Cameroon’s president has ordered its main Douala port to suspend contract talks with Swiss firm Terminal Investment Limited (TIL) until the conclusion of a court case brought by France’s Bollore, according to a letter seen by Reuters.

TIL was chosen to renovate and manage the Atlantic port in September after Bollore, which had managed the hub since 2015, was eliminated earlier in the bidding process as it sought to renew its contract. It is contesting the decision in the Cameroonian courts.

The Oct. 23 letter from the secretary-general of the presidency asks the director-general of Douala port “to suspend works to finalize the terms of the (TIL) contract … until the final conclusion of the case.”

A photo of the letter, which is marked “Confidential Very Urgent,” has been shared widely on social media. A source at the port confirmed its authenticity. Cameroon’s government spokesman could not be immediately reached for comment.

The request coincides with an official three-day visit by French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian to Cameroon to support the resolution of its long-running conflict with Anglophone separatists.

France, the former colonial power, has had a frosty relationship with Cameroon over the last year over concerns about how President Paul Biya has handled the crisis, which has cost close to 2,000 lives over the past two years.

However, French diplomats said recent discussions about granting special status to Anglophone regions and the release of hundreds of political prisoners paved the way for Le Drian’s visit.

French officials had said the trip would also focus on development of Cameroon’s Kribi port, which is operated by Bollore, French firm CMA CGM and China Harbour Engineering.

Douala, located on the Atlantic coast, is the hub for Cameroon’s exports of cocoa, oil and timber.

In September, the port said TIL had been provisionally designated the winning bidder of the contract and would take control of the port on Jan. 1, 2020. TIL did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Source: Reuters

Cameroon’s state airline Camair-co has suspended West African flights in its struggles to stay afloat. According to Top Business, a Cameroon publication, the company recalled its staff from Abidjan in Ivory Coast, Lagos in Nigeria and Cotonou in Benin.

The report said Camair-co General Manager Louis Georges Njipendi Kuotu officially recalled the staff a week ago on October 16. The company’s spokesman had not responded to our request for comments.

The decision by top management to recall personnel and suspend the routes was attributed to dimming financial prospects for the carrier dubbed “The Star of Cameroon.”

The airline has grappled with financial and managerial crisis since it began operations in March 2011 with the state injecting $64 million.

It acquired one Bombardier aircraft last year, bringing its fleet to six, but some of its aircraft is grounded for varying reasons.

The carrier inherited one Boeing B767-300 from Camair and bought two Boeing B737s and two Chinese-made MA60 planes at launch.

Pet project

In May President Paul Biya fired former General Manager of the company, Ernest Dikoum and his deputy Moussa Habouba.

A former regional director of Emirates Airlines for Senegal and Guinea, Mr Dikoum had been at the helm of the national carrier for just 33 months (since August 2016).

He was replaced by Louis Georges Njipendi Kuotu, former chairman of the Board of Directors of the Airlines Corporation while Max Constant Mve Minsi, a former director of maintenance in the firm, was appointed Deputy General Manager.

President Biya also appointed current Transport Minister, Jean Ernest Massena Ngalle Bibehe as chairman of Camair-Co’s Board. Because of the small fleet, the company has been uncompetitive with flight cancellations endemic.

An audit by Boeing Consulting revealed that Camair-co recorded a deficit of FCFA 35 billion ($60 million) between 2012 and 2014. The audit showed FCFA 20 billion ($34.2 million) was owed by state enterprises.

Boeing recommended a government bailout and cash injection of $101 million in addition to fleet expansion. Camair-Co rose from the ashes of the defunct Cameroon Airlines (Camair) in 2006 as one of President Biya’s pet projects.

Source: The East African

Nearly all maritime kidnappings and hostage-takings in the nine months to the end of September this year took place in or near the Gulf of Guinea, said global maritime piracy watchdog the International Maritime Bureau (IMB).

New data from the IMB shows that worldwide there have been 70 actual kidnappings of seafarers and 49 hostage-takings year to date. The West African country of Guinea alone saw 23 hostage-takings, Nigeria a further 12 and the West African country of Togo an additional seven. Cameroon and Nigeria were hot spots for kidnapping, too.

The IMB says about 86% of all maritime hostage-taking and 82% of all actual kidnappings happen in or near the Gulf of Guinea. The body adds that there were at least 119 incidents of piracy and armed robbery against ships  from January through September. That’s a 31% decline compared to the 156 incidents recorded in the same period in 2018.

Incidents are down globally but Gulf of Guinea remains a concern

“Although incidents are down, the Gulf of Guinea continues to be a concern for piracy and armed robbery-related activities, with kidnappings of crew members increasing in both scale and frequency,” said Pottengal Mukundan, a director of the IMB.

That said, the IMB freely concedes that there’s a high degree of under-reporting. The assistant director of the IMB, Cyrus Moody, told FreightWaves that the IMB’s own research indicates there’s roughly a 50% under-reporting of incidents.

Possible reasons why  include the fear that insurers will hike rates if it is known that a ship was attacked. There are also fears that if an attack on a ship is reported then criminals may “go harder on the crew,” the next time the same ship is attacked. Some operators may worry that local authorities could hold or delay the ship.

Gulf of Guinea – piracy at the center of the world

The Gulf of Guinea lies between West Africa and Central Africa. It’s the sea-space at zero degrees longitude and zero degrees latitude. There are different definitions what constitutes the Gulf of Guinea. The international “Guidelines for Owners, Operators and Masters for protection against piracy and armed robbery in the Gulf of Guinea region,” a document issued by the major global maritime shipping organizations, applies to the waters off the countries of Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria and Cameroon.

