Negotiations between Cameroon and Sundance Resources (and its local subsidiary Cam Iron SA), which began in the second half of 2021, for an amicable settlement of the dispute over the Mbalam iron ore mining project, have failed.

The Australian mining company brought the case to the International Court of Arbitration of the International Chamber of Commerce in Paris in June 2021 to force Cameroon to grant it an operating license on the project, after the mining convention of November 29, 2012, and the transition agreement of June 30, 2015. The company said Cameroon was about to grant the license to another partner.

Sundance wants Cameroon to at least repay the amount it invested in the research phase. The money is estimated at CFA94 billion (subject to audit), according to the Minister of Mines, Industry and Technological Development (Minmidt), whose services led the negotiations with the Australian mining company.

Disapproval

Gabriel Dodo Ndocké believes that paying this “debt” will put a definitive end to the battle between the Cameroonian government and Sundance Resources but President Paul Biya (pictured) seems to disapprove. In a letter dated April 18, the President said he prefers an arbitration approach and has already contacted Thierry Lauriol, a lawyer at the Paris bar and partner in the firm Jeantet, to defend Cameroon before the court. Thierry Lauriol was Congo’s lawyer before the court of arbitration of London when the country was battling against the same company for the Congolese part of the same project.

The lawyer should have already filed the response of the State of Cameroon to the request for arbitration before the deadline of April 30, 2022. Under this strategy, the Minister of Finance, Louis Paul Motazé, was instructed to urgently make $55,000 (about 34.57 million CFA francs) available to the collector at the Embassy of Cameroon in Paris. The money covered the urgent procedure that ended April 1, 2022, by a decision not favorable to Cameroon. The International Court of Arbitration in Paris issued a provisional decision prohibiting Cameroon “from issuing an exploitation permit for the Mbalam iron ore deposit or from issuing any instrument or document having a similar effect, to Sonamines or any other entity,” Sundance reported.

Delay

In August 2021, Sundance Resources announced it was relying on arbitration proceedings against Cameroon and Congo to pay debts owed to its shareholders estimated at $132 million (about CFA70.86 billion), as of the end of January 2021. In Congo, the Australian firm is claiming damages of $8.76 billion, or more than CFA4,700 billion at the current value of the US dollar.

Since 2015, after several extensions of its exploration license on the project, the Australian mining junior has not managed to secure a technical and financial partner for the implementation of infrastructure related to the Mbalam project (construction of a railway more than 500 km between Mbalam and Kribi, of the mine and a mineral terminal at the deepwater port of Kribi). Successive attempts with the Chinese companies China Gezhouba, in 2015, Tidfore Heavy Equipment Group Ltd, in 2018, and AustSino, after 2018, have all failed.

On June 25, 2021, in Yaoundé, Cameroon signed an MoU with AutSino Resources Group Ltd and Bestway Finance Ltd for the construction of the railway (more than 500 km) linking Mbalam to the deepwater port of Kribi. This prompted Sundance to take AutSino to court in Australia for breach of trust. Sundance believes that the Chinese company used the data it had provided to negotiate and obtain the Mbalam permit behind its back.

Culled from Business in Cameroon

Cameroon and the European Investment Bank (EIB) on Thursday signed an agreement on funding the railway line between Belabo and Ngaoundere in the eastern part of the Central African nation.

Vice President of the EIB Thomas Ostros began a working visit in Cameroon Thursday, hoping to explore further avenues of economic cooperation between the EU and the Central African nation. During his stay, Ostros met with the country’s Prime Minister Joseph Dion Ngute and other senior government officials in Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon, and discussed the prospects for increasing investment.

It is believed that the signing of the agreement during his visit will involve an investment of 80 billion XAF (about 129 million U.S. dollars).

“We see this as a ground-breaking project. It is about connecting people but also for business and job opportunities. It fits also with our ambition to invest in sustainable transport. Actually, the biggest investment that we have made in sustainable transport in Sub-Saharan Africa ever,” Ostros, who signed on behalf of the EIB, told reporters in Yaounde.

