Iran has delivered as many as 30 hybrid vehicles to Senegal to be used in the country’s taxi fleet.

The ceremony for handing over the taxicabs was held at the Blaise Diagne International Airport in western Senegal. It was joined by Senegal’s Minister of Air Transport and Development of Airport Infrastructures, Maimouna Ndoye Seck.

The project for making the vehicles was leveraged by the Bank of Africa pan-African banking conglomerate.

Iran Khodro

The vehicles are of the Samand LX make manufactured by Iran’s biggest carmaker Iran Khodro (IKCO).

Last month, it was reported that Iran Khodro had exported a first consignment of its Dena Plus cars to Senegal to be used in the African country’s police fleet.

The report said the exports would take place through IKCO’s joint venture company with the Senegalese government, known as SenIran. Senegal also re-exports the company’s cars to Guinea and Nigeria.

IKCO also exports vehicles to Russia, Syria, Turkey, Iraq, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Egypt, Algeria, and Bulgaria.

Presstv

When top Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi met Cameroon President Paul Biya in the capital Yaounde last month and wrote off a chunk of the African country’s debt, the deal very nearly went unnoticed. China issued no press release, and the Cameroon government did not mention the debt cancellation in its write-up of Yang’s visit.

It was only when a Chinese news report later alleged that Beijing had written off 3 trillion Central African CFA francs ($5.2 billion) of Cameroon’s debt during Yang’s trip that the existence of a deal emerged. The figure was incorrect. Five billion dollars is close to the amount Cameroon has borrowed from Beijing since 2000, according to the China Africa Research Initiative (CARI), and exceeds the amount the country is believed to still owe.

But while the news report was wrong, its release did force the Chinese government to speak publicly about what type of deal had been reached. Last week, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told CNN: “China agreed to waive the interest-free inter-governmental debt that Cameroon had not paid back by the end of 2018.” That debt was worth $78.4 million. Cameroon’s total debt is 5.8 trillion Central African CFA francs ($10 billion), about a third of which is owed to China, according to the International Monetary Fund. In short, this was a tiny slice of Cameroon’s liability to China. So why the initial secrecy?

African debt backlash

Debt write-offs for developing nations are usually greeted with great fanfare, such as the IMF and World Bank’s Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative, or the Paris Club’s landmark debt wipe-out in the early 2000s. In China, it’s more complicated: African debt has become increasingly controversial at home. When President Xi Jinping pledged a $60 billion package of aid, investment and loans to Africa last September at the triennial Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, angry posts emerged on the Chinese internet.

Critics questioned why China — where at least 30 million people still live in poverty, defined as an annual income of less than 2,300 yuan (about $340) — was giving money to Africa. Censors quickly deleted the complaints. There is also this to consider: African nations have borrowed $143 billion from China since 2000, according to CARI figures. Beijing’s leniency toward Cameroon could prompt other heavily leveraged nations, such as Ethiopia, Djibouti and Zambia, to expect similar treatment.

China may have also sought an under-the-radar arrangement because of Cameroon’s political turmoil. Last week, police arrested Maurice Kamto, the Cameroonian opposition leader who claims to have won last year’s election, along with several staff supporters, amid protests that are fueling political instability. The West African nation is battling a Boko Haram insurgency in the north, while a secessionist movement is destabilizing the two Anglophone regions of the largely French-speaking nation which was born from the unification of a former British and a former French colony. Due to the unrest, Cameroon has been stripped of the right to host the 2019 African Cup of Nations, the continent’s biennial soccer championship, which will now take place in Egypt.

An election posters for Cameroonian President Paul Biya in Yaounde in November 2018 reiterates he has “the force of experience” on his side.

From a human rights perspective, the bar for Chinese political partners in Africa is low. Beijing backed Zimbabwe during some of the darkest years of dictator Robert Mugabe’s rule, and poured money into Angola under former president José Eduardo dos Santos, an authoritarian figure associated with large-scale corruption.

But 85-year-old Biya, who has ruled Cameroon for 36 years, is increasingly looking like an “inappropriate partner” from a business standpoint as China faces growing scrutiny on the continent, says Chris Roberts, a political scientist at the University of Calgary. “Cameroon in every way, shape or form is getting worse by the day in every metric,” says Roberts. “This regime has dismantled whatever foundations it had for a stable economy.”

