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

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