The first Russia-Africa summit this fall will hopefully increase Russian business presence on the continent, the Cameroonian ambassador to Russia, Mahamat Paba Sale, said on Thursday. “We count on this enterprise because, thanks to this event, Russian enterprises that are already present on our continent will further deepen their presence. They will be more interested in the African continent,” he said at a reception at the Russian Foreign Ministry dedicated to Africa Day.

The summit will be held in the Russian resort of Sochi in October. The diplomat said he expected it to be widely covered in Russian media, which will bring African countries back into spotlight.

Russia and Cameroon share a 55-year history of diplomatic ties. As part of their cooperation program, Russia gave free university education to 35 Cameroonians in 2017-2018.

“Students in other countries cannot receive such serious training in such favorable conditions. Therefore, we would like to thank Russia in particular for this,” the ambassador said.

Russia and Cameroon will hold a high-level inter-parliamentary meeting in 2019. The diplomat said there would be time to discuss a wide range of issues at this year’s events.

Source: Urdupoint

Vietnamese and Cameroonian authorities have begun talks to resolve the managerial crisis at Nexttel, the brand name of Viettel Cameroon, ITweb reported. It is a joint venture by Viettel Global Investment Joint Stock Company, a subsidiary of Vietnamese military telecoms company Viettel, and local shareholder Bestcam. The crisis stems from disagreements in the management of the company by the Vietnamese and Cameroonian stakeholders.

Vietnamese shareholders have denied allegations by their Cameroonian counterparts that they had flouted Cameroonian business laws, including the OHADA law. El Hadji Baba Danpullo, chair at Bestcam, has accused the general manager of Viettel Cameroon “of running Nexttel like his private business”. He said the Vietnamese were recruiting their counterparts at the expense of unemployed Cameroonians.

The dispute also concerns issues such as signatures for financial transactions, engagement of foreign partners, purchase of telecoms hardware, and transfers of technology, amongst other things. The Nexttel crisis has resulted in several litigations in local courts between conflicting parties and has pitted Viettel Global against Bestcam. They owned 70 percent and 30 percent stakes respectively at the onset of Viettel Cameroon in 2014.

The Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Vietnam, special envoy of the Prime Minister of Vietnam, Nguyen Quoc Cuong, has held talks with the Prime Minister of Cameroon, Joseph Dion Ngute in Yaounde. The main focus of their audience lasting over 80 minutes was to seek a lasting solution to the Nexttel crisis, involving parties of both countries.

Source: Telecompaper

China’s state media says the country does not want to engage in a trade war with the United States as it will have no winner, but Beijing is not afraid to do so.

The remarks were made in a commentary which is due to be published on Monday by the ruling Communist Party’s People’s Daily, but whose text was carried by the official Xinhua news agency the night before.

It also said China’s door to talks with the US about their trade dispute is always open, but China will not yield on important issues of principle and will never brush aside its priorities.

In similar comments on Friday, Chinese Vice-Premier Liu He had noted that cooperation is the only right choice for China and the United States, but China will not compromise on major issues of principle.

Cooperation is the only right choice for the two sides, but it has to be based on principles, said the vice premier in a group interview with Chinese media after the conclusion of the 11th round of high-level economic and trade consultations between the two sides in Washington.

The comments come after China and the US failed to reach a deal to end their months-long trade dispute.

People with knowledge of the talks between the two sides said on Friday that US President Donald Trump has reportedly given China a one-month ultimatum to seal a trade deal or face tariffs on all its exports to the United States.

China-US negotiations broke down last week after Chinese representatives reportedly backtracked on promises to address issues like theft of intellectual property, after which the US announced an increase of Chinese tariffs from 10 percent to 25 percent on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports. 

Trump has urged China to either sign the deal now or it will be forced to sign a far worse agreement in future. However, China says it won’t make concessions on issues of principle.

China strongly opposes US tariff hikes, which are harmful not only to China and the United States, but to the world at large, and China will have to take necessary countermeasures, the Chinese vice premier said Friday.

‘US will suffer‘

One of Trump’s top economic advisers has acknowledged the president was wrong to suggest that China would pay tariffs on its exports to the US.

Larry Kudlow, who heads the National Economic Council, accepted it was US businesses that paid the import tax from Chinese goods.

He told Fox News that he believed “both sides will suffer” from the escalating trade dispute.

Trump’s view, however, is at odds with his top economic advisor’s. On Sunday, Trump weighed in on the state of trade negotiations with China, saying the US was “right where we want to be” — namely, on the cusp of taking in massive tariffs from China.

On Twitter, he said of China, “they LOVE ripping off America!” He also refloated a plan from Friday to redirect money generated by tariffs to buy up American agricultural products and “distribute the food to starving people” around the world — a suggestion that has already drawn skepticism.

Source: Presstv

Jean Tchoffo, Secretary General of the Cameroonian economy ministry, presided on May 8 in Yaoundé over the presentation of a report on the trade impact of the bilateral Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between Cameroon and the United Kingdom.

According to the official, the validation of this study is the first step before the actual start of negotiations, which may have to be concluded by 2021. These will include a review of the legal text of the Cameroon-European Union (EU) Partnership, with a view to its possible transposition into a bilateral Cameroon-United Kingdom post-Brexit EPA.

The British government informed Cameroon of its ambition since February 12, 2018. And after two informal meetings, President Biya finally authorized the opening of formal negotiations on 29 August 2018. However, Paul Biya conditioned the start of these negotiations on the completion of a study that will provide an overview and outlook of trade, economic and financial relations between Cameroon and the United Kingdom. It is also a question of assessing the possible impacts of this agreement on Cameroon’s economy and finances.

The Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a party to the EU-Cameroon EPA. However, the British people decided on 27 March 2017, in a referendum, to leave the Union. As a result, the United Kingdom should in principle lose the benefit of trade agreements between the EU and its partners around the world. In order not to disrupt trade with its partners after leaving the Union, the United Kingdom is engaged in negotiations of new trade agreements and treaties with all its major trading partners.

Source: Business in Cameroon

Cameroon’s economic growth is expected to rise to 4.2 percent this year, compared to 4 percent in 2018, thanks to increased oil production, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said in a statement on Friday.

The chief of the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) on Wednesday urged Cameroon to ratify the African Continental Free trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement.

The agreement is the tool that is going to help Cameroon overcome “the storms” of the global economic environment, ECA Executive Secretary Vera Songwe said at the opening of the National AfCFTA Information and Sensitization Forum co-organized by ECA and the Government of Cameroon in partnership with the European Union in the capital, Yaounde.

“We are really hoping that Cameroon ratifies this AfCFTA because I think there is no doubt that our country and many others on the continent needs additional investment. With the AfCFTA you get investments that you need to be able to revamp your economy and more importantly create jobs,” said Songwe, who is also a Cameroonian.

Cameroon was among the first African countries to sign the agreement last year but it’s still laying the groundwork for the entry into force of the AfCFTA.

“If we are able to ratify this AfCFTA, Cameroon will start having value addition. We will be able to process our cotton and sell to Ethiopia. I think the big story of the continental free trade agreement is that value addition, which essentially means that value and quality of the goods and the resources that are put into making the goods, stay on the continent,” she added.

Twenty-two African nations have already ratified the agreement, the minimum threshold expected to approve the deal among the 55 members of the African Union.

Source: Xinhuanet

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