Headline News

14, February 2023

Journalist Martinez Zogo Affair: Jean Pierre Amougou Belinga going, going, gone! ⁰

Jean Pierre Amougou Belinga the main suspect in the murder of whistleblower journalist Martinez Zogo, his hit man lieutenant colonel Justin Danwe and twenty other persons who have been in custody for more than a week at the Secretariat of State for Defense were on Tuesday transported in two security vehicles like common criminals and presented before judges at the Yaoundé Military Court located at the Ngoa Ekelle district in the nation’s capital.

Amougou Belinga and his gang were ferried in very old National Gendarmerie Toyota pickups in a move described by many political commentators in Yaoundé as the end of the preliminary investigation into the journalist Martinez Zogo affair.

Cameroon Concord News Group understands that the custody in SED was extended three times in compliance with the law. This week, it became mandatory to remove the suspects from SED.

Commenting on the happenings in Yaoundé, Cameroon Concord News Nelly Epupa opined that it is now up to the Military Court to issue new detention warrants for Amougou Belinga and his killer squad or to extend their stay in SED pending further investigation.

By Rita Akana with additional editing from Nelly Epupa

14, February 2023

As Biya celebrates his 90th birthday, is he heading towards a centenary? ⁰

After celebrating 40 years at the helm of Cameroon, the patriarch Paul Biya is celebrating his 90th birthday with only a few discordant voices.

Celebrations follow on from one another within the Cameroonian presidency’s entourage.

On 6 November, several thousand of Paul Biya’s supporters celebrated his 40 years as head of the country. Biya is Africa’s second longest reigning monarch, just behind the 43 years that Equatorial Guinea’s head of state has spent on the throne. However, the clan is hosting a more private affair this 13 February to celebrate the 90th birthday of the self-proclaimed “Lion Man”.

Apart from crowned heads who do not have to go back to the drawing board 100 times, nonagenarians are rarely found at the top of leadership institutions, like Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, who resigned at the age of 93, and Tunisia’s Béji Caïd Essebi, who died in office at 92. Biya is currently the oldest sitting head of state.

Is Biya’s birthday “private”? The event is making headlines in Cameroon, newspapers and social media echo the lavish festivities in Mvomeka’a, the patriarch’s birthplace, some 250km from Yaounde. After the festivities, it will be interesting to note which privileged person has been invited around the cake to be included in the photo. Beyond blood ties, the political family is having a field day. A member of the Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (CPDM), Justine Diffo salutes the birthday of the man who mentored her with his ‘institutional aura’ and ‘spiritual halo’.

Even beyond the labelled “biyaists”, each one has his own zeal, more or less constrained by the weight of the presidential institution. On 7 February, the University of Yaounde 1’s rector sent a letter to the heads of departments inviting them to “make arrangements in advance (…) to mobilise students” to the ceremony scheduled for this Monday at the Yaounde Sports Palace.

In Cameroon, where life expectancy at birth is around 59 years, old age is an indisputable reason for respect. Although Biya’s birthday should be the occasion for a 24-hour political truce, the impressive number of years he has lived inevitably gives rise to debates on the succession.

Will the 64-year-old Finance Minister Louis-Paul Motaze win the jackpot when the time comes, or will Biya’s fading from the political scene trigger a clan war? As usual, the current head of state wants to weigh all possible options. Last July, during a press conference with France’s President Emmanuel Macron, “Popaul” reminded everyone that his term ends in 2025, adding: “When this mandate expires, you will be informed of whether I have decided to stay or go to the village.” This seems to suggest that he has not ruled out formally running for president in 2025.

Culled from The Africa Report by Nelly Epupa (Cameroon Intelligence Report)

13, February 2023

Global Think Thank Donates to IDPs in Mamfe ⁰

The Global Think Tank for Africa has once more put smiles on the faces of pupils in Mamfe following the donation of didactic materials to pupils who have been displaced due to the socio-political crisis in the country’s twoEnglish-speaking regions.

On Friday, February 10, 2023, the organization through the inspectorate of basic education in Mamfe donated didactic materials to some 50 internally displaced children drawn from 10 schools in mamfe.

