Category Archives: Cameroon
Sahel Region : The hungry season starts
An aerial view of the inland Niger delta and surrounding farmlands, Mali. Image via Wikipedia
A warning
Back in the days when I lived in The Gambia we used to call this time of year ‘hungry season’. There was little available to eat in the villages and people were reliant on stored groundnuts and millet. The September harvest seems a looong time away. Today there is a warning from the World Food Programme that the situation this year is bad, really bad. Migration from villages to towns has already started as people seek to feed their families.
The following press release gives you an overview.
WFP WARNS OF GROWING CHALLENGES AS Â DROUGHT-STRICKEN SAHEL ENTERS HUNGER SEASON
DAKAR – The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) today warned of growing needs in the Eastern Sahel region of West Africa, where some 10 million people are facing a challenging season of hunger before the next harvest is due in September.
“The Sahel is one of the most destitute regions in the world and the spectre of hunger is pushing increasing numbers of people from the countryside and into cities where they are searching for food to feed their families,†said Thomas Yanga, WFP Regional Director for West Africa. “People have lost crops, livestock, and the ability to cope on their own, and the levels of malnutrition among women and children have already risen to very high levels.â€
Yanga said despite efforts by governments and humanitarian agencies and non-governmental organizations, the situation in Sahel regions of eastern Mali, northern Cameroon, Chad and Niger is critical and more contributions are urgently needed to ease the suffering of the 3.6 million drought victims WFP is planning to assist.
NIGER: Â A government-led food security survey this month has confirmed the critical situation, finding nearly half of the population to be food insecure — 3.3 million people highly food insecure and 3.8 million moderately food insecure. So far, the World Food Programme is planning to provide assistance to save lives and boost the nutrition of some 2.3 million people in the worst-affected areas. To do so, WFP needs US$125 million to scale up feeding from May to December 2010.
CHAD: Â 2 million people require assistance due to poor harvests and unusually high rates of acute malnutrition are reported. WFP has launched an emergency operation to assist more than 700,000 people hit by drought in western and central regions.
CAMEROON:  the 2009 cereal harvest in the North was 10 percent below the five-year average and 19 percent below the previous year’s production. Flooded valleys that are usually watering points for cattle dried up earlier than usual. WFP has responded with an emergency operation to feed 339,000 vulnerable people from June 2010 to 30 April 2011.
MALI: Â late and erratic rains in the Northeast during the last two crop seasons led to poor agro-pastoral production, resulting in more than 20 municipalities being declared highly food insecure. An estimated 258,000 people most at risk are currently receiving emergency food assistance from the government, WFP and humanitarian partners.
# Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â # Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â #WFP is the world’s largest humanitarian agency fighting hunger worldwide. Each year, on average, WFP feeds more than 90 million people in more than 70 countries.
WFP now provides RSS feeds to help journalists keep up with the latest press releases, videos and photos as they are published on WFP.org. For more details see:Â http://www.wfp.org/rss
Suggested Books (US)
- Sahel: The End of the Road (Series in Contemporary Photography
- Eaters of the Dry Season: Circular Labor Migration in the West African Sahel
Africa in Pictures : Cameroon
Way back in the 1980′s I went to Africa for the first time. I started off in Cameroon and after a brief hop from Douala to Yaounde stayed in the area for a couple of months. My first impression then was the militarisation of the town. Armed guards seemed everywhere. Photography was frowned upon back then and I was glad to find a number of photos on Flickr under creative commons from people who have been able to take photos.
Map of Cameroon (CIA World Factbook)
Cameroon is a country in West Africa between Equatorial Guinea and Nigeria.
The former French Cameroon and part of British Cameroon merged in 1961 to form the present country. Cameroon has generally enjoyed stability, which has permitted the development of agriculture, roads, and railways, as well as a petroleum industry. Despite a slow movement toward democratic reform, political power remains firmly in the hands of President Paul BIYA. (CIA World Factbook)
Yaounde, Cameroon
[Photo Credit: zzilch (Creative Commons license)]
Yaounde, Cameroon
[Photo credit: friel (Creative Commons license)]
Sandga Market in Douala, Cameroon. Photo by Johanna Paillet, Summer 2009 Advocacy Project Peace Fellow. Location: Douala, Cameroon. Partner: AMA Women Project, Vital Voices. The Sandaga Market is the largest public produce market in Central Africa. While women represent over 800 of the 1,300 traders in Sandaga, they are heavily underrepresented and marginalized in the marketplace. They are manipulated, abused and threatened daily, and the AMA Women Project, with UCOMAS, is working tirelessly to improve women's conditions in Sandaga.
