Headline News

Catholics save lives in Cameroon as fighting intensifies

25, January 2019

Catholics save lives in Cameroon as fighting intensifies 0

An ambulance dispatched by a Catholic Church-run hospital in Cameroon continued saving lives this month amid fresh outbreaks of violence between the military and armed groups.

Elengu Noella, 27, told voanews.com that the vehicle whisked her and four other women to safety during a firefight between security personnel and separatists but two of her three children were killed in the heavy fighting near the town of Buea.

Cameroon said this week it is mobilizing troops along its northern border with Nigeria as Boko Haram and its splinter group, the Islamic State in West Africa, step up their attacks.

In January alone, the military has recorded five incursions by insurgents near the border and in the Lake Chad basin, with three people killed last week, the media reports.

Meanwhile, Cameroon, which is also fighting separatists in its English-speaking western regions, is believed to have sent thousands of refugees back to Nigeria.

Filippo Grande, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, has repeatedly urged the Cameroon government in the capital Yaounde to “refrain from further forced returns and to ensure protection to those fleeing insecurity and persecution in Nigeria.”

The situation worsened in Nigeria in 2018, capped by a brutal massacre in November when a Boko Haram strike on a military base killed up to 100 soldiers.

Now Cameroon seems bent on sealing off the border as the terrorist group continues to recruit fighters from within its territory.

Defense Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Rene Claude Meka has vowed to fight fire with fire, saying this year will see Cameroon fight for national unity and territorial integrity.

“2019 will not be a bed of roses,” Defense Minister Joseph Beti Assomo said on Jan. 21.

“We shall continue with various operations in the far north, northwest and southwest regions, and reactivate special operations in the Adamawa region where criminal groups specialized in kidnapping are wreaking havoc.”

Source: La Croix International

Conflicts and corruption in Cameroon drain the economy

25, January 2019

Conflicts and corruption in Cameroon drain the economy 0

Cameroon is finding it difficult to meet its financial commitments as the battle against armed separatists and corruption depletes the country’s resources.

A truck with armed with military men patrols an english-speaking area (DW/F. Muvunyi)

In addition to corruption and the battle against separatists fighting to create an English-speaking state, there is also the war against Boko Haram on Cameroon’s northern border with Nigeria and the spillover of the crisis in the Central African Republic (CAR). All of these combined are draining the state of its resources.

Employees of a company constructing the Paul Biya Stadium in Olembe, on the outskirts of Yaounde, protested against difficult working conditions and non-payment of their salaries. Their spokesperson Dieudonne Nguidjol demanded that they be given a normal contract. “We are supposed to work from 7:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. [and] 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. is supposed to be extra time. Our salaries are not good,” said Nguidjol.

He added that people who come to work as engineers earn a salary of about 80,000 CFA francs (about €120, $138), which is not in line with Cameroon’s labor code. “We have salaries of four, five and six months that have not been paid; this is the immediate cause of this strike,” Nguidjol said. Cameroon’s Minister of Finance Louis-Paul Motaze said the stadium is just one project that has been affected by the conflicts affecting the country. He said the treasury is stretched with requests for funds for development projects and money to fund the conflicts. “The people want roads. They want security. They want energy. They want agricultural products. We have to realize them with revenues. That means that we have to look for internal revenues. Those internal revenues are taxes. But we have to consider the expenses,” Motaze said.

Cameroonian football players training (AFP/Getty Images/R. Kaze)

Cameroon will no longer host the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON)

Financial scandal

The 2019 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) project was one of the largest projects recently rocked by a financial scandal in Cameroon. The country was stripped of its hosting right in favor of Egypt due to massive delays in the preparations. Whistleblowers claim that an estimated 1.8 billion euros of Cameroonian public money has been swallowed in contracts shrouded in controversy. A video of a Cameroonian official allegedly defending why a bag of cement costs 15,000 CFA francs  for the AFCON project, instead of the normal 4,500 CFA francs, went viral on social media.

Ako John Ako, a university lecturer and civil society activist in Cameroon, said that the prices of the 2019 AFCON infrastructure were ten times more than is usual for the same kind of infrastructure in other African nations. “Findings indicated that public contracts suffered one of the highest hits,” Ako said. “Within Cameroon, those who implement decisions or grant the order for contracts always have a percentage reserved in their name.”

