The financial scandal that rocked the Southern Cameroons Interim Government under the leadership of the disgraced Dr Ikome Sako has not led to an extreme economic downturn of the Ambazonia resistance. There has not been any whiff of resignation but those involved are operating shamefully under the banner of an obscure organisation known as Sako’s IG.

Consequently, the Dabney Yerima administration and patriotic Ambazonia citizens have now developed the Bond Holder Project and the most likely outcome will be an end game for the Sako-Chris comedy and some form of agreement that will see Southern Cameroonians donating again to the struggle.

Correspondingly, the cabinet has summoned patriotic Ambazonia citizens to participate in a meeting tomorrow Wednesday the 9^th October 2019 anticipating an outcome that despite numerous revolutionary opinions, will limit corruption within the Ambazonia Interim Government.

Whilst it is unlikely to be a permanent solution to the question of financial transparency deep within the Interim Government, it might offer a valuable commodity to all Southern Cameroons economic, political and institutional relationship.

The stakes are high in this “knife-edge equilibrium’ as we of the Cameroon Concord News Group cannot know if Ambazonians will buy into it and what the final result will be!  But given the failed so-called Grand National Dialogue and the urgent need to reignite My Trip To Buea, how patriotic Ambazonians will react to this new development remains to be seen after tomorrow’s meeting.

We are keeping a watchful eye on the Ambazonia exiled government and we will keep our readers posted on any development as we get it!!

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Morocco’s Banque Centrale Populaire (BCP) acquired 68.5% of the capital of the International Bank of Cameroon for Savings and Credit (BICEC), from French banking group Banque Populaire Caisse d’Epargne (BPCE).

BCP, a pan-African banking group, is now present in 15 African countries. The other shareholders of BICEC are the state of Cameroon (17.5%), Cameroonian private shareholders (7.5%), and the Italian bank Instituto Centrale Delle Banche Populari (1.5%).

The agreement was finalized on October 1, and BCP can now claim a presence in the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa (CEMAC).

Kamal Mokdad, director of BCP, called the move a new phase of development for BICEC.

“BICEC will benefit from the best banking practices, innovations and expertise adapted to the African market,” Mokdad said.

Customer satisfaction and promoting local talent are now BICEC’s top priorities, Mokdad added.

With their headquarters in Casablanca, the BCP group is the 6th largest bank in Africa. The consolidated net income of the group’s subsidiaries increased by 75% to MAD 857 million between 2018 and 2019.

The addition of BICEC to the BCP group is expected to have a positive impact on the group’s earnings in 2020.

Source: Moroccoworldnews

Soldiers have been battling insurgents in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions since 2017 in a conflict that has killed 2,500 people

Hi-tech promoters had big dreams for Silicon Mountain in Cameroon, where a broad plateau was seen as perfect for startup ventures, but their hopes have been shattered by a separatist struggle.

Entrepreneurs in the tech village wanted to launch new technologies and make Cameroon a market player on the model of California, but the bloody insurgency in the country’s English-speaking west has driven many to leave.

“Silicon Mountain is just about alive,” says Valery Colong, one of the workers in the ActivSpaces area modelled on Silicon Valley at the foot of Mount Cameroon, but his voice lacks conviction.

The ambitious Silicon Mountain project bears the economic and social scars of a conflict that has claimed more than 2,500 lives since 2017, according to international NGOs. Many of the dead and wounded are civilians.

“The crisis has badly affected our activities,” says Colong, promoter of the project to make ActivSpaces a key link for business at Silicon Mountain. The walls at its headquarters are decorated in the colours of global internet giants.

The hi-tech incubator site is meant to extend from Buea, the capital of the Southwest Region on the slopes of the mountain, to the chic seaside resort of Limbe on the Gulf of Guinea, about 30 kilometres (19 miles) distant by road.

But several promoters have pulled out, while others have taken their business to Douala, a major port and economic capital of Cameroon, only 50 kilometres from Buea but set in the majority French-speaking part of the country.

“Others simply dream of leaving the country,” says Colong.

Residents of Buea hope for peace to return, but few express any faith in a “Great National Dialogue” convened by President Paul Biya to begin on Monday.

Biya, ruler of the central African nation for 37 years, has invited representatives of the anglophone Southwest and Northwest to the capital Yaounde to settle the crisis.

But most of the separatists, along with a major part of the political opposition, have decided to boycott the national dialogue for lack of a ceasefire and until their jailed leaders are released.