Alamine Ousmane Mey, the minister of Economy, Planning and Regional Development, who signed on behalf of the Cameroonian government, expressed confidence that European investors would increasingly look at the favorable opportunities available in the country in the context of the positive steps taken by the government to create an investor friendly climate.

“This cooperation has led to a portfolio of projects amounting to roughly 880 million euros. This has made it possible to cover priority areas such as infrastructure, energy, industrial development and agriculture. This certainly is going to help Cameroon accelerate its development process,” Mey said.

Source: Xinhuanet

Authorities in Cameroon say anglophone separatists have joined forces with Nigerian militants to shut down nearly all trade across the two countries’ border. Cameroon depends on Nigeria for 70% of basic commodities and most of them are transported across the land border. Authorities say about 90% of trade has been halted as militants from both sides attack and abduct merchants.

Njume Peter Ambang is a lawmaker from Cameroon’s restive southwest region on the border with Nigeria. He said fighters within the past two months have taken control of many businesses, including palm oil plantations in Ndian, a division in the Southwest region.

“Maritime business has collapsed. The oil business has all collapsed. Palm oil fields have been seized by the separatists. They harvest the crops, they mill and sell. These guys are working with area boys (armed groups) in Nigeria,” he said.

Ambang was speaking in the Ndian capital, Mundemba, Sunday during a meeting to plead with local fighters to drop their guns and stop harassing merchants.

Cameroon’s military says several hundred fighters chased from towns and villages during raids by government troops relocated to the border with Nigeria. The military says the fighters have killed at least two dozen merchants and abducted scores of others for ransom since January.

Nigeria and Cameroon have promised to crush all separatists who do not surrender.

The two countries’ governments announced in February 2021 that they would work together to combat separatists and armed groups.

Cameroon this week said it deployed more troops to the border to protect civilians, merchants and their goods.

Source: VOA

The autonomous Douala port (PAD) is gradually taking over activities that were previously managed by foreign groups. Cyrus Ngo’o, the port authority’s boss, is in charge of dredging, weighing, security and managing the container terminal.

The Bolloré-Maersk consortium’s eviction from the container terminal in December 2020 and the ongoing litigation, which has been widely publicised, may lead one to believe that this disqualification of foreign operators was a one-off event.

However, a nationalist groundswell has indeed been sweeping through the Cameroonian economic capital’s port complex ever since Cyrus Ngo’o was made the head of the autonomous Douala port (PAD) five years ago. In October 2020, this trained civil administrator announced the return of the “state of Cameroon’s sovereignty over the main access route for goods and merchandise in the country.”

New agencies and companies

Under his leadership, a number of activities that were carried out by foreign companies – in line with the 1998 port reform which, among other things, established private operations – are now managed by local companies. Several of them are supervised by the port authorities. “As was the case before, when some activities were even directly operated by the former Office National des Ports du Cameroun [ONPC], the PAD’s ancestor,” says Lin Onana Ndoh, deputy director of the company in charge of towing and salvaging ships, which was established at the beginning of 2021 to replace the French company Boluda.

For the past two years, the delegated company has also been responsible for managing the container terminal, which was previously the responsibility of Douala International Terminal (DIT, a subsidiary of the French company Bolloré Transport & Logistics and the Dutch company APM Terminals), through the Régie du Terminal à Conteneurs (RTC). It has also taken over the dredging activities previously operated by China Harbour Engineering Company (CHEC), as well as safety and security, for which a new entity has been created: Douala Port Security (DPS). This takeover was possible thanks to financial support from Afriland First Bank, which made lines of credit available to the port authorities to start their activities.

Another mechanism used was concession. This is the case for stevedoring, for which an agreement was signed last year with Fako Ship, one of the entities of the family group founded by Charles Namme Menyoli and established in Buea, in the South West region. It led to the creation of Douala Mooring Company (DMC), the project company in charge of the activity. The only exception to this rule is the concession for the timber yard’s management, which was concluded before Ngo’o’s arrival and remains a part of Bolloré group.