Deep pockets, deep port

China established diplomatic relations with Cameroon in 1971. Their economic partnership grew after Nicolas Sarkozy became president of France in 2007 and oversaw his country’s decreased engagement with its former colonial territory, leaving a vacuum for Beijing to fill. Since the turn of the century, China has been granting Cameroon debt relief: In 2001, it canceled $34 million of debt, then in 2007 it forgave another $32 million and $30 million was wiped out in 2010. Those figures in fact paled in comparison with the $227 million Canada forgave in 2006, for example, notes Roberts.

But it was in 2011 that China really committed to Cameroon by agreeing to build and finance a new port in the fishing town of Kribi. It seemed a stable place to invest: Cameroon was considered a relatively peaceful nation in a war-torn region. Cameroon’s existing port of Douala was overworked, run down and restricted by its location on a sediment-filled estuary. When completed in 2035, Kribi will be the biggest deep-water port in the region. It will handle exports of Cameroon’s bauxite, iron ore and other minerals and could also serve the Chad-Cameroon Petroleum Development and Pipeline Project, which pumps oil from landlocked Chad.

The first two stages of the project, constructed by China Harbor Engineering Company, were worth $1.2 billion.CHEC is also building a $436 million highway to connect the new port with Douala and has agreed to construct a railway to an iron ore deposit. Other Chinese companies have been throwing up concrete towers around Kribi, in anticipation of its transformation into a thriving regional commercial hub. The Kribi port will also extend the reach in West Africa of China’s Maritime Silk Road, an initiative that Senegal signed on to last year. It is an important part of President Xi’s massive multinational One Belt One Road economic development plan.

 The old port compared with the new Chinese-built facility.

“The Gulf of Guinea is strategic for China,” says Xavier Auregan, a specialist on China-Africa relations in Francophone nations, explaining that a foothold there strengthens its interests in West Africa from the Ivory Coast to Gabon. “Cameroon is one of the countries that can bring together the energy infrastructure of … West Africa.”

China’s activity in Cameroon is not restricted to the new port: It was responsible for 90% of road construction and restoration in the country as of 2014, and Chinese companies have built dams and hydroelectric power facilities there. China has also undoubtedly benefited from these developments, with many of the contracts going to its firms. But the Cameroonian government has taken out considerable loans to fund them and debt repayments look increasingly problematic in a now faltering economy. “If you’re saying we lent this money for this project or development effort, and we’re just writing it off because we know we’re never going to get it back,” says Roberts, “that has a domestic effect, but it also has international implications.”

One of the big concerns around Chinese loans in Africa is debt-trap diplomacy — the idea that Beijing will pressure countries that can’t repay loans into handing over key assets. Last December, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta denied that Mombasa’s massive Kilindini Harbor, the largest port in East Africa, had been listed as collateral for a multibillion-dollar Chinese loan to fund a railway. China also denied the report. In Djibouti, similar concerns have been raised over China’s recent acquisition of a stake in a port there.

Gold mine tensions

China’s decision to provide Cameroon with debt relief also comes at a fraught moment between the country’s traditional gold-mining community and Chinese mining companies. East Cameroon is rich in gold. Justin Kamga, coordinator of the Forests and Rural Development Association (FODER) in Yaounde, says Chinese companies are operating illegal mines across the region and have scant respect for the land.

A Chinese mine site in Cameroon. Industrial machines are used to dig up the site.

The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not reply to CNN’s request for comment. Local Cameroonian miners typically use artisanal mining methods which do not damage the environment, says Kamga. Chinese companies use heavy machinery that often pockmarks villages with multiple holes 30 meters deep, destroying farmland.

Between 2012 and 2015, Kamga said that more than 250 excavations were abandoned, mostly by Chinese companies. From 2015 to 2018, he said, more than 100 people died in such holes, which trigger landslides and spark local outrage at Chinese companies. In December, nine people died in such an incident, according to FODER.

Artisanal gold miners in East Cameroon.

