1, January 2020
Biya’s end-of-year speech: Can he win hearts and minds? 0
For some three decades, Cameroon’s president, Paul Biya, has gone down in the estimation of many of his compatriots due to corruption and incompetence that have become the hallmark of a country that was known by many across the globe as a country of the future.
In the seventies and the early eighties, Cameroon was admirably zooming towards a bright future, especially as the country’s pioneer president, Amadou Ahidjo, had laid a solid economic foundation for the country with his five-year development plans that were delivering better living conditions to the people.
Ahidjo’s education was limited, but he quickly learned the ropes and surrounded himself with honest and hardworking Cameroonian technocrats whose love for the fatherland was never in doubt.
Though ruthless when it came to dealing with the political opposition, the country’s pioneer president ensured that corruption was kept very low and any government official caught toying with state funds had to face the music.
He was merciless with government officials who dared to think that occupying a high position was a sign of superiority.
His insistence on using the youths to manage the affairs of the country was his way of ensuring continuity in the country even after him.
This explained why many of those in government today were granted top positions when they were either in their late twenties or thirties, including Mr. Biya who became the Secretary General at the Presidency at less than 35 years.
Under Mr. Ahidjo’s political program, every administrative division in the country was represented in his government.
Though he dishonestly lured the country’s English-speaking minority into a lopsided political union, he always ensured that the post of vice-president went to someone from Southern Cameroons, including the post of speaker of the National Assembly.
Mr. Ahidjo kept unemployment very low and he established a solid private sector that could help hire many young Cameroonian graduates, especially as the civil service could not hire everybody.
Under his economic program, every administrative division had an administrative headquarters endowed with all the services that could make life easy and beautiful to Cameroonians.
But this has not been the trend since 1982 when Mr. Ahidjo handed over power to the country’s current president, Paul Biya, who has ruled the country for 37 years through presidential decrees that have only delivered death and destruction to the citizens of Cameroon.
A country that was once considered as an oasis of peace in a desert of military and political chaos has now become home to many armed groups.
For three years now, Cameroon has been caught in an armed conflict that has pitted the country’s English-speaking minority against a government that has no emotional attachment to its citizens.
As the conflict progresses, light weapons are spreading like ragweed and criminal gangs that are feeding from the government’s failure to restore peace and security in those regions are sprouting and blighting the lives of ordinary citizens, especially in rural areas where the government is conspicuously absent.
The conflict has affected the country’s economy and, over the last couple of years, it has been in a free fall, with unemployment reaching unprecedented levels.
Graduates have become criminals and odd jobs, once done by the uneducated Cameroonians, have become very popular among highly educated Cameroonians.
Recruitment into the civil service has become very unreliable. Regional balance that was a reality under the country’s first president, has been swept under the carpet.
Today, most government ministers are from Mr. Biya’s region of the country, although that region constitutes less than 10% of the country’s population.
Senior administrative officers are also mostly from Mr. Biya’s region and the objective is for them to implement a vicious policy of intimidation and fear-mongering given that most Cameroonians are against a regime that has divided them and robbed them of their dignity.
Today, tribalism and nepotism have replaced competence and regional balance. Mr. Biya’s ministers have become very arrogant. They have no respect for their compatriots and this has eroded whatever respect and emotional attachment the ordinary citizen had for the government.
Cameroonians have been intentionally pauperized by their government. Many are dying of preventable and curable diseases and this has only stepped up opposition against a government run by ailing Octogenarians.
Given this appalling and unsettling economic and political picture, many observers are asking if today’s end-of-year speech by Mr. Biya will deliver any hope to a people who are already indifferent to all government actions.
The government seems to be tone deaf. The people are sick and tired of complaining. Even the international community is losing hope.
The international community has been calling on the government to organize an inclusive dialogue that will deliver peace to the country, but these calls have all fallen on deaf ears.
Instead of organizing a genuine inclusive dialogue, Mr. Biya and his cohort hastily organized a major national dialogue that has not produced any real results.
The war is still going on and without an honest effort and dialogue, the English-speaking minority may walk away from a union that was hastily stitched together by the country’s first president; a union that has spread pain and frustration among the country’s English-speaking minority.
Today, the government has hastily brought home some refugees to demonstrate that the rebellion is dying and that Mr. Biya’s strategy is working.
But observers have already qualified this as a charade that will not address any real issues. This is more of a publicity stunt by the government and this will be a key focus of Mr. Biya’s speech today.
The world is watching and it believes this is an opportunity for the 86-year-old Biya to reach out to the English-speaking minority so that a real and genuine dialogue can start.
If he changes his tone and approach, he might win lots of hearts and minds, but will that be possible, especially as Mr. Biya has a mindset that belongs to a different epoch? To him, only military violence and manipulation can achieve anything meaningful.
He is frozen in time. He has to walk away from his old mentality if he wants peace to return to Cameroon. The ball is in his court.
1, January 2020
2019 in Africa: pro-democracy uprisings, regime change and terrorism in the Sahel 0
From Felix Tshisekedi’s rise to power in the Democratic Republic of Congo to the fall of Abdelaziz Bouteflika in Algeria and the acquittal of former Ivorian president Laurent Gbagbo, Africa was rocked by seminal change throughout 2019. FRANCE 24 takes a look.
For pro-democracy protesters, 2019 got off to an auspicious start. Political change would sweep the continent throughout the year, particularly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where an electoral battle for the country’s leadership proved a harbinger of the winds of change.