Countering multinationals’ blackmail

Public-private partnerships, including with foreign operators, are not excluded. For example, the Turkish company Erdem, financed by Afriland First Bank, will invest 15bn CFA francs [€22.87m] in the coming months to build 13 warehouses. Erdem has already created the Société de Gestion des Magasins Portuaires (SGMP) to ensure that these warehouses will be operational when the time comes.

For a long time, certain jobs were left to foreign operators who had the necessary tools, such as security – now entrusted to DPS – and weighing goods entering and leaving the port. This task has now been devolved to Douala Port Weighing Services (DPWS), which signed a 20-year operating agreement two years ago. “Since then, we have set up a network of weighbridges that are open to the public in the port area and capable of handling all the traffic,” says DPWS’ president Lucien Ndzomo Mviena.

In addition to the PAD’s stated intention, some renationalisations are the result of disagreements between the port authorities and the concessionaire regarding the specifications at the time of negotiations, which were supposed to lead to a contract renewal. “In this case, when the previous service provider could not convince the PAD of the need to reduce operating costs and maintain investments,” says Ndoh. According to Ngo’o, Cameroonising activities also makes it possible to counter “certain multinational companies’ persistent blackmail to stop work.”

Significant savings

The first impact of this PAD policy is the savings made across the port activity’s various segments. One of the best examples is the disappearance of head office costs, which the parent company charges to its subsidiaries and have an impact on the result, as well as better control over salary costs, resulting from expatriates’ departure.

Cameroonisation has also brought down costs. “Dredging represented 30% to 40% of the PAD’s operating costs, which is considerable. To dredge 3.7 million m³ of tailings, we were spending nearly 10bn CFA francs per year. We have reduced this cost to less than 4bn CFA francs per year for the same quantity treated,” says Idriss Beye, the dredging authority’s deputy director. Similarly, in terms of security, installing DPS and its video surveillance system has considerably reduced the number of larcenies suffered by the various operators. “This has prevented us from stealing fuel, which our predecessor deplored, and we have therefore been able to make significant savings,” says Ndoh.

Royalties

The dynamics set in motion have thus helped increase the PAD’s income and the resources needed to make the investments required to renovate the infrastructure and acquire new equipment. With a turnover of 56.8bn CFA francs for 2021 – up 14% from the previous financial year – the Régie du Terminal à Conteneurs (RTC) is expected to make a profit of more than 15bn CFA francs.

The net result of its more modest sister company specialising in towing is estimated at around CFAF 1bn, which translates to CFAF 4.3bn (up 23%) in revenue. Add to these resources a collection of fixed and variable royalties, which are increasing overall across the various businesses. In addition, the contract signed with the Swiss company Pukaly to reevaluate dredging residues guarantees an income of 45bn CFA francs for the next 15 years.

These initial satisfactory and promising results are already being replicated in the region’s other ports. For example, one of the dredgers that the PAD has recently acquired will leave in April to stay in the Congolese port of Pointe-Noire so that it can evacuate 1.7m tonnes of sand in order to facilitate maritime access. “We are even studying requests from Venezuela and Colombia,” says Beye.

Source: The Africa Report

When the Chinese arrived in Cameroon in 2011 to begin building the first phase of Kribi Deep Seaport, the Central African nation was hopeful of having a new transport corridor that would link its vast southwestern coastal area and neighboring nations.

The main existing port in the commercial hub of Douala, some 150 km to the north of Kribi was virtually worn out by congestion. To increase transport capacity, the China Harbour Engineering Company Ltd (CHEC) set out to construct the Kribi port, and in three years works were completed.

The new port has stimulated the country’s economy and provided relief for the harbor at Douala port, the country’s most populous city, while also providing dock space for larger ships, said Alain Patrick Mpila Ayissi, Manager of Land development and Environment department of Port Authority of Kribi.

“Since the construction works ended in 2014 and the start of port operations in 2018, there has been notable increase in economic growth. The first indicator is the hikes in the custom revenues as a result of the port. We left from 750 million XAF (US$1.26 million) to practically 150 billion XAF per annum,” said Ayissi.