This is the 4th batch of pupils to benefit from the largesse of the Global Think Tank for Africa, a Canada-based not-for-profit organization.

So far, some 250 IDPs have benefited from this humanitarian assistance and the project is on going as planned and it will be extended to villages close to Mamfe town where the fighting has stopped.

On behalf of the children, the Inspector of Basic Education for Mamfe, Mr. Herman Taku Arreyngang, extended his great appreciation and called on other external elites of Manyu Division to follow the example of the Global Think Tank.

Speaking over the phone from Abidjan, Ivory Coast, the Executive Director of the Global Think Tank for Africa, Dr. Joachim Arrey, said that education was the foundational key to a child’s success and that it was important to help Africa’s future leaders to have that foundation so that they can acquire the skills and knowledge which will enable them to play their future leadership role.

“There is no better way of helping our children than by granting them the knowledge and skills they will need in future, Dr. Arrey said.

“No society will be ready for the future if its future leaders are not educated. While education alone will not grant the children the knowledge and leadership skills they will need tomorrow, it will however open their eyes and will grand them the foundation they need to live in a society which is increasingly a knowledge-based society,” he stressed.

He thanked the inspector of basic education and his team members who have been working tirelessly to help the children cope with the stress of leaving their natural environment.

“The teachers in Mamfe are really doing a good job. It is not easy to work in a war zone where the most vulnerable of our society are being threatened for going to school. I don’t know how to thank the authorities of basic education in Mamfe for their selfless services to our desperate children. May the Lord grant them more energy so that they can continue to do the great job they are doing,” Dr. Arrey said.

Asked about the program, Dr. Arrey said his organization would continue to support the IDPs for as long as the crisis continues.

By Thomas Ashu Atem

13, February 2023

Buea: Bishop Bibi backs Pope Francis on ‘economic colonialism’ in Africa ⁰

The exploitation of Africa has remained a major talking point across the continent, especially after Pope Francis roundly condemned what he called “economic colonialism” in Africa.

On his long-awaited trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan, the pope repeatedly decried the transformation of ill treatment from political domination to economic victimization.

“Political exploitation (of the Congo and more generally of Africa) gave way to an economic colonialism that was equally enslaving,” Pope Francis told an audience of Congolese politicians and other dignitaries. “As a result,” he continued, “this country, massively plundered, has not benefited adequately from its immense resources.”

“It is a tragedy that these lands, and more generally the whole African continent, continue to endure various forms of exploitation,” Francis said. “The poison of greed has smeared its diamonds with blood,” he said—a reference to what has become known as Congo’s blood diamonds.

“Hands off the Democratic Republic of the Congo! Hands off Africa! Stop choking Africa: it is not a mine to be stripped or a terrain to be plundered,” Francis warned.

That message has continued to make headlines.

The Bishop of the Cameroonian diocese of Buea, Michael Bibi, whose diocese is located in the far south of Cameroon’s majority anglophone western regions, told Crux the Pope’s “economic colonialism” criticism was a reference to the idea of neo-colonialism.

In a conversation with Crux, Bibi described the political liberty African nations obtained from their erstwhile colonial overlords as a “flag and anthem” independence, “while the purse strings remained in the hands of the former colonial masters.”

Bibi said he sees a marked difference in the levels of such neo-colonial arrangements between former British and French colonies. “France,” he said, “more than any other former colonial power, continues to have an iron grip in the economic and political affairs of her former colonies.”

“Many wonder whether we should even use the adjective ‘former’,” Bibi said, adding that the rate at which young Africans are dying in the Mediterranean Sea “as they risk their lives in search of greener pastures in Europe,” dramatically illustrates the relevance of the pope’s message.

Bibi said that the degree and extent of interference in the economic affairs of African states differs between the former colonial powers.

“Some of the biggest economies in Sub-Saharan Africa are former colonies of Britain (Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, Ghana) and these countries are also the leading democracies on the Continent,” he said. “When you compare their lot with that of the former French (and Belgian) colonies, you begin to see that France, more than any other former colonial power, continues to have an iron grip in the economic and political affairs of her former colonies.”