Corruption kills infrastructure

Government ministers, heads of parapublic and public as well as giant private enterprises are increasingly being brought down as Cameroon’s anti-corruption organ intensifies its efforts. According to the National Anti-Corruption Commission’s (CONAC) most recent report, the country saw 375 billion CFA francs  returned to its coffers.

Street scene of Doula in Cameroon (DW/F. Muvunyi)

Doula is Cameroon’s biggest city and its economic capital Despite these efforts, civil society actors like Ako think that CONAC, other anti-corruption agencies and poor governance remain key factors in holding back Cameroon’s development.

“CONAC and many other agencies that have been created by the state simply come to confirm that Cameroon will solve problems with commissions, but then more often than not most of the commissions created are still a problem and center for corruption within Cameroon,” he told DW. Ako went on to say that the Cameroonian government could say that the fight against corruption has been succeeding, because Cameroon does not appear among the first five most corrupt nations in the world. “But corruption still continues to be the venom that is eating and killing the infrastructure and implementation or execution of state activities,” he said.

Threat of famine

The situation in the English-speaking regions, where suspected separatists have been carrying out attacks and kidnappings, is dire. Dominic Asah, one of the supervisors of government development projects, said that up to 20 percent of planned projects could not be implemented due to insecurity and shortage of liquidity. “The socio-political climate in the field is actually what is hampering the execution process in these localities. The northwest region received a total of 490 operations. Only 52 have been executed, 69 are ongoing and 311 are still to take off the ground,” Asah said. At least 10,000 workers have quit their jobs in rubber plantations in the English-speaking town of Buea. According to director general Frankline Njie, they require at least 54 million dollars. “None of our rubber estates is operating normally. Some are shut down completely, the workers are threatened,” Njie lamented.

He said it was difficult for him to understand and accept why all this pain was being inflicted. “The banana sector has been hit. One of our pack houses, where bananas are processed for export was attacked and set ablaze.” President Paul Biya has openly called on all fighters to drop their guns  and has created a national disarmament commission to socially reintegrate fighters who surrender.

Source: DW.Com  

Biya owes much of his survival to a longstanding relationship with various French gov’ts

25, January 2019

Biya owes much of his survival to a longstanding relationship with various French gov’ts 0

On 6 November 2018, 85-year-old Paul Biya was sworn in for his seventh term as president of Cameroon, extending his 36-year rule. It is remarkable, more so considering that up to 60 per cent of the population is below the age of 25. It means that the vast majority of Cameroonians have never known a president other than Biya and have never lived through a truly free and fair election, where anyone other than Biya could win.

The question of longevity in office has been a focus for political organizing in many parts of the world since the 1990s, when one-party regimes fell apart – unable to sustain themselves after the Cold War. Many of the long-serving leaders of that era owed their survival to client relationships with the US and the Soviet Union. When the superpowers no longer needed them, there was finally enough space for democracy to take root. Only a handful of countries in Africa and Asia have resisted this transition, and the case of Paul Biya highlights why.

In crude terms, Cameroon was a second-tier state that was more interesting to secondary Western powers – namely France – than it was to either the US or the Soviets. Indeed, Biya owes much of his survival in power to a longstanding relationship with various French administrations. As such, despite the cloud of violence surrounding this latest election, France’s president Emmanuel Macron was one of a handful of leaders who congratulated Biya on his election victory in a letter (which Biya published on his Facebook page) that the Élysée claimed was supposed to remain private.

Nor have other nations made any tangible moves to distance themselves from Biya. Despite the mounting domestic resistance to his regime, particularly in the Anglophone region of the country, Biya travels the world freely. He frequents the InterContinental hotel in Geneva, where Cameroonians allege he spends more time than in Yaoundé. He regularly attends African Union Heads of State meetings and recently turned a three-day Africa-China summit in Beijing into a two-week trip.

When a president has been in power for 36 years in a country where elections should nominally change the leadership, it’s logical to ask, ‘Why aren’t the locals resisting?’ But in Cameroon, regional and international institutions do their best to nullify any local resistance. The army and the police have a nominal monopoly on the use of force and a relatively limitless access to weapons, training and other tools. And because the arms trade remains one of the least regulated industries in the world, after a while the only recourse left for those who resist is armed conflict, if the central state is unwilling to negotiate.