‘Scared of getting shot’

“Before the crisis, there were 10 startups on average in the main hall,” Colong said on the first floor of the ActivSpaces premises in central Buea. “Today there’s just one.”

In a corner of the main hall, Nevile Akombo Akwo was working on Digital Renter, a site dealing in property announcements. “I’m here because I believe in the future. This isn’t the time to be discouraged,” he said.

“For the platform to work, we have to go out on the terrain to see the property owners, but it isn’t possible to go everywhere in town,” Colong says.

“It’s dangerous to go to difficult zones like the Muea district or Mile 16, the guys are scared of getting shot.”

In the Southwest and Northwest, the demands of English-speakers who feel that the eight French-speaking regions have taken the lion’s share of social progress and development at their expense, turned violent in the past three years.

Radical separatist groups have waged an armed struggle with the security forces sent by Yaounde, where authorities have remained largely deaf to the issues raised by the anglophone minority, who make up 16 percent of the population.

Troops are deployed almost daily to fight scattered radicals fighting for their self-proclaimed independent state of Ambazonia. Both sides have carried out atrocities against civilians and more than 530,000 people have fled their homes.

Cutting the internet

In 2017, the authorities cut internet services in the two regions for three months, a measure that drove firms from Silicon Mountain to move close to Douala.

“Our main partner ceased to finance us,” Colong says. ActivSpaces has turned to giving tech training to young people, taking in 15 of them.

“I’ve been here for two months, my experience is positive,” says Stephen Mbong, during an exercise with a fellow student.

Colong does not rule out leaving if the situation gets worse, but the sector of new technologies is not the only victim of conflict in anglophone Cameroon.

Income from national cocoa exports, of which 40 percent come from the Southwest, and from Arabica coffee, of which 75 percent comes from the Northwest, have dropped by 20 percent because of the conflict, according to the employers’ association Gicam.

The crisis has also sent the unemployment rate in agriculture up to 70 percent, according to the non-profit organisation Human IS Right, based in Buea.

Building work and public sector projects have come to a standstill on many sites. Investors are not keen to put money into a conflict zone, while the expatriate community has difficulty in transferring funds when the government suspects the money may be going to armed groups.

Source: Techxplore

Camair-Co informs that it has taken appropriate measures to suit its domestic flights’ schedule with the various delegations that will be in Yaoundé for the upcoming national dialogue.

In that regard, the concerned delegations are invited to send, within reasonable deadlines, their travel schedules to Camair-Co’s various agencies near their residence.

The national dialogue was announced by President Paul Biya during a televised message on September 10, 2019. Presided by the prime minister, this dialogue will address the sociopolitical crisis ongoing in the Southwest and Northwest since 2016. It will gather deputies, politicians, public figures, economic operators and members of the diaspora.

Source: Business in Cameroon

The challenge of inequality is at crisis levels in many of Africa’s oil producing countries. According the NJ Ayuk, author of Billions at Play, a small but growing number of people are becoming rich in the sub-region, whilst the vast majority are denied the most essential elements of a dignified life, including quality education, healthcare and decent jobs, despite remarkable economic growth driven by extractive industries.

In chapter 16 of the book, Ayuk gave a substantial coverage on “Managing Oil and Gas Revenue”, According to him “Cameroon, for example, also has had a case of “disappearing” oil revenue. Since oil was discovered in Cameroon in 1977, approximately USD20 billion has been paid in oil rents—but only 54 percent of the money appeared in the government budget.

And how has Cameroon’s resource wealth played out for Cameroonians? There has been some good news on the economic front: During the last decade, the country’s gross domestic product per capita has grown by 4 percent annually, above the global average of 2.6 percent.293 Other figures, however, show oil revenue failing to impact the lives of the people who need help most: 48 percent of the population continues to live below the poverty line.

Healthcare is sparse, and Cameroon’s life expectancy only is 57 years for males and 59 years for females. Some might argue that local poverty and disenfranchisement, particularly in the South-West region of Cameroon, have contributed to the Anglophone crisis taking place. Since late 2017, it has resulted in violent clashes, the deaths of scores of people and the displacement of tens of thousands. The crisis has its roots in African Colonialism and the German colony of “Kamerun” being divided between France and England by the League of Nations following Germany’s defeat in World War I.

In 1960, when Cameroon gained its independence, English-speaking residents were given the option of joining the French-speaking portion of Cameroon or becoming citizens of neighboring Nigeria. They voted to stay, but since that time, have described unfair treatment, with education, roads, and healthcare in their western region of the country being neglected—despite the production of tens of thousands of barrels of oil per day in the South West, an English-speaking region.