As a cheap logistics mode, the port is a fundamental foundation of Cameroon’s industrialization process, said Xu Huajiang, general manager of China Harbour Central Africa Division of CHEC who oversaw the construction of the first phase of the port.

“So far, after Kribi (port) was founded, it has attracted a lot of external investment. For example, there is already a cocoa factory invested by Cote d’Ivoire. There are two cement plants under construction. Many logistics enterprises have settled in to build their own yards and warehouses. There are also some Chinese enterprises coming to discuss investment with them in this area,” Xu said.

Kribi port is located on the Atlantic coast some 285 km from the capital Yaounde. It is strategically positioned in the center of the Gulf of Guinea and is surrounded by the 262 square km Kribi Industrial Area, destined to host new industrial and logistical developments.

With Cameroon being a growing market, Kribi is expected to become a regional hub for the African Atlantic coast. Ship-owners will no longer run the risk of offloading part of their cargo elsewhere before docking in Cameroon, said Ayissi.

“With the coming of the Kribi port, Cameroon has once again placed herself as the port entry to the sub-region. This (the port) has added more value to certain industrial projects in Chad, Central African Republic and Congo,” he added.

As part of the project, CHEC also constructed the Kribi-Lolabe highway that will cater to the requirements of the port transportation and logistics and make a contribution to local prosperity.

The highway which includes the construction of 20 bridges, the total length of which is 2 km will serve as an important traffic artery in the Kribi region.

Currently, CHEC is busy constructing the Kribi Deep Sea Port Phase II. After the completion of the project, it is expected to become a large container transit port and comprehensive hub port in Central and West Africa.

Xu revealed that during the process of port and highway construction, over 1,000 jobs had been provided. Cameroonian workers employed by CHEC, including Eric Defo Fotso, Larissa Ekale Koule and Fran Mbofris told Xinhua that building their country’s largest port is an opportunity to update their own skills and contribute to the country’s industrialization.

“We have project coordinators with a lot of experience be it in administrative affairs, project management and I got to live the Chinese culture. We get to see different things from what we heard since childhood. Just working with them is like you traveled to China to learn about this (skills),” said Fotso, 32, who coordinates projects at the site.

“Every nation, like Cameroon aspires to emerge. So it’s an honor for us to have China and her expertise and who willingly accepted to share it with us,” added 26-year-old Koule whose main assignment is to ensure that all onsite workers are in good health and that there are no job-related illnesses.

“They (CHEC) have given us a great opportunity. Our livelihoods have improved significantly,” said Mbofris who spent seven years in China teaching the English language and now works as an interpreter with CHEC.

Ayissi said the Kribi port project is a glaring example of Cameroon’s participation in the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative, adding that the country is committed to unlocking the potential of interlinked production networks and value chains.

Source: Xinhua  

The African Development Bank (www.AfDB.org) and the Commission of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) have signed a memorandum of understanding for $3.56 million in grant funding to support the development of pharmaceutical industries in West Africa.

Lamin Barrow, Managing Director of the Bank for Nigeria and Mamadou Traoré, ECOWAS Commissioner in charge of Industry and the Private Sector, signed the agreement for the Pharmaceutical Industry Development Support Project in West Africa on Wednesday.

The project’s total cost is $3.77 million, to which the ECOWAS Commission will provide $200,000 in cash and $400,000 in-kind.

The funds will support the implementation of regulations to allow duty-free access to pharmaceutical raw materials, packaging, and finished products under the ECOWAS Common External Tariff. It will also help establish an effective regional pharmaceutical regulatory ecosystem by providing technical assistance programs for regional regulatory authorities.

Commissioner Traoré said: “Local production of pharmaceuticals and biologicals has become an imperative and a regional priority, as is the provision of healthcare delivery services. The African Development Bank’s support of these priorities will help ECOWAS achieve its development objectives.”