Thus, in 2015, citizens in the Anglophone region of Cameroon began a peaceful campaign to protest poor access to government services. That protest was met by violence from the army and the state, and has since morphed into a full rebellion. A secessionist campaign has been brutally countered by state violence and collective punishment of civilians. But this information is broadly kept out of the mainstream media by restricting access to the restive regions. By controlling how information about Cameroon is created and disseminated, Biya manages to shield the country from scrutiny, leaving Cameroonians to resist his regime by themselves.

Never-ending presidential terms are a hot topic right now in Africa, with the youngest population in the world, and in Cameroon, with a gap between an 85-year-old president and a population with an average age of 18.5, it looks particularly absurd. Biya’s Cameroon highlights that change is not just about sheer demographic numbers but power, violence and political institutions. Longevity is also a chance to ask important questions about the international systems that connect and sustain regimes around the world.

Source: New Internationalist

24, January 2019

Of Biya and the Chinese, CDC, PAMOL and business tycoon Danpullo 0

The Chinese government recently announced that it has written off almost $78m (£60m) from Cameroon’s debt as part of measures to ease economic hardship in the country, but it is evidently clear that China is exploiting a desperate regime that is taking the last kicks of a dying horse and playing for greater access to Cameroon resources.

Beijing and Yaounde made public the debt relief announcement on Friday last week shortly after a meeting between the 85 year old President Paul Biya and Yang Jiechi, a special representative of China’s President Xi Jinping.

Chinese media houses also reported that Cameroon’s total debt burden to China stands at almost $5.7bn (£4.4bn), citing figures from the Autonomous Sinking Fund, the public entity that manages Cameroon’s external debt. We also gathered from the Biya-Yang Jiechi press release that the sum of $78m that has been wiped is money that should have been paid in 2018, but which Cameroon failed to pay.

Finally, the Chinese have taken over Cameroon (to be precise) French Cameroun and the roots of Chinese colonization are very deep that not even the French can decolonized.  The Chinese gesture without mincing words is NOT an act of charity. We now have evidence that Biya and his ruling CPDM gang have handed over the mines in the East region and the iron ore deposits in the South to the Chinese.

President Biya 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. The Special Representative of China’s President Xi Jinping has been quoted by our intelligence sources in Yaoundé as saying that Xi Jinping made it very clear to Biya “If you cannot pay, then hand over the mines to us.”

The Chinese are not in Cameroon to play; they are pursuing a well-calculated mission of taking over the country. Russia is already installing a military base in the Central African Republic that will benefit both Beijing and Moscow if the French attempt to disrupt the plan.

A French Cameroun ministerial task team established by the Biya Francophone Beti Ewondo regime has reported that CDC and PAMOL are now a thing of the past. We of this publication think, Biya and his crime syndicate should be held responsible for the collapse of these two gigantic agro-industrial plants as the leadership of the CDC and PAMOL are both connected to the crimes committed against Southern Cameroonians.

Governor Okalia Bilai (Board Chair PAMOL) and Itoe Benjamin (Board Chair CDC) including the general managers were among the so-called South West Elites who ordered Nkemgu Martin to read a communiqué addressed to President Biya demanding the deployment of more troops to kill the laborers, their children and the local population working in these plantations. They must now face the far reaching consequences of their actions.

Baba Danpullo’s empire too is collapsing at catastrophic rapidity! The internet shut down in Southern Cameroons greatly affected the man who is a chartered Biya business partner. He wrongfully thought that the crisis in Southern Cameroons was a repeat of the CPDM/SDF political tug-of-war in 1990. Correspondingly, he attempted to put the Muslim population at daggers-drawn positions with the people of Southern Cameroons. That venture failed and today the Vietnamese who originally owned Nexttel are soon to take him to an international court. He is the right man to tell Biya that it is cheaper to talk for 1000 years than to fight for just a day.

