Some cities in Cameroon were deserted Tuesday after the main opposition leader asked citizens to stay at home to protest the recent election win of 92-year-old President Paul Biya.

The three-day lockdown, which began Monday, was mainly in key opposition strongholds including the economic hub of Douala and in northern cities like Maroua and Garoua, where deadly protests have taken place in recent days. There was partial compliance in the capital of Yaoundé on Tuesday as some businesses continued as usual.

Biya, the world’s oldest president at 92, won the Oct. 12 vote and secured his eighth term, according to official results. Main opposition candidate Issa Tchiroma Bakary, however, claims to have won and has called on Cameroonians to reject the official results.

In his call for a lockdown, Tchiroma said: “Let us keep our shops closed, suspend our activities, remain at home in silence, to demonstrate our solidarity.”

The lockdown in cities where people decided to stay indoors has resulted in economic hardship with businesses and offices closed while some transport services including along intercity routes are grounded.

Amadou Adji, a resident of Garoua whose niece was among those killed during the protests, expressed support for the lockdown. “The lockdown is also a form of solidarity which we are showing to Tchiroma,” said Amadou.

In the economic hub of Douala, food seller Caroline Akuh said it’s been difficult to make ends meet for her family since the lockdown started.

“We are afraid to step out … we are tired of this,” she said.

In Yaoundé, the cost of a 5 liter bucket of potatoes has jumped to $8.78 from $3.50 less than a week ago.

“Prices have gone up in ways no one anticipated,” said Celestin Mimba, a resident in the capital.

The lockdown follows pockets of protests by opposition supporters and clashes with security forces in the aftermath. Authorities confirmed the killing of four persons during protests in the north while the Stand Up For Cameroon civil society group has said at least 23 people were killed during recent protests.

Cameroonian authorities have condemned the protests and accused the opposition of trying to instigate a breakdown of law and order.

Source: ABC News

At least one person was killed and four others injured on Sunday when an improvised explosive device detonated in a bar in Cameroon’s restive Anglophone Northwest region, security sources said, APA reports citing Xinhua.

The blast took place in Batibo, a locality of the region, with the bomb planted in a bar near a police station, according to officials.

“A group of terrorists targeted the bar because policemen frequently gather there,” a regional security officer told Xinhua. “However, no officers were present during the explosion. All victims were civilians enjoying time with friends and family.”

No group has claimed responsibility, but local authorities attributed the attack to separatist fighters active in the area.

On Monday, separatists initiated a month-long lockdown in Cameroon’s English-speaking Northwest and Southwest regions to disrupt school reopenings and the October presidential election.

Separatists have been clashing with government forces in the regions since 2017 in a bid to create an independent nation.

Source: Xinhuanet

Three-quarters of Cameroon’s road network remains in a poor or mediocre state despite public investment, according to a September 2025 project review by the country’s Ministry of Public Works. The report reveals that 91,405 km of the nation’s 121,873 km road system are in disrepair, presenting a significant obstacle to economic activity.

Only 25% (30,468 km) of the network is rated as being in good or fair condition. The quality varies significantly by road type. While 100% of the country’s small stretch of motorways (109 km) are in good condition, only 18% of crucial municipal roads meet this standard. National roads fare better, with 69% rated as good or fair, but regional routes lag at just 35%.

The report indicates a marginal five-percentage-point improvement in overall network quality compared to 2024. Progress is being hampered by several systemic issues, including pavement degradation, the impacts of climate change, and a lack of discipline among road users.

A critical factor cited is the weakness of the domestic construction sector. The ministry noted that many local firms lack the financial, technical, and logistical capacity to execute projects effectively. This has led to the termination of 27 contracts between 2019 and 2024 and the closure of several other projects at the request of the struggling companies.

In response, the government is implementing structural reforms. A 2022 law aimed at protecting national road assets is being enforced to increase infrastructure durability. Furthermore, a decree from July 2025 has reorganized the national Road Fund to improve resource allocation for maintenance and rehabilitation.

As of December 31, 2024, Cameroon’s road network consisted of 10,576 km of paved roads and 111,297 km of dirt roads.

Looking ahead, the government plans to launch 132 major new road projects starting in 2025. The initiative aims to pave 882 km of new roads, rehabilitate 661 km of existing paved roads, and perform maintenance on another 828 km by 2027, covering a total distance of 2,371 km.

Source: Business in Cameroon

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

The newly-installed Ethics & Disciplinary Committee (EDC) of the Cameroon Association of English-speaking Journalists (CAMASEJ) has been well received by newspaper publishers.