During the signing ceremony held in Abuja, the African Development Bank’s Director General for Nigeria, Lamin Barrow said: “The COVID-19 crisis has further exposed the fragility of our national healthcare systems and posed significant disruptions to the global health and pharmaceutical supply chains. This underscores the urgency of accelerating efforts to ensure a minimum level of supply of health products.”

The project will enhance the pharmaceutical industry’s competitiveness through improved quality and product standards and help ensure that the region complies with best practices in manufacturing pharmaceutical products and supplies. It will strengthen regional training institutions and laboratories to ensure that the required skills are available to support the industry’s regional growth in a gender-sensitive and environmentally friendly manner.

In response to calls from the African Union and the pharmaceutical industry, the African Development Bank has taken a leadership role in developing and driving a continental Vision and Action Plan for a new African Pharmaceutical order. Bank Group President Dr. Akinwumi A. Adesina announced last year that the institution would mobilize up to $3 billion to support this development.

The project will also advance the Bank’s efforts to support the harmonization of the regulatory environment for pharmaceuticals across Africa at the regional and continental levels. This, in tandem with the operationalization of the African Continental Free Trade Area, will deepen intra-African integration and trade, boosting regional markets.

The Bank’s Vice President for Private Sector, Infrastructure and Industrialisation, Solomon Quaynor, said: “To develop the pharmaceutical industry, the African Development Bank will help to develop local production capacities to increase the market share of African (local and regional) pharmaceutical production value to 45-55% by 2030.”

The project aligns with three of the African Development Bank’s High Five strategic priorities: Industrialize Africa, Integrate Africa, and Improve the quality of life for the people of Africa. It also advances the Bank’s Regional Integration Strategy for West Africa, and is in line with the Bank’s gender strategy, and its strategic response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The ECOWAS Commission will be the executing agency for this project, which will run for two years, starting from 2022. The West African Health Organisation will be the implementing agency.

 By APO Group

From airlines in Nigeria to shoppers in Malawi, Africans are feeling the impact of the Ukraine crisis in wrenching increases in the price of fuel, grain and fertiliser.

Global oil prices scaled decade-long highs of more than $100 a barrel shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, inflicting a hefty blow to many businesses south of the Sahara.

Both Ukraine and Russia are also major suppliers of wheat and other cereals to Africa, while Russia is a key producer of fertiliser.

The impact of the war and the West’s sanctions against the Kremlin are already starting to translate into higher prices for farm inputs and imported grain, AFP bureaus in Africa report.

For Lagos baker Julius Adewale, the crisis is a perfect storm.

Nigeria’s fragile power grid had recently been supplying just a few hours of electricity per day, forcing Adewale to turn to diesel-fueled generators for power — the cost of which has now soared.

“There is no light since yesterday and we’ve been running on gen since yesterday,” Adewale said this week, as workers stacked piles of loaves in his bakery.

“(The) cost of production has increased immensely.”

Nigeria is Africa’s largest oil producer and biggest economy, but it has little refining capacity.

The government subsidises the cost of petrol, but diesel and aviation fuel are sold at market price.

Several local airlines warned this month they were forced to cancel flights due to aviation fuel scarcities.

Diesel used to sell in Nigeria at around 300 naira (0.72 cents) a litre but now goes for 730 ($1.75) a litre.

“I don’t know how we are going to cope because 70 per cent of industries are running on diesel,” Lanre Popoola, a regional chairman of Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), told local media.

“Other businesses are also running limited hours on diesel as they cannot afford to use generators all day.”

Hardship ahead

If the crisis is sustained, said Eurasia Group analyst Amaka Anku, African countries which are big importers of fuel and grain will rank among the losers, although exporters of those commodities may be among the winners.

There are also countries that are heavily indebted, such as Ghana, which will struggle with higher borrowing costs as investor risk appetite lowers, she said.

Gas producers like Tanzania, Senegal and Nigeria may benefit from Europe’s moves to end its dependence on Russian energy, said Danielle Resnick at the Brookings Institution think tank.

But, she said, the immediate challenge was hardship for African families, millions of which are already struggling to get by.