By Rita Akana in Yaounde  

Congo-Kinshasa set for historic transfer of power under shadow of disputed election

24, January 2019

Congo-Kinshasa set for historic transfer of power under shadow of disputed election 0

Felix Tshisekedi is to be sworn in on Thursday as president of Democratic Republic of Congo, marking the country’s first-ever peaceful handover of power after chaotic and bitterly-disputed elections. At 55, opposition leader Tshisekedi takes over from Joseph Kabila who is stepping aside after 18 years at the helm of sub-Saharan Africa’s biggest country.

The inauguration will take place at the Palace of the Nation, the seat of the presidency, at noon (1100 GMT), aides to Tshisekedi and Kabila said on Wednesday.

One of Tshisekedi’s first tasks will be to appoint a prime minister in a move which will see him sharing power with Kabila’s supporters, who hold an overwhelming majority in parliament.

The ceremony caps more than two years of turmoil sparked by Kabila’s refusal to step down when he reached the constitutional limit on his term in office.

Turbulence

A country the size of continental western Europe, DR Congo has lived through two regional wars in 1996-97 and 1998-2003.

The last two presidential elections, in 2006 and 2011 — both of which were won by Kabila — were marred by bloody clashes.

The ballot, which took place on December 30 after being delayed three times, surprised many by the lack of violence, but a political storm swiftly brewed over the count.

Tshisekedi was declared winner with 38.5 percent of the vote, over his opposition rival Martin Fayulu, who was credited with 34.8 percent.

Fayulu branded the result a fix but lost a challenge to the Constitutional Court and foreign support for his position ebbed as countries took comfort in a peaceful transition.

“The opposition has run out of recourse to challenge the election results and the threat of widespread post-election violence is gradually subsiding,” said Robert Besseling of EXX Africa, a business risk consultancy.

Many challenges

Tshisekedi heads the Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS), DR Congo’s oldest and largest opposition party, which was founded and led by his father Etienne.

Analysts say he faces a raft of pressing problems after taking the oath of office. He must defuse the anger of Fayulu’s supporters, carry out his campaign pledge of ending the “gangrene” of corruption after the Kabila era, and forge a power-sharing arrangement with the outgoing president’s bloc.

The pro-Kabila Joint Front for Congo (FCC), controls 337 seats in the 500-member National Assembly against 102 for Fayulu’s coalition, Lamuka, and 46 for his own coalition, Heading for Change (Cach).

“Tshisekedi will have little margin for manoeuvre,” said Stephanie Wolters at South Africa’s Institute for Security Studies (ISS) think tank.

According to a “political coalition agreement” seen by AFP which outlines an arrangement for “power-sharing” between the FCC and Cach, the position of prime minister “will be rotated every five years.”

And the defence, foreign affairs and interior portfolios will go to “the president’s political family”.

Kabila himself will become a senator for life, a position reserved for outgoing presidents under the constitution, but he is widely expected to wield influence through his supporters. His family has acquired a wide range of assets during the many years in power.

Kabila congratulated Tshisekedi on the eve of his inauguration, saying he will hand over power to his successor “without regret or remorse”.

In his first speech since the election, Kabila said Tshisekedi can count on him “whenever he wants” and called for a “grand coalition of all the progressive forces”.

“A coalition against the predatory forces that have come together and will always try to join forces to monopolise our natural resources,” he said.

Conflict and poverty

Beyond the politics, Tsishekedi also has to deal with the brutal militias who control parts of the country’s strife-torn east where an Ebola epidemic is also unfolding.

He also has to meet the expectations of his supporters about easing poverty, which afflicts the vast majority of the country’s 80 million citizens.

Despite the poverty, DR Congo boasts a treasure trove of minerals, ranging from gold and diamonds to copper and coltan — a mineral essential for the batteries used in hand-held electronic devices.

Yet, in a country where graft is entrenched, very little of the wealth trickles down to the poor. It ranks a mere 176th on the 189-nation Human Development Index compiled by the United Nations’ Development Programme (UNDP).

(AFP)

Ambazonia Crisis: Atanga Nji Says Over 60,000 IDPs receive government assistance

24, January 2019

Ambazonia Crisis: Atanga Nji Says Over 60,000 IDPs receive government assistance 0

Cameroon’s Minister of Territorial Administration Paul Atanga Nji said Tuesday that the government has assisted more than 60,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the two troubled English-speaking regions of Northwest and Southwest.