“Frequently,” Bibi went on to say, “these states have turned to China for help, but they are often so weak that they cannot strike a fair bargain with the Chinese Government. When loans are given, the construction must be done by a Chinese company.”

The resulting picture is one in which the major players fostering this economic colonization “are the former colonial powers in Europe, especially France, the Chinese, and the Americans as well.”

He said that France uses “a complicated network of financial economic policies and political control through the threat of regime change and their military presence to maintain the status quo,” while China exercises financial and commercial influence through loans, and “the Americans use their influence over the United Nations Security Council and the IMF and similar International Organization to have their way over many issues.”

Bibi said there is a cultural element to the involvement of Western powers, especially, in African affairs. “Another major instrument used by the players, especially the former colonial masters, is the formation of Associations ostensibly to celebrate the same culture such as the Francophonie and the Commonwealth of Nations,” he said.

Colonization, in Bibi’s view, continues to affect the continent’s economic life and impact the impact on the lives of ordinary people.

“The economic life of the African continent will not change,” Bibi said, “if foreigners continue to make all the decisions.” He went on to say: “If Africans must be the first beneficiary of the economic decisions of the continent, then they themselves must make the decisions.

Bibi said that the mass migration of young Africans to Europe and America of young Africans, “who should stay back and contribute towards the development of the continent,” is one consequence of the current state of affairs.

African leaders are not blameless, in Bibi’s view, many of whom for many years “have played this role of accomplices sometimes willingly and sometimes unwillingly,” but always with the same consequences.

“It is often said that the oppressor would not be so strong if he did not have accomplices among the oppressed,” Bibi said, adding that he believes African leaders should “look less on what they stand to lose” in standing up to those who would exploit their nations and peoples.

“Economic colonization is a dynamic phenomenon,” he said, noting the recent economic summit to which US President Joe Biden had invited them, and a similar invitation from China, and the knowledge that Russia has another similar meeting in the works.

Bibi said African leaders “must use this opportunity to seize control over their economic affairs because it may never be given to them on a platter of gold. Freedom, whether economic or political, must be seized.”

“Too often,” Bibi said, “they only seek to protect their small individual interests at the detriment of that of their countries.”

Bibi spoke also of the “will to be free” that both leaders and citizens in Africa “must have.” Leaders, he said, “must have the courage to enact policies that will benefit their people and their countries first. They must have the courage to bear the consequences of doing so.”

African citizens, for their part, “must start giving up short term solutions like struggling by all means to travel out of the country.”

“The people who will make Africa great,” Bibi said, “are not those who travel out, but those who remain to work: to open up businesses, whether farms or factories.” Bibi noted that some of those who leave think that they will come back and do that, but in the main, they gradually become “absorbed by the material abundance in the West and forget about their lofty ambitions.”

“Africans,” said the bishop of Buea, “must love their continent enough to want to stay back and contribute to its development.”

Source: Crux

13, February 2023

Biya’s 90th birthday marked by cocktail of woes ⁰

Edith Kah Walla was at the front of a crowd of students that welcomed Cameroon’s new president Paul Biya on a tour of the United States in 1984, full of hope that the young leader would bring stability and democracy, and end corruption.

Four decades on, Biya, now the world’s oldest leader, turns 90 on Monday. When he cuts a large cake, as he usually does on his birthday, Kah Walla, who was one of Biya’s challengers in the 2011 presidential election, will not be celebrating.

Her support for Biya evaporated over the years as economic progress stalled, dissenting voices were silenced, and the oil-producing country of 27 million people became split by a separatist uprising that has killed thousands, and Boko Haram attacks in the north.

At 90, Biya should spend his days playing with his grandchildren, she said.

“We live in a violent, brutal dictatorship. Over the past 40 years it has gotten more and more violent and brutal,” said Kah Walla, now a civil society activist. “These 40 years are a huge setback for Cameroon.”

HANDPICKED IN 1982

Biya has repeatedly defended his record in the past and says that the government has made strides to return peace to the minority English-speaking regions where separatists are trying to form their own state.