“War in Ukraine means hunger in Africa,” International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said on Sunday.

High prices will for instance aggravate food insecurity in conflict-torn Ethiopia, where nearly 20 million people are in need of food aid.

– Inflation already here –

In many parts of Africa, the inflationary machine has already lurched into higher gear, AFP bureaus report.

In Kenya, a two kilogramme (4.4-pound) bag of wheat flour now sells for 150-172 Kenyan shillings (US$1.3 to US$1.5), compared to less than 140 shillings in February.

Sub-Saharan Africa’s No. 3 economy usually gets a fifth of its imported wheat from Russia and another 10 percent comes from Ukraine, according to government figures.

As for fertiliser, a 50-kilo bag that cost 4,000 shillings last year now changes hands for 6,500 shillings ($57) — a figure that is likely to increase as the planting season starts this month.

In the Ugandan capital Kampala, Ukraine’s crisis has already caused a surge in prices of soap, sugar, salt, cooking oil and fuel.

“Most of the essential commodities are produced locally but some ingredients are imported and their prices are being dictated by the shocks on international markets,” Junior Finance Minister David Bahati told AFP.

Cooking oil has risen from 7,000 shillings per litre ($1.94) in February to 8,500 shillings ($2.4) and a kilo of rice from 3,800 to 5,500 shillings, according to Kampala retail shops.

“My family of four people spend an average of 5,000 shillings to cater for food and other necessities but this is no longer enough… I now spend more than 10,000 shillings,” Ritah Kabaku, 41, a shop assistant in Kampala, told AFP.

‘Victims of war’

Wary of Ukraine-fueled inflation, Mauritius’ central bank has raised its key interest rate to two percent — its first hike since 2011.

“It is unfortunate that as the sky cleared after Covid 19, more clouds appeared,” Prime Minister Pravind Kumar Jugnauth said in a televised speech.

In Somalia’s capital Mogadishu, prices for fuel, cooking oil, construction materials and electricity have shot up.

“A week ago, the 20-litre jerrycan of cooking oil was $25, today it’s about $50. A litre of gasoline was $0.64 and today it runs about $1.80 — it’s crazy,” said Mohamed Osman, a trader.

In southern Africa, bread and cooking oil prices in Malawi have shot up by an average 50 percent.

“This war doesn’t concern us and it is not right that we should be paying such a high price,” Fatsani Phiri, an auditor who was buying bread in the capital Lilongwe.

“We cannot always be victims every time there is a war somewhere in the world.”

Source: AFP

Since 2016, for people in the restive English-speaking parts of Cameroon, each new year comes with the expectation of an end to the drawn-out separatist conflict. However, gratuitous violence rages on as the bloody war – which has so far killed over 5,000 people – continues unabated.

Barely two weeks into 2022, some nine workers at Cameroon’s largest agro-industrial company, the Cameroon Development Corporation (CDC), came face-to-face with death. They were toiling at the Sonne/Likomba Rubber Estate, one of CDC’s rubber plantations near the port town of Tiko in Southwest Cameroon, when gunmen abducted them, despite military protection. The kidnappers, who later claimed to be members of the Ambazonia Revolutionary Guards (one of several armed militia groups fighting to establish an independent, English-speaking state called Ambazonia) held them for 10 days in an undisclosed location.

The victims, including a lactating mother, were tortured, forced to carry assault rifles and grenades for the rebel fighters, and sing the national anthem of Ambazonia. In a video which was circulated on social media and seen by Equal Times, the plantation workers looked visibly hungry and dejected. Thankfully, they were eventually released without bodily injuries.

When their colleagues at the same estate were previously attacked at work, on two different occasions, the armed separatists beat them with machetes, inflicting serious bodily injuries. On one occasion, attackers asked six CDC plantation workers to place their fingers on tree trunks before chopping them off.

From the onset of the Anglophone crisis, separatists have been disrupting CDC operations as a form of economic sabotage. The CDC, which is engaged in the production of rubber, banana and palm oil for export, is the second biggest employer in Cameroon after the civil service.