“As of today, there are 60,345 Cameroonians who have already received humanitarian assistance in the two regions. There are also 1,200 families that have returned home,” Nji told reporters in the capital city of Yaounde while meeting with seven other ministers to assess the humanitarian situation in the restive regions.

He stressed that other humanitarian organizations wishing to assist the IDPs must obtain permission from the government.

“On no account can you go to the field and start doing your activities without the formal approval of the government because if things are not properly organized there is the risk of having assistance falling into the hands of the terrorists,” Nji said.

He said, rehabilitation centers have already been set up to accommodate armed separatists who will drop their weapons.

“When you lay down your weapons, you will be taken to the centers, where you are provided health, psychological and training facilities,” Nji said.

Armed separatists have been clashing with government forces in the two English-speaking regions since November 2017. Separatists want to secede from Francophone-majority Cameroon and create a new nation called “Ambazonia”.

The United Nations estimates that over 430,000 people have been displaced internally by the conflict.

During his end-of-year speech to the nation, Cameroon President Paul Biya said he was ready to continue dialogue with “people of goodwill” in the troubled regions but warned that armed separatists unwilling to drop their arms will be “neutralized”.

Source: Xinhua

24, January 2019

2019 AFCON Fiasco: Aecom’s ‘impossibly fast’ delivery of 50,000-seat Cameroon stadium 0

Cameroon may no longer be hosting the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations, but the Japoma Stadium is still set to be delivered to the original, tight schedule.

Project name: Japoma Stadium

Client: State of Cameroon

Value: $220m (£171m)

Contract type: Design and build

Main contractor: Yenigün

Design and structural engineer: Aecom

Steel subcontractor: BCES Bülbüloğlu

Façade subcontractor: Tensaform

Start date: January 2017

End date: March 2019

“By the time we had a deal and were able to start, we only had two years to deliver the stadium,” says Aecom director and head of sport Peter Ayres. The stadium in question is Cameroon’s Japoma Stadium, which is designed by Aecom and being delivered by Turkish contractor Yenigün.

“We had a very general idea conceptually of what we needed to build,” Mr Ayres says, “as in we need a 50,000-seat stadium and we’ve got a site […] but that was it. There was no design as of two years ago. Mr Ayres adds that, normally, it takes a minimum of three years (“absolute minimum”) to design and deliver these projects.

The new stadium was sanctioned alongside three others as Cameroon prepared to host the 2019 African Cup of Nations football tournament. But in November last year, the country was stripped of its right to host the event due to preparation delays and security concerns. Despite this, the time and cost-saving design and construction of the Japoma Stadium in the port city of Douala has meant the project has stayed on schedule. Given the hugely ambitious programme, it has been no mean feat.

Design based on speed and trust

Aecom was approached by the government of Cameroon at the start of 2016. Mr Ayres says the client wanted a turnkey package, which the firm was unable to provide. Instead, Aecom managed to put together a consortium with main contractor Yenigün, who also brought onboard a Turkish bank to part-fund the scheme. By the time all the deal-making had concluded, the contract was signed and the money started to flow through for construction, it was already January 2017. This is when the “nitty gritty designing” work actually kicked off, says Aecom associate director of building engineering Adrian Armstrong.

“We had a very general idea conceptually of what we needed to build as in we need a 50,000-seat stadium and we’ve got a site […] but that was it”

Peter Ayres, Aecom

With the stadium needing to be handed over to the client in a little over 26 months by the end of March 2019, a time-efficient design and build process took priority. One of the first things this meant was, “there had to be an element of trust” on the client’s part, according to Mr Ayres, as there simply was no time to offer “27 different options” for the design. “It was [a case of], ‘This is what works, this is what can be built quickly’. We’ve got our site, how do we work with the site? Instead of trying to fight the topography, let’s work with it,” he says.

A stadium on a hillside

Douala is 200 km west of Yaoundé, Cameroon’s capital. The site chosen for the stadium is less than 5 km west of the Dibamba River, which is forested on both banks. “When we got there, [the site] was all covered in bush. It was semi-forestry wasteland, but there were trees, ditches, bits of marshy areas that all had to be cleared and levelled,” Mr Ayres explains. The most intriguing element of the site however, is that it sits on a hillside. There is a 7 m difference in elevation between the lowest and highest points of the hill (pictured, below).