He touts his Vision 2035 plan as a blueprint to boost development over the next 12 years.

Biya was born in Mvomeka’a, a village in the southern equatorial forest, in 1933, the year prohibition ended in the United States and Adolf Hitler became Chancellor in Germany.

After studying in Paris, he returned to Cameroon in 1962 as a top civil servant and quickly rose to become the Prime Minister in 1975. He was hand-picked as successor after the country’s first post-independence president Ahmadou Ahidjdo decided to resign suddenly in November 1982.

In Africa, only President Teodoro Obiang of Equatorial Guinea has ruled longer.

Millions still support Biya, although international observers have raised doubts about the fairness of elections that he routinely wins with ease. He spends long stretches in comfortable European hotels with his wife Chantal, frustrating many at home who believe the country’s crises require closer attention.

In 2020, he was not seen in public for weeks, prompting speculation that he had died of COVID-19.

Biya has ruled with openness and tolerance, said former minister Elvis Ngolle Ngolle. Old age, he said, has its advantages.

“The more you add up the age, the wiser you become – the more experienced, tolerant, logical you become,” Ngolle said.

AGE OLD WOES

Popular journalist and whistleblower Paul Chouta disagrees. Chouta, an outspoken critic of Biya, has been repeatedly beaten and tortured in recent years. He lives in fear: just the sound of his floorboards creaking sends him into a panic.

On March 9 last year, unknown assailants bundled him into the back of a car and drove him to an isolated spot near Yaounde airport. They beat him with stones and batons and left him for dead, he said.

Chouta is one of several reporters who have been beaten or killed. Two journalists were killed in the last month, prompting condemnation from the United Nations.

“If he (Biya) loves Cameroonians, let him fix things and go. The woes are deep,” Chouta told Reuters.

It is not only well-known reporters who are wary.

Kouam Yves, a motorcycle taxi driver, last week stood at a newspaper stand discussing the news headlines with colleagues. He struggles to make a living and is critical of Biya and what he describes as rampant corruption. But he paused as he spoke, worried about who might be listening.

“I can’t celebrate the Head of State’s birthday. For more than 20 years, I have not seen anything which we have executed in this country that went well like in other countries,” he said.

Source: Reuters

13, February 2023

Ernest Obama in SED: How Amougou Belinga surrounds himself with an elite team of snipers ⁰

The mystery of who killed Brian Fombor, a young man stabbed to death by unknown assailants on June 2020 in the Omnisport district in Yaoundé while in the company of his girlfriend, Ivana Essomba suspected of being the mistress of Jean Pierre Amougou Belinga took a new twist this week when investigators announced they have summoned Ernest Obama, Jean Pierre Amougou Belinga’s right-hand man at the time of the murder.

Cameroon Intelligence Report understands that investigators are trying to untangle the skein to know the role that Ernest Obama would have played in this tragic case.

Ivana Essomba seen here on photo attached to this report became on December 2022, the wife of Bruno Bidjang a young journalist Amougou Belinga recently appointed as General Manager of his privately-owned television channel, Vision 4.

Senior security officials in Yaoundé have hinted Cameroon Intelligence Report that Brian Fombor’s alleged killers were part of a Vision 4 group led by Ernest Obama.

Ernest Obama who now moonlights as spokesperson for the Cameroon Football Federation is wanted in SED after a tip-off following the arrest of Belinga Amougou the owner of the L’Anecdote media group and Raymond Thomas Etoundi Nsoe, a retired colonel and former commander of the presidential guard.

The Francophone mafia boss and business tycoon including his top aide Bruno Bidjang are still being questioned. But Cameroon Intelligence Report has some intelligence that would suggest they have knowledge, perhaps some culpability on the murder of Brian Fombor.

Our Yaoundé city reporter said there was a high probability that Ernest Obama, an anti Anglophone extremist was the masked man who teleguided the murder of Brian Fombor.

Amougou Belinga, Paul Atanga Nji and Laurent Esso have been in the business of killing for decades and it is evidently clear that this time around state security apparatus appear to have done a poor job of protecting this CPDM gang.