Felix Tshisekedi succeeds Joseph Kabila in DR Congo
On January 19, after a controversial election, Felix Tshisekedi, son of longtime opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi, was proclaimed the DR Congo’s new president with 38.57% of the vote.
Runner-up Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary came third in the poll, while incumbent Joseph Kabila was forced to give up his seat after 18 years in power. But the results were met with widespread scepticism by the international community and were contested by the Catholic Church, which announced that the real winner was in fact opponent Martin Fayulu, who polled second.
International Criminal Court acquits Laurent Gbagbo
After being held for nearly seven years at the International Criminal Court detention centre for crimes against humanity committed during the 2010-2011 post-election crisis, former Ivorian president Laurent Gbagbo and his youth minister Charles Blé Goudé were acquitted in January of all charges against them.
Few saw the explosive verdict coming in a three-year-long trial.
The International Criminal Court initially ordered their immediate release. But prosecutor Fatou Bensouda appealed against the judgement on procedural grounds. The former Ivorian president is currently on parole in Belgium, awaiting news of a possible appeal. Blé Goudé remains in the Netherlands under similar conditions.
A year of revolution in Algeria
In Algeria, the popular protest movement, known as the Hirak, shows little sign of waning despite the election of a new president, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, on December 12.
The Hirak continues to draw thousands of people onto the streets of Algiers, and several other major cities in the country, every Friday. It began spontaneously on February 16, sparked by an announcement that then president Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who had been in power for 20 years, was planning to run for a fifth term despite his poor health.
Under pressure from the street, Bouteflika, whose public appearances were becoming increasingly rare, finally resigned on April 2. But this did nothing to assuage protesters who continued to call for the removal of an entire governing elite that they considered nepotistic and corrupt. The protest movement eventually forced the arrest of several of the regime’s leaders, including Said Bouteflika, brother of the deposed president.
Overthrow of Omar al-Bashir in Sudan
Sudan’s aggrieved citizens looked to Algeria for inspiration for their own pro-democracy movement. Last December, a first rally was held to protest against the rising cost of bread and petrol. Soon after, thousands more took to the streets of Khartoum, and several other Sudanese cities, to demonstrate against inflation and demand better living conditions.
They railed against their leader and longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir, who had ruled the country for 30 years. The vast protest movement continued unabated even though the Sudanese president was deposed by the army in April. More than 250 people were killed in clashes between protesters and the military.
After bitter negotiations between the political opposition, civil society and the military, a Sovereign Transitional Council was formed. On August 15, Abdalla Hamdok, a former senior UN official, was appointed prime minister to head up the country’s transitional government for the next three years, until elections can be held.
Terrorism in the Sahel
The Sahel witnessed the continuing scourge of terrorism throughout 2019. In northern Mali, jihadist groups affiliated to the Islamic State group attacked several military bases in Niger and Burkina Faso, despite the presence of French troops from France’s anti-terrorist Barkhane force, and the joint forces of the G5 Sahel.
The December attack against the Inates military base in Niger killed 71 soldiers, following an earlier attack on the Indelimane camp in mid-November, which left more than 50 dead. Nearly 1,500 civilians have been killed in terrorist attacks since January, according to the UN.
Several countries on the frontlines of the fight against terrorism in the Sahel pleaded for more support from the international community. French President Emmanuel Macron responded by organising a summit on January 13 in Pau in southwestern France to meet with regional leaders to reassess France’s military engagement in the region.
Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed
When Ethiopia’s newly elected prime minister, 43-year-old Abiy Ahmed, came to power in April, he wasted no time in asserting his progressive agenda in a country marked by social injustice and lack of freedoms.
In October, his parliament elected a woman, Sahle-Work Zewde, as head of state for the first time. A few days earlier, he demonstrated his commitment to gender parity by appointing ten men and ten women to his cabinet.
But it was his rapprochement with Eritrea that earned him the Nobel Peace Prize. In July, Ahmed signed a joint declaration of peace and cooperation with Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki, ending 20 years of war in which 80,000 people were killed.
Death of Tunisian President Béji Caïd Essebsi
Tunisia’s first freely elected president, Béji Caïd Essebsi died at the age of 92, just a few months before presidential elections originally scheduled for November. A symbol of Tunisia’s post-Arab spring, he was first appointed prime minister of a provisional government in February 2011 after the fall of former president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, and was tasked with preparing a new constitution in the wake of the nation’s pro-democracy uprisings.
Nine months later, he left office to found his Nidaa Tounes party, with which he won the presidential election in 2014 at the age of 88.
The end of the CFA franc
On a visit to Ivory Coast’s economic capital of Abidjan on December 21, President Emmanuel Macron and Ivorian President Alassane Ouattara announced the launch of the “Eco”, a revamped common currency that replaces the CFA in West Africa. The new single currency will be introduced across ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States) in 2020.
The CFA franc was created by France in 1945, then a colonial power, and was seen by its detractors as a lingering symbol of colonialism almost 60 years after independence had been declared in the former French colonies.
The currency, shared by 14 West and Central African countries, had crystallised tensions and divided public opinion among Africans. Anti-CFA economists believed that the currency kept Africa underdeveloped through its fixed parity mechanism with the euro, guaranteed by France. In return, France required African countries to pay about 50 per cent of their foreign exchange reserves to the French Treasury.
But for others, the CFA franc was seen as a guarantee of economic stability. Ouattara sought to reassure ECOWAS, saying that the new currency will remain pegged to the euro, thereby guaranteeing its stability.
Source: France 24