However, the Guidelines also say pirate attacks have occurred as far south as Angola and as far west as Sierra Leone, so the area of threat is enormous.

The Gulf of Guinea is an attractive area of operations for marine criminals for several reasons.

Many high-value, poorly-defended targets

Firstly, it has many high-value targets.

There are many ships because there are numerous ports and a great deal of cargo. And, because vessels are entering or leaving port, ships may be traveling slowly. They may be sitting low in the water, and are therefore easier for pirates to board, because they are fully laden. Or they may be at anchor waiting for commercial instructions or repairs or for any number of other reasons. As Moody pointed out, ships are constantly entering and leaving, or waiting around or in, the area of high threat.

Secondly, the targets are poorly defended because of certain provisions of international law. That is also the reason why experts talk of “piracy” and “armed robbery against ships,” and why there is a distinction between the two in statistical tracking, even though they’re physically the same crime.

What is “piracy”? What is “armed robbery against ships”?

A summary of Article 101 of the UN Convention on the International Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) indicates that maritime piracy is any illegal act of violence committed for private ends by the crew or passengers of a private ship and directed on the high seas, or in a place outside the jurisdiction of any country, against another ship.

The International Maritime Organization, a specialized body of the United Nations, uses the international definition for piracy to define “armed robbery against ships” but with the difference that the crime happens within the borders of a country.

The key parts are the concept of “high seas” and “outside the jurisdiction of any country.” Or, to put it another way, whether a maritime crime is “piracy” or an “armed robbery against a ship” depends upon where the crime happens in relation to the international/territorial border.

So a crime against a ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean is piracy. But a criminal attack on a ship in, say, the Port of Long Beach, California, is armed robbery against a ship in the U.S.

Where is the maritime border?

On land, a man-made barrier, or a natural barrier such as a river, often marks the location of the border. While there are no visible barriers or landmarks at sea, nonetheless, there is still a border. Under UNCLOS, a country’s sovereignty can extend from the coast out to sea up to a limit of 12 nautical miles (about 13.8 U.S. miles). This sea-space is known as the territorial sea.

Just as crimes against crew and ships in U.S. territorial waters are subject to U.S. law, crimes against crew and ships in the waters off Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria and Cameroon are subject to the criminal laws of those countries. The close proximity of all those sovereign nations poses several challenges.

Hot pursuit and armed guards

Law enforcers have a right of “hot pursuit” under article 111 of UNCLOS. Marine police (or navies) can chase and capture criminals who flee out of a country’s jurisdiction and onto the high seas. But if the criminals cross the border into a neighboring country, the chasing police lose that right. And, just as happens with neighboring countries the world over, police and criminal investigators cannot wander freely back and forth across borders to tackle crime.

A few years ago there was a big problem with Somali pirates attacking ships as they sailed through the Gulf of Aden. Deployment of armed guards aboard ships was the primary means of tackling Somali piracy along the east coast of Africa. Unlike ships in the Gulf of Guinea, however, ships sailing off the coast of Somalia were attacked in international waters and therefore the law of the local coastal state did not apply. So armed guards were a legally sensible response.

But that wouldn’t work in the Gulf of Guinea. Ships have to enter and leave the territories of the coastal states to visit the local ports. Nations jealously guard their monopoly on the right to use armed force in their jurisdictions and generally do not allow large numbers of openly armed foreigners to enter and hang around in their territory. So ship-borne foreign armed guards would not be allowed.

Local law enforcement and judicial systems

National sovereignty presents a further problem to deterring or stopping pirates because not every country has a well-developed law enforcement and judicial system. There’s a good reason there’s no piracy epidemic immediately off the coast of, say, the state of Oregon. U.S. law enforcement would take decisive action against repeated acts of organized piracy or armed robbery in that area. And the U.S. has prosecutors, courts, judges and a penal system to try, convict, sentence and imprison pirates and other maritime criminals.

That’s not so in the Gulf of Guinea.

“Nigeria did not even have piracy as a crime,” Moody explained to FreightWaves. So piracy (if outside the territorial sea) or armed robbery against ships couldn’t even be prosecuted as such in Nigeria. However, Moody pointed out that Nigeria has more recently enacted laws against piracy.

“You always have maritime crime where the response from law enforcement and the judicial system is not adequate or robust,” Moody told FreightWaves.

Culled from FreightWaves.Com

The Southern Cameroons Interim Government-backed savings bonds will go on sale soonest. Treasury Secretary, Comrade Tabenyang Brado says the new scheme is likely to prove popular with Ambazonians desperate for better accountability deep within the Interim Government.

With the Southern Cameroons war set to move into a more decisive phase over the coming months, Ambazonians putting money into the new bond will achieve a real return in Buea. The Ambazonia Treasury Department noted that it is all about loaning the Interim Government your money and you will be paid back at the best rate that will be available in Buea for those willing and able to tie up their money for the remaining years of the war.

The bond – its official name, the Amba Freedom Bonds – was first announced by the Treasury Secretary, Tabenyang Brado during a presentation on SCBC TV and it is open to anyone aged 16 or over and has no minimum investment limit. However, you only get a Bond Certificate once you get to the level of 250 US dollars.

The bonds are in three categories: Defense, Humanitarian and Diplomatic and are suitable for Southern Cameroonians who are happy to see the Federal Republic of Ambazonia become a reality.

Vice President Dabney Yerima will be doing a presentation on Sunday at exactly 8 pm Amba time on the bonds and he is also expected to order the sale process to go operational after his address.

Our chief economic reporter in London says the new Ambazonia product will provide a valuable boost for Southern Cameroonians who have been affected by corruption and misappropriation of funds that was meant for Ground Zero operations.

By Asu Isong in London

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