The Amougou Belinga-Martinez Zogo affair is extremely sensitive, with news of more arrests emerging.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

12, February 2023

UB Official Says Leaders World University a Blessing to Kumba ⁰

On an inspection visit to the campus of Leaders World University (LWU) in Kumba this February 8, 2023, Professor Chief Nol Alembong, Deputy Vice Chancellor at the University of Buea (UB) its potential mentor, praised the initiative and said the nascent varsity comes as a blessing to Kumba.

“[Leaders World University] is most welcome as Kumba has been without a university,” said Alembong to reporters at the end of the visit.

He was on an infrastructure inspection mission on behalf of the Ministry of Higher Education, the authorizing ministry.

Alembong was accompanied by senior officials of UB from faculties and schools with competence over academic programmes offered by LWU. The UB inspection team was received by senior officials of LWU, including its Provost, Dr Theophilus Mukete, who presented the programmes LWU is offering: Medical and Biomedical Sciences, Computer Engineering, Agriculture and Food Sciences and Business. Finance and Management for a start.

UB’s Alembong (right) speaking to LWU’s Mukete (left, in suit)

Mukete said LWU will engage in food transformation to respond to the food needs of Cameroonians abroad. He later gave the visiting UB officials a tour of LWU infrastructure including a demonstration ward for the medical and biomedical programmes, structures for medical and agriculture laboratories, land for an agriculture demonstration farm and the computer laboratory.

The inspection team said they will submit their report to the minister of state and subsequently come again for an academic inspection.

LWU is the initiative of US-based Dr Ralph Ayuk, its President, CEO, Chancellor and Chairman of its Board of Governors.

Its topnotch staff include Professor Cornelius Lambi (former UB VC) as its Pro-Chancellor, Professor Gilbert Eyabi as Vice Chancellor and Mrs Susan Etchu as Deputy VC in charge of Teaching, Professional Development and Student Life.

By Franklin Sone Bayen

12, February 2023

Yaoundé restricts Equatorial Guinea border activity over fever deaths ⁰

Cameroon has restricted movement along its border with Equatorial Guinea following “several unexplained deaths” from an unknown illness that causes hemorrhagic fever, Minister of Public Health Malachie Manaouda said on Friday.

The restrictions were imposed in view of “the high risk of importation of this disease and in order to detect and respond to any cases at an early stage”, he said in a statement.

Investigations are under way and epidemiological surveillance has been strengthened with the support of experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“At the current stage … there is no reason to be worried,” Malachie said.

Equatorial Guinea said in a statement on Wednesday that it had registered an “unusual epidemiological situation” over the past weeks in its Nsok Nsomo district, Kie-Ntem province, that caused nine deaths in two adjacent communities over a short space of time.

A crisis commission set up by the health ministry reported a tenth death on Thursday.

The symptoms observed were fever, weakness, vomiting blood and diarrhoea. A team was sent to isolate contact cases and take samples that were sent to a regional WHO lab for testing. A woman and her two children were taken to hospital, where they recovered after receiving mild treatment, the statement added.

A WHO spokesperson said the agency was supporting the testing of samples to identify what has caused the deaths and should get results within the coming days.

Cameroon said approximately 20 deaths had been recorded on Wednesday in villages in Equatorial Guinea’s Kie-Ntem province, which borders Cameroon’s Olamze district.

The symptoms of the “non-identified illness” were nose bleeds, fever, joint pain and other ailments that caused death within a few hours, the head of health for the district, Ngu Fankam Roland, said in a statement.

Source: Al Jazeera

12, February 2023

Southern Cameroons Crisis: Five CDC employees killed in Mondoni ⁰

Five employees of Cameroon’s main public agro-industrial group have died after their truck was attacked in the English-speaking west of the country plagued by separatist unrest, the company said Saturday.

“Unidentified armed men attacked a truck carrying workers” on Friday in Mondoni, about 30 kilometres (20 miles) north-west of the economic capital Douala, Cameroon Development Corporation (CDC) managing director Franklin Ngoni Njie said in a statement.

Five employees, including a woman, died and a further 44 were injured, one seriously, according to CDC, one of Cameroon’s largest employers specialising in rubber, banana and palm oil processing.