Regulations stipulate that operators should safely cover holes, but Kamga says the Cameroon army protects Chinese mining companies, meaning they often face little legal retribution. Cameroon ranked 152 out of 180 countries on the 2018 Corruption Perceptions Index. The Cameroon government did not respond to CNN’s emails asking for comment. Auregan says that while reckless mining has tarnished China’s image, it is unlikely to be the reason for the write-off of the 2018 debt. “China sees the geostrategic and long-term vision of the importance of Cameroon in that region,” says Roberts. In short, as long as China needs a maritime foothold in West Africa, Cameroon’s debt burden may be lightened for a while longer.

Culled from the CNN

China says it has written off almost $78m (£60m) from Cameroon’s debt as part of measures to ease economic hardship in the central African nation, but analysts say it is a play for greater access to resources.

The debt relief announcement was made on Friday shortly after a meeting between President Paul Biya and Yang Jiechi, a special representative of China’s President Xi Jinping.

Cameroon’s total debt burden to China stands at almost $5.7bn (£4.4bn), according to figures from the Autonomous Sinking Fund, the public entity that manages Cameroon’s external debt.

The sum of $78m that has been wiped is money that should have been paid in 2018, but which Cameroon failed to pay.

Instead, the country’s president flew to China for the third Summit of the China-Africa Cooperation in September and pleaded with Chinese authorities to ease Cameroon’s debt burden.

Cameroonian economist Ariel Gnitedem says the amount cancelled looks paltry in comparison with the total debt, and says it could actually be for China’s long-term benefit.

“China wants to control the sub-regional market and Cameroon is the gateway,” he told the BBC.

“It is possible they also want a greater share in the enormous natural resources in Cameroon which are essential to feed its home industries.”

Cameroon has been contracting loans from China to build dams, roads, hospitals and other infrastructure.

Source: BBC

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s special representative was in Cameroon this weekend to improve relations between the two countries. Trade and security ties have steadily grown between Beijing and Yaounde. But tensions between Cameroonian and Chinese miners has given China a bad name

When Cameroonian President Paul Biya hosted China’s special representative Yang Jiechi on Friday, both men had nothing but good things to say.

Biya welcomed China’s Belt and Road Initiative – Beijing’s multi-billion-dollar plan to connect Asia, Europe and Africa.

Yang said bilateral relations had reached a new starting point with important development opportunities.

When asked by VOA about the common belief that Chinese are exploiting Cameroon, Yang called it a misunderstanding. He said Cameroon and China need to work closely to make their people realize that they stand to benefit a lot.

But while Yang visited the capital, about 60 Cameroonian miners protested outside a Chinese-run gold mining operation in the village of Ngoura. The miners there have blocked access to the site since Thursday.

Protesting miner Patrice Wouyou said their Chinese competition exploits and destroys Cameroon’s natural resources.

He said Chinese miners violate Cameroon laws, which prohibit mining on river beds, swampy areas and waterfalls. They will keep this mining site closed, he said, until the government forces the guilty (Chinese) miners to face justice.

Protest leader Rigobert Ngom said the Chinese bribe corrupt Cameroon officials to overlook their code violations. He said they also lure teenagers out of school to dig for gold.

Ngom said he is surprised that the government gives mining licenses to the Chinese when there are qualified Cameroonians who own mining enterprises and are ready to industrialize their country.

But while mining remains a contentious issue, Cameroon’s Ministry of Economy, Planning, and Regional Development disputes the notion that China simply exploits.

China is Cameroon’s primary investor, according to the ministry, putting more than $400 million per year into the country’s roads, dams, telecommunications, stadiums and housing projects.

Critics note much of the investment goes toward accessing Cameroon’s natural resources, while the country is at growing risk of debt distress.

But ministry spokesman Alamine Ousman Mey said China is beginning to offer more help than in the past.

Beijing in November, he noted, gave Yaounde aid equal to $3 million dollars to help people displaced by Cameroon’s separatist crisis in English-speaking regions.

“We are very pleased that our partners like China are offering humanitarian support up to 1.8 billion CFA and material. We have signed a letter of exchange to supply to these two [Anglophone] regions.”

China’s special envoy Yang during his visit announced the cancellation of about $5 million of Cameroon’s debt as well, though the remaining amount owed was not clear.

VOA