Cocoa prices in Cameroon are surging as farmers in the biggest producing regions flee an escalating conflict between government forces and a movement that wants independence for English-speaking territories.

Cameroon produced an estimated 246,000 metric tons of cocoa in the season through September 2017, accounting for about 5.2 percent of global output, according to data from the International Cocoa Organization.

Source: Bloomberg

Cameroon is urging children in the eastern part of the country to stop leaving school to work in the gold industry. The campaign was launched after a report said 74 people have been killed in mine accidents this year, a majority of them of school age.

A group of five Cameroonian teenagers and a Central African refugee are digging through a river bed, searching for gold. One carries a newborn on her back as she turns over the dirt and mud, looking for the precious nuggets.

These kids, ranging in age from 11 to 15, are some of children who have dropped their studies to dig for gold.

The youth say Chinese companies pay them a dollar a day for their labor and a bonus if they find gold.

Government authorities have told locals to stop digging in the area. But the need for income is so high that many ignore the order, including refugees who leave their camps and parents whose kids should be in school.

Yves Bertrand Alienou is a senior divisional officer in the Lom and Djerem administrative unit. He is going village-to-village asking locals to leave gold mines alone and for parents to return their child miners to their studies.

“The first message is that of sympathy from the public authorities that we represent, but most especially we want to ask them to stop exploiting in this dangerous area. As they all know and have seen for themselves it is very dangerous,”

A report published in July by the government and private researchers said 50 people were killed mining for gold in eastern Cameroon last year. That number has jumped to over 70 in just the first half of 2018.

In one of the worst incidents, nine Cameroonians and Central African refugees were killed when a gold mine collapsed on them in the town of Ngoura last December.

Michel Pilo, chief of Mali village, says the Chinese mining companies are not only exploiting their natural resources but also their children.

He says the Chinese companies don’t build any schools for the children.And when the child miners dig the water beds, contaminating their only source of drinking water, the Chinese refuse to provide alternative sources such as constructing wells. He says many people have become sick from drinking contaminated water and others have died in landslides.

Vincent Atangana, a Cameroonian official at Chinese mining firm EXXIL, blames parents for allowing their kids to work in the firms. He argues Chinese mining has helped develop the area.

He says many houses are being constructed with modern materials.Several years ago, fuel was sold in cans but today, says Atangana, there are fuel stations.He says these developments are coming when gold mining is still at a working stage -they will do even more when it reaches the industrial level.

Alienou says the government has warned parents and instructed Chinese mining firms to stop hiring school-age laborers. Butwith high demands for gold from China and jobs in eastern Cameroon, there is little enforcement.

Source: VOA

The Cameroon Development Corporation, CDC has executed an immediate shut down of 8 of its Estates due to increased insecurity. Cameroon Concord News gathered that these estates include Mbonge, Illoani, Mukonje, Mondoni, Tombel, Malende and Meanja. Our source who is a management staff also hinted that the affected workers would be paid 50% of their salary.

The Director of Human Resources who spoke to our undercover reporter confirmed the company’s decision and further pointed out that the agro industrial plant may be close down completely if the fighting intensifies in Southern Cameroons.

CDC is the second largest employer after the CPDM government. Yaoundé recently ordered an investigation into the management of CDC and reportedly bailout the corporation with the sum of 90 billion FCFA.  Insiders say the Estates will remain shut down for as long as security procedures are not in place for the public and CDC personnel. The shutdown is likely to be indefinite as the crisis in the Federal Republic of Ambazonia is showing no signs of ending.

The shutdown will have a direct impact on the crisis noted a highly placed Cameroon government official contacted by our correspondent in Limbe. The management immediately told the government of its decision to close down some Estates earlier this week. Since the conflict started, the Yaounde government has made one mistake after another. In January 2017, it arrested and jailed Southern Cameroonian leaders who had called for a federal system that would guarantee that the people take ownership of their own development projects.

Barrister Felix Nkongho Agbor-Balla, Dr. Fontem Neba and Mr. Mancho Bibixy were captured and hastily taken to Yaounde in the belief that the population’s anger would be doused. This only inflamed Southern Cameroonians, and things actually took a turn for the worse.

To ensure that its atrocities in the region were not captured on video, the government cut off Internet and other communication systems. In the process, many businesses were killed and the unemployment rate in the region reached alarming rates. Silicon Mountain, a hub for many start-ups in the South West regional headquarters of Buea, was put out of business. The disconnection of the Internet created many Internet refugees and ever since, Silicon Mountain has become a thing of the past.

Rather than seek to appease a people who have been hurting for decades, the Yaounde government proceeded to employing tricks in the hope that it will come out of the conflict victorious. After more than six months in jail for no crime committed, Barrister Felix Nkongho Agbor-Balla, Dr. Fontem Neba and others were released, while Mr. Mancho Bibixy was left in jail. He was later convicted of many flimsy crimes, including terrorism.

Once the leaders were released in 2017, the ruling party’s propaganda immediately kicked in. It portrayed the releases as an act of magnanimity on the president’s part. But the tricks of the past could no longer work the miracles they had produced in the past. The people were sick and tired of the government’s manipulation and trickery. Southern Cameroonians no longer want to have anything to do with their unfortunate past. The calls for federalism have now developed into independence and secession.