No motives were given for the ambush which state broadcaster CRTV reported was “suspected of being separatist fighters”.

Cameroon’s primarily English-speaking Northwest and Southwest regions have been gripped by conflict since separatists declared independence in 2017 after decades of grievances over perceived discrimination by the francophone majority.

President Paul Biya, who has ruled the central African nation with an iron fist for 40 years, has resisted calls for wider autonomy and responded with a crackdown.

The conflict in the former French colony has claimed more than 6,000 lives and forced more than one million people to flee their homes, according to the International Crisis Group (ICG) think tank.

Civilians have suffered abuses committed by both sides, NGOs and the United Nations say.

Eighty-percent of Cameroon’s population of 24 million is French-speaking.

The presence of the large Anglophone minority is a legacy of the colonial era.

Source: AFP

11, February 2023

Canada Initiative Offers Opportunity for Southern Cameroons Peace Process ⁰

Pre-talks between Cameroon’s government and Anglophone separatists, facilitated by Canada, have opened the door to a long-overdue peace process, but Yaoundé has baulked. The government should embrace these talks, while domestic and external actors should put their full weight behind the initiative.

Having cooperated with efforts to bring Cameroon’s government and Anglophone separatists into formal peace talks, Yaoundé should now commit to participate in them. On 20 January, Canada’s foreign minister, Mélanie Joly, announced that the two sides had agreed to start peace negotiations. The announcement raised hopes that there might be a way out of the grinding seven-year conflict in mostly Francophone Cameroon’s two Anglophone regions, the North West and South West. For months, Ottawa had led secret “pre-talks” that seemingly helped the two sides overcome key hurdles to initiating a formal dialogue. Shortly after Joly’s comments, Anglophone leaders issued a joint statement affirming their commitment to participate in negotiations with Canada’s facilitation. But three days later, Cameroon’s government brushed aside Canada’s efforts, denying that it had asked a “foreign party” to broker a resolution to the conflict. The denial revealed deep divisions among top Cameroonian officials and came as a surprise, given Yaoundé’s previous engagement in the Canada-led pre-talks. While this last-minute rejection after months of careful work was a blow to peace efforts, the government can and should correct its course and get the talks on track.

Yaoundé’s brusque dismissal of Canada’s initiative leaves talks in limbo and risks perpetuating, or even escalating, the conflict. Separatist militias immediately responded to the government’s statement with a fresh campaign of violence in the North West and South West regions, erecting roadblocks and firing rocket-propelled grenades at army convoys. Their leaders started discussing the possibility of bringing the militias under a single command or organising joint operations against security forces under the banner of a united Southern Cameroon military front. In Yaoundé, meanwhile, the defence ministry launched a drive to recruit nearly 9,500 new soldiers. Its special forces stepped up patrols in the Anglophone regions and attacked separatist positions.

After seven years of hostilities in the Anglophone regions, the prospect that the parties might miss an opportunity to put hostilities behind them is jarring. The trouble in the North West and South West regions began in October 2016, when lawyers and teachers led protests calling for a two-state federation to preserve the Anglophone legal and educational systems, which they felt were being encroached upon by the Francophone-led central government. The military’s heavy-handed response to peaceful calls for greater autonomy prompted Anglophones to form militias, leading to armed conflict the following year. Since 2017, the fighting has claimed over 6,000 lives in the Anglophone regions and displaced nearly 800,000 people. Making up 60 per cent of the displaced population, women and children face differentiated risks, including gender-based violence and child trafficking. Recent estimates state that the conflict has disrupted the education of over 700,000 children.

Yaoundé has thus far been reluctant to consider a political settlement with the separatists.