Yenigun Japoma Stadium elevation

There is a 7 m difference in elevation between the lowest and highest points of the hill The Aecom team took advantage of this by placing all of the changing rooms, operations and internal accommodation facilities on the west side of the stadium, at the bottom of the hill. This meant excavation and earth works could be kept to a minimum, Mr Armstrong explains, as the basement level did not have to be dug up. Relative to the rest of the stadium, the basement sits on a lower floor, but because it has been positioned to sit at the bottom of the hill, it is still at ground level. Another benefit of building the stadium on a hill is that, “we can bring people in at halfway up the stadium bowl,” Mr Armstrong adds. “That means you don’t need lifts and staircases, because for three-quarters of the stadium, people come in and they either go down into the bowl or up into the bowl.”

Starting from the west

Piling work started on site in May 2017, five months after the starting pistol was fired on the scheme. Main contractor Yenigün’s in-house groundworks team installed a total of 2,076 bored piles, each 800 mm in dimeter. Depending on the level on the site and the ground conditions, the piles varied in length from 8 m to 20 m. Given that all of the additional elements in the stadium (basement, VIP box and premium concourse) were all centralised in the west stand, piling work started there. Time constraints meant that as soon as piling for the west stand was complete, Yenigün turned its attention to the stand’s substructure and superstructure, as piling work continued across the rest of the job. Yenigün used insitu concrete for the primary frame as well as for the 48 raker beams that form the stadium’s superstructure frame, which supports the seating terraces.

Yenigun Japoma Stadium 4

[BCES Bülbüloğlu] built the whole truss on the ground, lifted it in as one piece and placed it on the concrete structure The Turkish contractor set up a precast concrete batching plant onsite to produce a portion of the concrete required for the terraces, while the remainder was imported from Turkey. “Because it’s such a wide perimeter and we wanted to reduce the amount of insitu concrete for [the sake of] speed, we developed a system where the precast terracing units, which normally would be single 7.5 m spanning elements, we made them into double elements,” Mr Ayres explains. “So instead of being an ‘L’ shape, they’re ‘W’ shaped. That meant we could span twice as far, which meant we could halve the number of insitu units to speed up construction,” he adds.

Porous roof and façade

As this process fanned out across the circumference of the stadium and the 50,000-seat arena took shape, Turkish steel contractor BCES Bülbüloğlu began erection of the steel cantilevered roof. “We came up with 3D trusses that are self-stable,” Mr Armstrong says. “[BCES Bülbüloğlu] built the whole truss on the ground, lifted it in as one piece and placed it on the concrete structure.

Low maintenance design

In order to create a stadium that would fit the demanding programme, have a lasting legacy and be cheap to operate and maintain, the Aecom team made several forward-thinking choices with their design. The first of these was to take advantage of the hillside location by creating a basement level under the west stand, which sits on the ground level at the bottom of the hill. This reduced excavation and earth works on the west stand, while eliminating the need to have staircases on the remaining three stands, as spectators can come in half way up the stadium bowl and either go up or down the terraces. As well as allowing spectators to move in out of the stadium freely, the fabric envelope and roof was also selected to minimise M&E work.

“The porous façade allows air movement through the envelope to ventilate the bowl and keep everyone at a comfortable temperate,” Mr Armstrong explains. “They get a lot of rainfall in Cameroon – the same amount of rain in a month as we get in a year. In terms of the stands and concourses it [the fabric roof and façade] shields people from the rain, but it’s porous in terms of air flow so it keeps it cool.”

As a result, air-conditioned spaces have been limited to the players accommodation area, and the VIP and premium spaces. Catering has also been rethought to accommodate local tastes. “The world of stadium design is going high-tech with massive corporate offerings, more and more aimed at the 1 per cent because that’s where the money’s hidden,” Mr Ayres says. “In Cameroon, when you go to eat, it’s almost all street food. There are hardly any restaurants.” With this in mind, 20 street food pods have been dotted around the stadium, which local catering companies can serve from as they would along the busy streets of Douala.