[Photo Credit: The Advocacy Project (Creative Commons license)]
Bamenda Cameroon
[Photo Credit: zzilch (Creative Commons license)]
Cameroon landscape
[Photo Credit: zzilch (Creative Commons license)]
Suggested Books (US)
- Cameroon 2nd (Bradt Travel Guide)
- Culture and Customs of Cameroon (Culture and Customs of Africa)
- Cameroon and Gabon Travel Map
Cameroon : The impact of roads on poverty reduction
Yaounde, Cameroon
[Photo credit: zzilch]
Abstract
Many investments in infrastructure are built on the belief that they will ineluctably lead to poverty reduction and income generation. This has entailed massive aid-financed projects in roads in developing countries. However, the lack of robust evaluations and a comprehensive theoretical framework could raise questions about current strategies in Sub-Saharan Africa. Using the second Cameroonian national household survey (Enquete Camerounaise Aupres des Menages II, 2001) and the Cameroon case study, this paper demonstrates that investing uniformly in tarred roads in Africa is likely to have a much lower impact on poverty than expected. Isolation from a tarred road is found to have no direct impact on consumption expenditures in Cameroon. The only impact is an indirect one in the access to labor activities. This paper reasserts the fact that access to roads is only one factor contributing to poverty reduction (and not necessarily the most important in many cases). Considering that increase in non-farming activities is the main driver for poverty reduction in rural Africa, the results contribute to the idea that emphasis on road investments should be given to locations where non-farming activities could be developed, which does mean that the last mile in rural areas probably should not be a road.
How to get a copy
Download a PDF of  the impact of roads on poverty reduction from World Bank
Suggested Books (US)
- Sustaining Reforms for Inclusive Growth in Cameroon: A Development Policy Review
- Culture and Customs of Cameroon (Culture and Customs of Africa)
New Technology Helps Young African Journalists Make Their Mark
I love writing about training initiatives! It is so exciting to see people changing their own lives.
Since 2006 the Voices of Africa Media Foundation has been training young journalists in Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Tanzania and South Africa.
The foundation uses professional training materials and mobile phone technology to train reporters to create objective news in the form of written and video reports.
- Mobile phone camera rivals quality of professional camera
- Barriers between interviewer and subject lowered by using mobile phone instead of camera
- Cultural and language barriers to the media lowered by working with local youth>
- Talented, unemployed youth targeted
- News stories uploaded to training platform via internet or mobile phone (GPRS)
- Building a marketplace for assignments for our reporters through partnerships
- Providing visibility of local news published by talented reporters
- Creating a pool of professional independent community reporters
These young reporters are now making short video reports (on their mobiles) with the guidance of local professionals, interactive learning and online coaching. The best get their work published on publishing platforms such as Africa News.
Olivier Nyirubugara puts their success down to the rise of mobile wireless technology.
Thanks to tremendous progress achieved by the General Packet Radio System (GPRS), the wireless communication protocol, it is now possible for Africans to send articles and images (still and moving) about events taking place in their countries without using a computer and without having traditional internet connection.
You can find out more about Voices of Africa HERE.
You can see a variety of mobile reports on the Voices of Africa website including:
Kenya: Sack vegetables prove efficient
Kenya: How museum guard turned tree planter
Cameroon: The Study Groups and Literacy Programme
Launched in 2005 by the National Association of Cameroonian Language Committees (ANACLAC), the Study Groups and Literacy Programme works to boost the role of national languages in literacy training in Cameroon. The project involves the establishment of study groups who combine reading and writing sessions with discussions about topics relevant to that group such as agriculture, HIV/AIDS, and gender equality. The groups also develop or adapt their own materials to suit their local language and content requirements.