Yaoundé has thus far been reluctant to consider a political settlement with the separatists. Previous peace initiatives have foundered. In January 2017, the government suspended negotiations with Anglophone civil society leaders in the city of Bamenda, in the North West region, before arresting them, triggering widespread Anglophone calls for the two regions’ secession. In 2019, President Paul Biya ignored a Swiss offer to facilitate talks, instead organising what purported to be a national conference, but without inviting the most influential separatist leaders. In April 2020, Cameroonian officials began talks with imprisoned separatist leaders, only to suddenly call them off after a second encounter in July of that year. In October 2022, while again rejecting Swiss efforts to push forward with their initiative, the government started low-level consultations with Anglophone leaders in the diaspora. This time around, the separatists’ discretion and clear commitment to finding a resolution persuaded some in Yaoundé to participate at senior levels in pre-talks, with Ottawa’s facilitation, leading observers to believe that the government was ready to take the next step and fully engage in formal talks.

It should. Committing to the Canada-facilitated peace initiative would allow President Biya to change the perception that he has little interest in a political solution, prevent yet another escalation of the conflict and contribute to stabilising the country ahead of elections that are likely to be fraught. The presidential, legislative and local polls due in 2025 are already fuelling familiar political and ethnic tensions that tend to surface during election cycles. Politicians from rival power blocs are positioning themselves to succeed Biya, who has served as president for 40 years and will turn 90 later in February. Cameroon has not seen a single democratic transfer of power since gaining its independence in 1960 and has a history of contested polls, leaving the 2025 elections freighted with uncertainty. Among other reasons for concern, separatist militias forced many Anglophones to boycott votes in 2018 and 2020.

If formal negotiations proceed, they will benefit from good work done in the pre-talk phase. Those pre-talks set as a priority the establishment of confidence-building measures, such as a cessation of hostilities, protection of the right to education and the release of prisoners. Reaching agreement on some or all of these in the next phase of dialogue could ease the suffering of millions of Cameroonians. Building on these achievements, the talks could then turn to issues that will be at the core of any settlement, such as designing a consensual political reconfiguration of the Anglophone regions; reforming the security sector; disarming the rebels; establishing transitional justice mechanisms to address abuses committed over the course of the conflict; and launching economic reconstruction.

Already the Canada-facilitated initiative has yielded clear benefits.

Already the Canada-facilitated initiative has yielded clear benefits. Anglophone faith leaders (Catholics, Presbyterians, Baptists, Muslims and Anglicans), as well as civil society and women’s groups, are more supportive of the prospective Canada talks than of previous initiatives. More critically, the facilitation has also persuaded rival separatist movements to form an orderly bloc. Drawing on earlier efforts by Swiss facilitators, Canada managed to bring together four major separatist groups, with a fifth announcing its commitment to the peace process after Joly’s statement. In the past, separatist groups appeared too divided to reach consensus among themselves. This time around, their unity offers the Cameroonian government a clear counterpart in negotiations.

Key outside interlocutors – including France, Germany, Switzerland, the UK, the U.S. and the Vatican, and multilateral organisations such as the African Union, European Union and UN – should urge Cameroon not to miss this opportunity. They should underscore the benefits that a commitment to formal talks would bring Yaoundé on the security, humanitarian and diplomatic fronts. Should the impasse be overcome, Canada should convene an inclusive discussion among interested Cameroonian parties that would allow them to agree on a negotiation framework that addresses the two sides’ concerns about the agenda for future talks.

To set the talks up for success, Ottawa should seek a public commitment from the Cameroonian government to stick with the process and clarify misconceptions among some Cameroonian parties that Canada seeks a bigger role than to facilitate or is driving toward a particular outcome. For their part, Cameroon’s government and separatist movements should work closely with faith leaders, women’s groups, civil society organisations and politicians to build domestic support for the talks, as suggested by Yaoundé in its 23 January statement. Outside parties should monitor progress closely and provide persistent support, and France should use its close relationship with Cameroon to press for positive momentum.

Progress toward an enduring settlement has not come easily. The tumultuous relationship between Cameroon’s Anglophones and the central government is marked by years of frustration, mistrust and, since 2017, gruesome violence. Unpacking and addressing the two sides’ differences will take time, effort and good faith. The Canada-facilitated process represents a crucial chance to begin this long-overdue work. All those with an interest in the peaceful resolution of Cameroon’s festering Anglophone conflict should do what they can to ensure this opportunity is not squandered.

Culled from International Crisis Group