By Tina Nene Nganda

Cameroon Concord News Group

The port of Douala, the largest in Central Africa, this week launched an operation to remove wrecks of old boats which hamper its functionality and competitiveness.

“At the operational level, the impacts are even heavier because we are losing docks that should bring us money. It is on the dock that the boat comes to dock to allow exchanges,” said Georges Menye the project manager.

This operation is the first “in 33 years”, according to Cyrus Ngo’o, general manager of the autonomous port of Douala. “The port, the Wouri River is full of a hundred wrecks and we have decided to start with the most dangerous. The first twenty-five wrecks that impede the operation of the port are those that constitute this phase of the project,“ said Mr. Ngo’o.

Fear of pollution

Most of the boats whose frames have been abandoned in the port of Douala are over half a century old and are feared to contain asbestos.

“The majority of these boats are over 50 years old. However, nearly 20 years ago, the construction of boats with asbestos was stopped. Asbestos that has become toxic to humans,” worried Mr. Georges Menye, the project manager.

This contract for the withdrawal of abandoned boats was awarded to an Italian company, Bonifacio, for a sum of 4.7 billion CFA francs (just over 7 million euros).

Work to remove the first 25 wrecks will take eight months.

The main outlet for landlocked Central African countries such as Chad and the Central African Republic, the port of Douala is characterised by its dilapidated infrastructure, congestion, corruption and administrative hassles.

More than 95% of Cameroon’s port traffic passes through Douala.

In February, the French tropical timber trader Rougier designated the “chronic congestion” of the port of Douala as one of the causes of its bankruptcy.

“The bankruptcy of the Rougier group could not be the responsibility of the port of Douala, where the logistics operations of foreign trade are carried out normally”, then reacted Cyrus Ngo’o.

Source: Africa News

Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea have reopened their border six months after it was sealed to stop the movement of armed groups that fought to overthrow President Teodoro Obiang Nguema, who has led Equatorial Guinea since 1979. Strict controls remain on movement across the border.

It is a busy Wednesday morning at the main bus station in Ebebiyin, a north eastern town in the part of Equatorial Guinea that is on the African mainland. Business persons from neighboring Cameroon and Gabon are transporting goods to and from the tiny central Africa state. Ephraim Mukwah, a 43-year old Cameroon-born truck driver, said they are happy Equatorial Guinea officials have finally authorized them to have access to Cameroon.

He said people are very grateful and happy as the town’s taxi business is picking up and buses and trucks can now freely circulate between Cameroonian border towns right to Bata, the economic capital city of Equatorial Guinea.

Cameroon supplies food items, building material and motor spare parts to Equatorial Guinea while Equatorial Guinea delivers beverages, and vegetable oil to Cameroon.

Forty-year old Equatorial Guinean business woman Rosaline Avah said there has been a huge movement of goods and people to and from Ebebiyin within the past two weeks after Equatorial Guinea officials announced that the borders had been completely reopened. She said she is just returning from the first business trip to Cameroon in five months.

She said they went to the Cameroonian border town of Kiossi with nine trucks of wine, whiskies and vegetable oil on Friday last week with the hope of returning after two days. Instead, she said, they spent three additional days waiting for farm produce they bought from Cameroon to supply to their clients in the Equatorial Guinea border town of Ebebiyin and the country’s economic capital Bata. She said she is happy they are doing brisk business after a long period of no trading.

Rosaline, however, complained that the military checked them seven times between Bata and Ebebiyin, with all passengers asked to get out of their vehicles and pass through security checks. She said some people who did not have all of their identification papers were arrested.

Equatorial Guinea closed its border with Cameroon on December 24, following a failed coup attempt in the oil-rich Central African state.

On December 29, Equatorial Guinea’s leadership said its forces had arrested a number of people moving towards the Cameroon border in possession of rocket launchers, rifles and a stockpile of ammunition. Officials alleged the group had accumulated the weapons to destabilize the government of President Teodoro Obiang Nguema, who has ruled the Spanish-speaking country since 1979 and is the longest-serving leader in Africa. His critics have historically characterized his government as authoritarian and corrupt.

Cameroon said it arrested 40 heavily armed men on its side of the border and had strengthened security along the 290-kilometer boundary.

The security measure, traders said, crippled economic activities.

Handerson Quetong Kongeh, the highest-ranking government official in Ntem valley Cameroon border administrative unit, said the decision to reopen the border was taken following a series of meetings in which both countries agreed the threat to Obiang Nguema’s presidency had passed.

“Progressively serenity, peace, order and discipline reigns along the borders. So the Guinean authorities have judged for themselves that it was necessary to relax the exchanges and we think that if it continues in this way, the barriers will be completely uplifted,” said Kongeh.

Two months ago, the border was opened only two days every week and movement was under strict control of the Equatorial Guinea military. But today, movement is allowed daily, with impromptu and spontaneous checks by the country’s police force.

Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea are members of the six-member Economic Community of Central African States, CEMAC.

Obiang, who celebrated his 76th birthday on Tuesday, was elected to a fifth seven-year term in 2016 in polls the opposition said were rigged in his favor. Equatorial Guinea, a former colony of Spain, is a tiny oil rich state with 1.2 million people.

Source: VOA