Prior to the conflict, the state-run CDC was an important revenue stream for the government. The corporation generated 58.39 billion francs CFA (approximately US$101.8 million) from produce sales in 2016, according to CDC officials. But then, protracted fighting between increasingly bold armed separatists and government troops has forced the CDC to grind to a near-halt, seriously eroding the revenue base of the corporation. Since CDC plantations and factories are largely located in the troubled English-speaking Southwest region of Cameroon (one of two regions snared in the conflict, alongside the Northwest region), the conflict has dealt a heavy blow to the agricultural sector, and the CDC in particular, with its low-income plantation workers bearing much of the brunt of the chaos.

In 2016, before the outbreak of the conflict, CDC tells Equal Times that its workforce stood at 20,595. But as of 31 December 2021, this number had dropped to 15,505 workers, with about 50 per cent of the manpower on unpaid ‘technical leave’.

By 2019, only seven out of CDC’s 29 production sites were fully operational. Twelve had been shut down while 10 were partially functioning. This had an adverse impact on production capacity. For rubber, annual production fell from about 16,000 tons in 2016 to 4,507 tons in 2020. Palm oil production dropped from 22,375 tons in 2016 to 8,493 tons in 2020, while banana production fell from 113,858 to 6,178 tons over the same period.

Severally CDC processing plants have suffered from arson attacks. Meanwhile, separatists have also pitched their logistic and training camps in some plantations, forcing workers to abandon the farms. The disruption in activities saw CDC’s revenue plummet, and the company has since continued to default in the payment of its workers’ wages.

Quest for survival

As the fighting persists, many CDC workers have been caught in the crossfire. No fewer than 20 workers have been killed on and off duty since 2016, according to CDC trade unionists. Others have been exposed to violence as the corporation is unable to provide them with adequate security. Amid the insecurity and unpaid wages, some CDC workers, not keen to wait and see if the precarious situation will ever subside, have fled the country.

Twenty-nine-year-old Douon Basilise joined the CDC as a farm labourer in Tiko in 2014. She then rose to the rank of process control overseer, a position she held between 2016 and 2017 at CDC’s banana section. But insecurity and the uncertainty over wages was very bad for her morale.

“In September 2018, I met Amba fighters [armed separatists of the Ambazonia Defence Forces] on the field. As they approached me, I left everything in the changing room at Benoe Estate and took to my heels. I had to run for my life,” Douon discloses. That was the last time she ever set foot on a CDC plantation. With support from her family and friends, she ventured to the United Arab Emirates where she is currently exploring other opportunities.

Douon has described the working conditions of CDC employees, especially those in lower categories, as “extremely pathetic”. Not only do these workers often work additional jobs to make extra cash but they also live in dilapidated housing structures in camps that lack basic amenities.

Jonas Ebini Mbengtarh is another banana worker who has experienced the thorny issue of unpaid salaries at the CDC. He was owed 11 months of wages before being furloughed in September 2018. “My stay at the CDC was not the best,” Mbengtarh tells Equal Times, adding that he also contemplated embarking on a perilous journey to Europe.

“I was flat broke when I left the CDC. I decided to work in building construction sites as a general labourer for a meagre 2,500 francs CFA [approximately US$4.30] a day,” Mbengtarh says. He did this for 14 months to take care of his ageing parents and fiancée, before re-joining the CDC when the corporation restarted banana production.

For ordinary workers of the CDC, such as general labourers, the seemingly intractable situation means they have to lay their hands on anything they can to eke out a living. Some have heavily indebted themselves to get basic necessities such as food and clothing for their families, while others have resorted to additional menial jobs under extreme working conditions just to put food on their table. Some still work for the CDC though the corporation still owes them months of outstanding wages.

CDC in tight corner

Gabriel Mbene Vefonge, national president of the Cameroon Agricultural and Allied Workers Trade Union (CAAWOTU), which has over 2,500 CDC worker-members, says the situation is regrettable. Vefonge, who amongst other trade unionists had a meeting last October with the Prime Minister to discuss the issue of unpaid salaries, says the government is yet to give any concrete answers regarding full payment.