More information
Contact Dr. Etienne Sadembouo nacalco@camnet.cm OR Blasius A. Chiatoh bchiatoh@yahoo.com
Cameroon Book : Betrayal of Too Trusting a People
History of the Southern Cameroons
Betrayal of Too Trusting a People: The UN, the UK and the Trust Territory of the Southern Cameroons, Carlson Anyangwe, 2009, ISBN 9789956558810, 260 pages, 216 x 140 mm, Langaa RPCIG, Cameroon, Paperback
There is a growing body of literature on what was originally envisioned as a free political association of the French and British Cameroons and its dramatic effects on the ‘British Cameroons’ community. Anyangwe’s new book is an attempt to write the history of the Southern Cameroons from a legal perspective. This authoritative work describes in great detail the story of La Republique du Cameroun’s alleged annexation and colonization of the Southern Cameroons following the achievement of its independence, while highlighting the seeming complicity of the United Nations and the British Trusteeship Authority. In the process, Anyangwe unravels a number of myths created by the main actors to justify this injustice and, in the end, makes useful suggestions to reverse the situation and to restore statehood to the Southern Cameroons. The book is rich in archival research and informed by a global perspective. It convincingly shows the uniqueness of the Southern Cameroons case.
How to get a copy
From the African Books Collective:
http://www.africanbookscollective.com/books/betrayal-of-too-trusting-a-people
The Changing Landscape of Education in Africa
Strengthening education systems in Africa
One of the few books I’ve bought in the last year is The Changing Landscape of Education in Africa: Quality, Equality and Democracy edited by David Johnson. It has 8 chapters which
argue that quality, equity and democratic accountability are inseparable objectives in the quest to strengthen and improve educational systems in the developing world.
In addition to a general chapter about education in Sub-Saharan Africa, the countries dealt with in the volume are Nigeria, Gambia, Kenya, South Africa (2 chapters), Cameroon and Namibia.
How to get a copy
The book is also available from Symposium Books
Souls Forgotten by Francis Nyamnjoh
A bitter indictment of the political and social situation of many African countries
Souls Forgotten is a new book by Francis B. Nyamnjoh, Langaa Publishers. Bamenda, Cameroon. 2008
You can read about the book here
A review of the book is on Pambazuka by Alica Macdonald.
The prolific Cameroonian writer and academic Francis Nyamnjoh continues to delight his readers with the publication of his latest novel Souls Forgotten. Souls Forgotten is a bitter indictment of the political and social situation of many African countries. The novel is set in the fictional land of ‘Mimboland’, a linguistically divided nation presided over by none other than President Longstay and suffering from endemic corruption, failing public services and wild nepotism whose similarities with the author’s native Cameroon are hard to miss.
About the Author
Visit Francis B Nyamnjoh‘s website
How to get a copy
Solar Power in Cameroon
An under-utilised resource
Solar power in Africa is still under-utilised. It is expensive for individuals to set up and NGOs have been slow in encouraging its use. For many Africans the transistion from kerosene lamps to solar power makes such a huge difference to their lives that I find it difficult to understand why the implementation of solar projects has been so slow .
The following story on IPS gives a personal slant to that transition:
For Merline Momo Azeufac, a teacher at Balefock village in western Cameroon, the days of fearing nightfall while correcting pupils’ work are over. She is no longer hostage to the poor light provided by kerosene lamps.
Solar power projects are gaining momentum in Cameroon. See here for some of them.
Here’s a page about solar cooking in Cameroon. I thought the cooker was quite stylish in comparison to others I have seen.
Suggested Books
Internet Access in Africa 2009
- Image by CharlesFred via Flickr
Is Africa being left behind?
How is your internet connection today?
As high-speed web access takes off across Europe, Asia and the US is Africa being left behind? That was the question being asked a few years ago by ICT journalists like Eric M. K Osiakwan in Ghana.
The main problem has been the high cost of internet bandwidth reception. Most African countries are dependent on satellites for long-haul bandwidth access rather than fibro-optic cable and use low performance dial-up lines. Now there is a demand growing that the G8 leaders should support high-speed web access in Africa particularly for Universities. At the same time some philanthropists and entrepreneurs are finding ways to bring internet access to remote communities . In Tunisia (a country not known for internet freedom) high tech buses provide web access to remote villages, and in Rwanda an American millionaire is developing one of the world’s most modern networks to give web access to all Rwandans.
Finally, make sure you read a heart-warming story from Cameroon, ‘A Man, A Plan, A Cyber Café’ which is highlighted by Cameroonian writer Dibussi Tande on his Scribbles from the Den blog ( a great read BTW!).
Suggested Books (US)
- The 2009-2014 Outlook for Internet Advertising Services in Africa
- Africa’s Infrastructure: A Time for Transformation (Africa Development Forum)