Publishers of newspapers who are the main employers of members of CAMASEJ expressed kind words and made proposals to the Executive Secretary of EDC in the first outing by the Ethics Committee since it began its operations about a week ago.

Paying a courtesy call on newspaper publishers in Buea on 5 June, EDC’s Executive Secretary, Franklin Sone Bayen, had a brief exchange with them on the sidelines of the CENPA Awards organized by the Cameroon English Language Newspaper Publishers’ Association (CENPA) at Mountain Hotel in Buea.

For about 30 minutes, Bayen engaged with nearly 20 newspaper publishers, explaining the vision, mission and methods of EDC to achieve its objectives.

“As newspaper publishers, you are employers of CAMASEJ members as well as many of you are members of CAMASEJ, thus EDC concerns you,” said the EDC Executive Secretary in his opening statement.

 “We are told Jesus came to die for our sins but I think he also came to understand mankind, to have our human experience so that when he sits in judgement besides God the Father, he would use his experience in human frailty to tamper the wrath of God who is perfect. He would beg the Father to take it easy because he lived the experience of the temptations that lead Man to commit sin. He would tell the Father, for example, that being in the company of Mary and Martha and feeling the sensation of a woman oiling his feet, He understands better why Man can fall into sin, though sexual misconduct may not be totally excused,” Bayen went on.

“Likewise, we, members of EDC, being your colleagues, will not act as if we are perfect. We’ll act with an understanding of the challenges of our profession and its pitfalls though we must uphold values because blatant misconduct must not be tolerated, else impunity and abuses would thrive,” he said.

Bayen said that is why the best media regulation is self-regulation under peer review.

He told the publishers that EDC is not a declaration of war on journalists and publishers but a partner to assist publishers in maintaining order in their newsrooms by guiding and cautioning reporters and editors who could be perpetrators of professional ethical misconduct which could be costly to publishers themselves.

“Unlike undertakers and others in the death industry like coffin makers and hearse rentals who may wish for people to die for their business to thrive, we at ED rather wish for fewer or no media offences as the absence of offences would be good news to us, because it means less work for us and also that would suggest that journalists are increasingly ethically consciousness,” the Ethics henchman went on.

Bayen said EDC wishes to collaborate with publishers for a number of reasons. He said EDC wants publishers to give it logistic support by making available their newspapers to ease EDC monitoring due to its limited means.

EDC also wants publishers to take the commitment to enforce EDC recommendations and decisions on its staff because that would also save them the troubles the unethical misconduct of their staff can bring upon them.

Reacting, some newspaper publishers expressed certain concerns. Choves Loh, publisher of The News newspaper, proposed the inclusion of non-CAMASEJ members in EDC to broaden its scope of influence beyond just CAMASEJ members.

Elias Ngalame, publisher of Eco-Outlook advised EDC to bear in mind the commercial interests of newspapers and understand that ethical considerations may be limited in commercial reporting or “advertorials” in the local Press parlance.

Bouddih Adams of The Post said clearcut distinctions between news, editorials and commercial or advertorial content would save newspapers EDC’s wrath.

Responding to the publishers, the EDC Executive Secretary said EDC would take their concerns into consideration where possible but pointed out that as a general principle, commercial stories must be labelled as “advertorial” or “spotlight” or “special report”, without which they are ethically wrong.

Bayen told the publishers that in continuation of EDC’s outreach, it will visit individual newsrooms in the coming days to hold working sessions with their staff and sign Memorandums of Understand with publishers.

Besides watching over ethics in news media, EDC also has the duty of ensuring discipline among CAMASEJ members.

Macron has acknowledged that France waged a “war” in Cameroon during and after the African country’s decolonisation in the late 1950s, marked by “repressive violence”, in a letter published Tuesday.

The letter, sent to his Cameroonian counterpart last month, follows an officially commissioned report, published in January, which said that France implemented mass forced displacement, pushed hundreds of thousands of Cameroonians into internment camps and supported brutal militias to squash the central African country’s push for sovereignty.

The historical commission, the creation of which had been announced by Macron during a 2022 trip to Yaounde, examined France’s role leading up to when Cameroon gained independence from France on January 1, 1960, but also during the subsequent years.

“The historians of the commission made it very clear that there was a war in Cameroon, during which the colonial authorities and the French army carried out repressive violence of several kinds in certain parts of the country in a war that continued after 1960 when France supported the actions carried out by the independent Cameroon authorities,” Macron said in the letter to Cameroonian President Paul Biya, published by the French presidency.

“It is incumbent on me today to accept France’s role and responsibility in these events,” he said.

Source: AFP