Vefonge also says that he regrets that socio-political tensions in Cameroon had caused an economic giant of CDC’s standing to fall to its knees, with several plantations currently in ruins. “CDC, over its more than 70 years of existence, has never gone through this kind of financial stress,” he says.

According to the workers’ representative, “working today as a CDC worker is a nightmare because all CDC workers are afraid to be killed while at their workplaces by unidentified gunmen. Their security and safety at work is not guaranteed, even with the presence of state security”.

Franklin Ngoni Njie, general manager of the CDC, acknowledges that “insecurity continues to be one of our major challenges”. He also tells Equal Times that the social climate at the CDC is currently tense, and that workers’ morale is not at the best as a result of the many months of salary arrears.

“Since May 2018, the corporation became unable to honour her commitments and has thus accumulated huge debts with workers – 27 billion francs CFA [approximately US$47 million],” Njie says.

The precarious situation has pushed CDC workers to go on several strikes in the plantation areas and in the capital city of Yaoundé.

Njie says the company is using its limited means to make payments to the workers who are actually working but did not specify the number. The corporation is also making efforts to offset its debt, he says. “The last time that the corporation successfully paid salaries and wages promptly to all its workers, amounting to 2.2 billion francs CFA [US$3.8 million] was in April 2018. Numerous reports have been made to the government on the explosive social climate in the corporation arising from the indebtedness to workers. From May 2018 to June 2021, a total of 20 billion francs CFA [US$34.8 million] has been paid out as salaries and wages, of which 11.74 billion francs CFA [ US$20.4 million] was received in 20 installments as grants from the government,” the GM says.

Njie also tells Equal Times that the corporation has provided 100 per cent medical coverage to its workers injured or maimed while at work, while those incapacitated have been redeployed to other duties. He also notes that while the coronavirus pandemic also affected production capacities, particularly for rubber and bananas, the CDC was still able to provide health coverage to its workers.

Culled from Equal Times

Cameroon said France had signed a deal valued at 150 billion CFA francs ($262 million) to support its budget.

The French Development Agency loan will finance projects up to 2024, Alamine Ousmane Mey, Cameroon’s minister of economy, planning and regional development, said in Yaounde. He didn’t describe the type of projects to be funded.

The loan represents France’s contribution to a three-year arrangement between the Central African nation and the International Monetary Fund. Last year, the IMF approved about $690 million of support for Cameroon to help its economy recover from the pandemic.

Source:  Bloomberg L.P.

Francophone army soldiers deployed to Southern Cameroons have been escorting several convoy of tanker trucks carrying stolen Ambazonia oil from the city of Victoria named by the Biya French Cameroun regime as Limbe.

Last week, the Department of Foreign Affairs of the Ambazonia Interim Government cited local sources from the Fako County as saying that so many convoy of French Cameroun tanker trucks loaded with Southern Cameroons oil were transferred to Douala.

According to the Ambazonia Interim Government report that was made public by Vice President Dabney Yerima, the oil was taken from Southern Cameroons main oil refinery in Cape Limbo in Limbe. Yerima added that Southern Cameroons stolen oil has often been transferred through the Victoria-Tiko Highway to Douala in French Cameroun.

The Southern Cameroons Vice President further said that a convoy of 54 military trucks carrying logistical equipment belonging to the Biya French Cameroun military entered the Bakassi area via Ndian County and have been participating in smuggling Southern Cameroons crude oil.

Soldiers of the Francophone military regularly smuggle Ambazonian oil to French Cameroun. The regime in La Republique du Cameroun has stationed forces and equipment in Fako and Ndian in the Southern Zone of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia, with Yaounde claiming that the deployment is aimed at preventing the oilfields in the Bakassi area from falling into the hands of Nigwerian terrorists and Amba fighters.

The Ambazonia Interim Government, however, says the unlawful deployment is meant to plunder Southern Cameroons resources.

By Isong Asu with files from Fon Lawrence in Victoria-Limbe