The self-stabilising design of the trusses meant that only the first truss needed to be propped up. Once the second truss was erected and the two were connected, it was a stable structure. This approach was selected for multiple reasons, Mr Ayres says. First, it hugely minimised the amount of temporary work required to prop up the roof, saving on time and costs. And second, if the project had ended up running behind schedule, the team had the option of erecting the roof and façade solely on the west stand, then coming back to complete the rest once the football tournament had finished.

“The idea is that instead of being a fortress-like stadium, it’s very porous, which suits the climate. There’s no hard barrier around the stadium”

Peter Ayres, Aecom

As it happens, all 48 trusses have been erected and the stadium is due to complete on time. The top chords of every truss come together in a diamond shape and have a glazed roof. A PVC façade supplied by Turkish subcontractor Tensaform links all the trusses, creating a fabric envelope and roof that protects spectators from the rain, while allowing air to flow freely. “The idea is that instead of being a fortress-like stadium, it’s very porous, which suits the climate. There’s no hard barrier around the stadium,” Mr Ayres explains. This means spectators can move freely in and out of the stadium’s terraces and food stalls outside, while a wider security perimeter handles gatekeeping. The result of this impressively fast-tracked and innovatively thought-out stadium project will no doubt be a jewel in Douala’s crown. Cameroon’s loss of the 2019 AFCON tournament no doubt brings an air of anti-climax to the project and to the local population, but it shouldn’t take away from a notable engineering feat.

Not just a football stadium

As well as the 50,000-seat football stadium, the scheme also includes external facilities that will be made available to the public. These include:

  • An Olympic standard 50 m aquatics centre
  • A football field
  • Four tennis courts
  • Two basketball courts
  • Two volleyball courts

Source: Construction News

La Republique’s plan for a Francophone-led tech hub isn’t being welcomed in Ambazonia

24, January 2019

La Republique’s plan for a Francophone-led tech hub isn’t being welcomed in Ambazonia 0

The Cameroon government is backing a new technology hub to be called “Cameroon Silicon River” in its capital city Yaoundé, in a move that is likely to move attention from its small, but already thriving ecosystem in the country’s southwest region.

The new tech hub is modeled after Buea’s Silicon Mountain and will take a sizable portion of the 11.92 billion CFA francs ($ 20.6 million) 2019 budget of Cameroon’s ministry of scientific research and innovation. The government says Cameroon Silicon River will be a platform for research and innovation where young, creative, and enterprising Cameroonian software developers and other technologists will have the infrastructure and support they need.

But the news has not gone down well with tech leaders and entrepreneurs in Silicon Mountain; the already burgeoning tech ecosystem in Buea, in the English-speaking region of Cameroon. It is seen as the latest part of a wider national effort to marginalize the minority English-speaking regions of the country in the southwest and northwest.

For the last two years activists in the English-speaking regions of the country have protested against marginalization by the French-speaking dominated government. Modern Cameroon was formed from part of a former British colony and a much larger French colony, which makes up about 80% of the country’s population. But over the last year, those initially peaceful protests by Anglophone professionals, including lawyers and teachers, have turned into violent clashes with government security forces.

There has also been an information battle conducted mainly online. The government has taken to shutting down the internet for months in the English-speaking regions, ostensibly to prevent anti-government activists organizing.

Tech entrepreneurs in Silicon Mountain have often complained of systematic neglect by the government, citing specifically the lack of tax incentives for their tech start-ups and want of financial support.

Despite the difficulties, some Cameroonian start-ups in Silicon Mountain have received global acclamation and are being scaled up to spread across the world. These include Zuo Bruno (Zuoix)’s Zoomed car-tracking application using SMS and Churchill Mambe Nanje’s Njorku.com – a fast-growing job search engine and aggregator that helps thousands of African job-seekers find employment opportunities in locations nearest to them.

Bruno, an ethical hacker from Silicon Mountain, described the Yaoundé hub plan as a waste of resources. “I think it is a decision that assumes creativity and innovation can be taught and politicized.”

Many techies in Silicon Mountain say government officials often speak with them on how to improve the local ecosystem but their suggestions or proposals often end up being implemented in other parts of the country.