Some English-speakers want their grievances addressed, while others are calling for a more extreme solution: the creation of an independent state which  they refer to as “Ambazonia.” English-speakers have complained about the unbalanced distribution of revenue from natural resources. Their concerns resonate strongly with me: I am from the Manyu division in the South West region.

These grievances are valid. We aren’t producing jobs at the rate we should, and the private sector is suffering from high taxes, corruption, and red tape. Millions of young Cameroonians don’t have healthcare. Children and teenagers are senselessly being killed. I believe the only way out is a conversation that includes all of the people involved, all of the stakeholders. All of the country’s residents should be treated with dignity, justice, and equity”.

Source: www.vanguardngr.com

Several businesses in Cameroon have been fined by the government and had their licences withdrawn after they obeyed a lockdown imposed by separatists.

Kumba City Council says the businesses will be reopened once the owners pay a fine of 25,000 CFA francs ($42; £34).

Separatists are enforcing a lockdown across cities, towns and villages in Cameroon’s two English-speaking regions – the north-west and south-west – to ensure schools remain shut for a fourth academic year in a row.

The conflict has its roots in the government’s decision to increase the use of French in schools and courts in the mainly English-speaking regions in 2016. Protests later turned violent and armed groups who want to create a breakaway state have sought to control territory.

More than 437,000 people are currently displaced in Cameroon according to the latest UN estimates, most of them women and children.

US Assistant Secretary of African Affairs Tibor Nagy has called on Cameroon’s government to hold mediation talks with separatists “without any preconditions”.

Source: BBC

Some 300 new mining sites were discovered in Cameroon in the past five years, Cameroon’s Minister of Mining, Industries and Technological Development Gabriel Dodo Ndoke said on Tuesday.

New mines range from gold, zinc, rare earth, uranium, nickel and rutile to manganese, said Ndoke at the 2019 edition of Cameroon International Mining Exhibition and Conference (CIMEC), held from Monday to Wednesday in the capital city, Yaounde.

“The stakes of CIMEC are high given the multi-faceted, short and medium term benefits accruing from investments made and which we wish to attain through the mining and processing of minerals,” Ndoke said.

This year’s expo will feature an exhibition by mining companies and suppliers, speeches and discussions. More than 100 exhibitors will introduce the latest technology and equipment for the mining industry during the three-day expo, according to the organizers.

Source: Xinhuanet

Cameroonian Prime Minister Joseph Dion Ngute on Monday signed a decree declaring the troubled Northwest, Southwest and Far-North regions “economic risk zones.”

Companies operating in the economic risk zones will benefit from tax exemption for three years, according to the decree which did not specify additional measures.

In July, Cameroon’s Minister of Economy, Planning and Regional Development Alamine Ousmane Mey said the country’s sustainable development goals were facing “significant obstacles” as a result of the insecurity in the two Anglophone Northwest and Southwest regions where separatists want to create an independent nation, and the insurgency of Boko Haram in the Far-North region.

Conflict in the Anglophone regions has led to the “partial or complete” closure of about 20 companies, according to government statistics.

Source: Xinhuanet

MTN Cameroon has announced the launch of its 2019 Back2Skoul initiative aimed at supporting underprivileged children. More than 500 children will benefit from the initiative in all ten regions of the country for the 2019-2020 school year. MTN Foundation has been supporting orphans and underprivileged children from ten orphanages and care centres for several years now.

In each of these orphanages and care centres approved by the ministry of social affairs, MTN Foundation has set up a mini-school library equipped, among other things, with all curriculum textbooks of all the classes, from Class One to Upper Sixth, accessible to all the inmates.   

On the occasion of back-to-school, these underprivileged children receive from MTN Foundation, school supplies that comprise school bags, exercise books, pens, didactic materials and protective clothing that enable them to cope with the rainy season. MTN Foundation also offers scholarships to the top five students in each of these orphanages and care centres. In addition, volunteer MTN staff are available throughout the school year to assist the inmates in better assimilating their lessons.

Source: Telecompaper  

Cameroon’s Ministry of Commerce has announced that the Central African nation would suspend the importation of about 50 products

The ministry is yet to provide details about the concerned products and the deadline for the implementation of the ban.

According to local media, no less than 12 sectors are concerned, because of the excess nature of local production.

These sectors include paints, metallurgy, cement, industrial packaging, cosmetics, agri-food, vegetable oils, palm oil derivatives and the brewing industry.

Source: Africa News