kumbo noted that the 2024/25 academic year was a resounding success, given the performance of Catholic schools at the General Certificate of Education Examinations.

“Our schools performed exceedingly well in the last academic year, with many of them scoring a hundred per cent at the GCE examinations,” he said.

However, he regretted that the continuing separatist violence in several parts of the region doesn’t create the perfect environment for children to learn.

Nkuo complained about problems with infrastructure, explaining that most school infrastructure have dilapidated, some have been destroyed by the conflict.

Source: Crux

20, August 2025

Old CPDM Tricks: Sonara to audit staff as part of refinery restructuring plan ⁰

Cameroon’s state-owned oil refinery Sonara has launched an audit of its human resources and career management. The company has opened a CFA80 million tender, according to a call for bids signed by Managing Director Bako Harouna.

The goal is to give management “an effective and lasting match between its workforce and its jobs, in terms of staffing, qualifications, and profiles.”

The selected firm will be tasked with reviewing staff numbers, evaluating the quality of job profiles, and assessing the alignment between skills and roles. The audit will also include an evaluation of the monitoring and control systems for human resources to determine whether they are suited to Sonara’s responsibilities and workload.

The review will extend to career management, including promotions, identifying shortcomings, and recommending improvements to boost management efficiency. It will also highlight areas where new human resources policies and procedures are needed.

The initiative follows the board of directors’ approval of an ambitious restructuring plan known as the Acceleration Plan for Restructuring and Rehabilitation Measures for Refining Recovery within 24 Months (Parras 24). The program aims to restore the refinery’s capacity to pre-2019 levels, before a fire destroyed part of its facilities.

Sonara has been out of operation for six years, adding to its debt burden with traders, banks, and the tax authorities. In this context, the staff audit is seen as a key step to determine whether the refinery has the skills needed for its industrial revival.

Source: Business in Cameroon

20, August 2025

Football: Salah makes history as first three-time PFA player of the year winner ⁰

Mohamed Salah became the first player to win the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) men’s player of the year for a third time on Tuesday after guiding Liverpool to Premier League glory.

The Egyptian scored 29 goals and provided 18 assists to propel the Reds to a record-equalling 20th English top-flight title with four games to spare last season.

Salah also scooped the award in the 2017/18 and 2021/22 seasons.

The 33-year-old picked up the Football Writers’ Association and Premier League player of the year awards in recent months.

Aston Villa’s Morgan Rogers won young player the year following a breakthrough campaign that saw the attacking midfielder make his senior international debut for England.

Salah is joined in the 2024/25 PFA Premier League team of the year by Liverpool team-mates Virgil van Dijk, Ryan Gravenberch and Alexis Mac Allister.

Milos Kerkez, who moved to Anfield from Bournemouth in June, is also selected, as are the Arsenal trio of William Saliba, Gabriel Magalhaes and Declan Rice.

Matz Sels and Chris Wood are recognised for their fine campaigns at Nottingham Forest, while wantaway Newcastle striker Alexander Isak is included after finishing second to Salah in the Golden Boot race.

Arsenal’s Mariona Caldentey won the women’s player of the year accolade after her role in helping the Gunners win the Champions League.

The Spanish midfielder scored 19 goals in all competitions, including eight in the Champions League, in her first season in England.

Olivia Smith recently joined Caldentey at Arsenal in a world-record £1 million ($1.4 million) deal and won the women’s young player of the year prize following her superb season at Liverpool.

Source: AFP