“We had proposed to officials that there was need to put in place an institution in Buea that will help startups in registering their ventures and scaling them up. Now we hear it is Yaounde,” said Otto Akama, co-founder of Makonjo Media. He indicated that same had been done with the creation of a technopole in Kribi, in the country’s French-speaking region.

Internet rights activist, Gwain Colbert Fulai predicted Cameroon Silicon River will die off in a relatively short timeframe.

“When you copy an initiative, you miss out the essential details. Even Silicon Valley in the US was not a government creation,” Colbert said. He argued government should only create an enabling environment for technology to strive.

Despite being Cameroon’s capital city, Yaoundé has few little-known tech entrepreneurs compared with Silicon Mountain. The entrepreneurs believe government should use the striving Silicon Mountain tech ecosystem as a springboard to build and expand other ecosystems in the country.

Source: Quartz

French Cameroun: At least 23 killed in bus crash

24, January 2019

French Cameroun: At least 23 killed in bus crash 0

At least 23 people have died in a road accident in Cameroon’s north, local authorities say.

Kildadi Taguieke Boukar, the governor of the region where the crash took place, told dpa that it appeared a truck from neighbouring Chad collided with a public transport bus.

Boukar added that the crash was caused by “overspeeding.”

Three people were seriously injured in the crash and were receiving treatment at Ngoundere Regional Hospital.

Source: Deutsche Presse Agentur

23, January 2019

European Union urges crackdown on ‘golden visas and passports’ 0

The European Union urged member countries on Wednesday to crack down on schemes granting “golden visas and passports” to foreign investors, warning they can bring corruption and money laundering in their wake.

The European Commission, the EU executive, published a report urging members to curb the practice of giving foreigners — often Chinese, Russians and Americans — residency or citizenship in return for investment.

“We speak about opening (a) golden gate to Europe for some privileged people who have the money to pay for citizenship or residence,” EU justice commissioner Vera Jourova said at the report’s publication.

“We are looking at it with concern,” Jourova told a news conference in Brussels. The commissioner said investor residence and citizens schemes, known as “golden visas and golden passports,” should not be a weak link in EU efforts to curb corruption and money laundering.

The report said wealthy candidates for residency or citizenship do face insufficient security and background checks to prevent them from posing a security risk, laundering money or evading taxes. EU countries set conditions for granting and withdrawing nationality but must do so with respect for EU law, enforced by the European Court of Justice, officials said.

The bloc’s laws are important as a citizen of one EU country has the right to travel to others, exercise economic activities within the 28-nation internal market, and vote in local and European elections.

“Crime has no borders,” said Jourova, a Czech politician. The Commission complained that Bulgaria, Cyprus and Malta run schemes granting foreign investors citizenship without requiring them to live in those EU countries or show “genuine connections” to them.

The investor citizenship schemes, known as “golden passports,” offer less strict requirements than those for foreigners seeking to become naturalised citizens.

– ‘Transparency and oversight’ –

The Commission also said residence permits pose serious security risks to member states. An EU residence permit gives a third-country national the right to live in the member country and to travel freely in Europe’s passport-free Schengen area.

Britain, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Ireland, Greece, Spain, France, Croatia, Italy, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania and Slovakia run these schemes.

The Commission said there was a lack of “transparency and oversight” of the residence schemes, including too few statistics on how many people obtain a residence permit in this way. The Commission warned “it will take necessary action as appropriate” if member countries fail to comply with EU law and rules on border checks, money laundering and tax avoidance.

It said it will set up a group of experts from member countries to improve the transparency, governance and security of the investor schemes. The aim is to develop a common set of security checks for investor citizenship schemes by the end of 2019.

The problem of “golden visas and golden passports” has been flagged by non-government organisations. In October last year, Berlin-based Transparency International and London-based Global Witness called EU citizenship and residency as “just like a luxury good” which “can be bought”.

“By their very nature, golden visa schemes are an attractive prospect for the criminal and the corrupt,” they wrote.

Several EU members have used such schemes to give passports to around 6,000 people and residency rights to around 100,000 people in the past decade, securing about 25 billion euros ($29 billion) of foreign direct investment in return, the NGOs said.

They said Spain, Cyprus, Portugal and Britain are the countries that have received the most investment in return for visas. Spain received 976 million euros annually compared to 498 million euros in Britain.

 AFP

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