Several businesses in Cameroon have been fined by the government and had their licences withdrawn after they obeyed a lockdown imposed by separatists.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

For the past 20 years, a young man from the slums of Yaoundé, the capital of Cameroon, has been running a local waste collection service that has had a transformative impact on the community around him. The residential area of Melen, like most teeming city’s informal settlements, is not connected to the public garbage disposal system.

Through the Tam Tam Mobile, nearly every morning at 6 a.m., a team of young men from Melen make their way through the community. At the end of their shift, they unload their full carts at a municipal waste collection point outside the slum.

The Tam Tam Mobile initiative is supported by UN-Habitat, the United Nations programme working towards a better urban future.

Source: News.UN.Org

Cameroon’s second largest employer, the Cameroon Development Corporation, says it has been paralyzed by the separatist conflict in the country’s English-speaking regions.  The agricultural giant has not been able to pay its staff for a year because of falling production and revenue.

The village of Meanja used to be a banana production center in Cameroon’s English-speaking southwest.

Two years ago, 2,000 people lived here, and many worked for the Cameroon Development Corporation’s banana production unit.

But these days, a visiting reporter sees only abandoned houses, empty schools, and silent factories.

Oliver Kogue worked at the Meanja banana factory but says security threats forced them to shut down. Armed separatists attacked the factory in 2017, he says, killing four workers and wounding scores of others.

“This production unit produces averagely 60 tons of banana daily and after this attack, work has ceased.  Workers escaped for their dear lives,” Kogue said. “Five-hundred-and-60 workers were working in this particular section. In the course of stopping work we have deprived 560 workers from employment.”
The Cameroon Development Corporation is the central African country’s second largest employer and runs banana, palm oil, and rubber plantations.

But the three-year conflict between Anglophone Self Defense Groups and French Cameroun government troops has forced the CDC to close farms and factories across Southern Cameroons.

CDC general manager Franklin Ngoni Njie says more than half of his 20,000 workers – fearing attacks – refuse to work, while the remainder work only part-time.

“If you look at the economy of the area, what else do we have? CDC every month directly in form of salaries and wages is 2.2 billion {CFA} francs every month,” Njie said. “All of that activity is dead.”

Cameroon’s Francophone agriculture minister, Gabriel Mbairobe, says the government is negotiating with staff to resume work. He says the government will assure their safety and settle the past year of unpaid salaries.

“I will like to appreciate the willingness of all workers to resume work,” Mbairobe said. “I can assure them that the government will take all the measures to pay their salary arrears and to give money so that the plantations and the factory will be back in activity.”

The conflict in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions was sparked in 2016 by protests against discrimination from the country’s French-speaking majority in education and the justice system.

The government responded with a crackdown and armed separatists fought back.

The Ambazonia Restoration Fighters consider state-run companies such as the CDC and institutions such as schools legitimate targets.

Last month, the Cameroon Employers Association said Self Defense Groups had transformed many CDC plantations into training grounds.

Reported by the VOA with additional editing from Camcordnews

Cameroon top state-owned agribusiness said the Anglophone crisis in the country has had a “disastrous” effect on its operations, cutting output of palm-oil and rubber and leaving most of its banana plantations destroyed. The majority of about 22,000 workers at the Cameroon Development Corp., the country’s biggest employer after the state, are no longer going to the company’s plantations and haven’t been paid for months, Director-General Franklin Ngoni Njie told reporters on Sunday.

Sixteen workers have been killed by separatist fighters since the crisis erupted almost three years ago, and 98 others have been assaulted or maimed, he said. The CDC grows and processes rubber, palm-oil and bananas on about 42,000 hectares (104,000 acres).

Most of its plantations are in the Southwest and Northwest regions, where Cameroon’s minority English-speaking population lives. Economic activities in the two regions have been paralyzed by rebels who want to break away from the larger French-speaking area in the central African nation.

The unrest has left only four out of 11 rubber estates functional, halted operations at two palm-oil mills and slashed output to 2,100 metric tons, from an expected 17,400 tons, the CDC said. Agriculture Minister Gabriel Mbairobe said on July 5 that President Paul Biya would take “urgent measures” to ensure a resumption of activities at the company.

Source: Bloomberg

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has formally agreed on a name for a planned common currency set to be launched in 2020.

“ECO was adopted as the name of the ECOWAS single currency,” representatives of the 15-member group agreed in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, on Saturday.

“Afri” and “Kola” had been other names suggested that were rejected by the members.

An ECOWAS statement said the aim was a “gradual approach to the single currency starting with countries that meet the convergent criteria.”

Currently, eight ECOWAS countries – Benin, Burkina Faso, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Togo – jointly use the West African CFA franc, while the seven others, including Cape Verde, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone, have their own separate currencies.

The idea of a common currency for the West African region was first mooted almost 30 years ago in the hope of boosting cross border trade and economic development.

The ECOWAS statement said the currency would be based on a flexible exchange rate regime, coupled with a monetary policy framework focused on inflation targeting.

Member states should pursue appropriate policies and structural reforms that will sustain accelerated growth and the structural transformation of their economies, it added.

The new “ECO” currency for West Africa has been compared to the European Union’s “Euro” currency.

Nigeria, which accounts for most of the region’s economic output, is the powerhouse of West Africa with over 190 population and the vastest economy.

“It is difficult to see Nigeria agree to being in a monetary union if it is not the boss,” said economist Ndongo Samba Sylla from the Dakar-based Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.

ECOWAS, which was set up in 1975, represents a total population of around 385 million inhabitants.

It comprises Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo.

Source: Presstv

The local mobile telecom companies Orange and MTN in Cameroon have been fined over $160 million for failing to pay taxes on games and gambling services.

The Central African country corruption board announced on Wednesday.

A probe into the sector led to fines totaling $283 million, and found other companies including Camtel and Viettel were also in violation of regulations.

The amount paid by each company was not clear and the companies were not immediately available for comment.

In the report the Telecommunications Regulatory Agency said MTN and Orange were also accused of not paying taxes on their money transfer system, known as Mobile Money.

The report is another blow for MTN, which is already contesting a $3.9 billion fine in Nigeria for failing to disconnect users with unregistered SIM cards.

Unregistered SIM cards can be used for criminal activity – a growing concern in Nigeria facing the threat of militant Islamist group Boko Haram.

MTN successfully lobbied to get the fine reduced from $5.2 billion in December.

Source: AFP