April 23rd is the wedding anniversary of the marriage between the French Cameroun monarch Paul Biya and First Lady Chantal Biya.

The 23rd of April 2020 is a special day for the failed leader and his wife. It marks the 26th anniversary of their marriage. To be sure, it was on April 23rd, 1994 that the butcher of Yaoundé surprised Cameroonians with news of Chantal Pulchérie Vigouroux as first lady.

The young Chantal Pulchérie Vigouroux, then 23 years old, said yes to Mr. Paul Biya who at that time was 38 years older than her.

The head of the ruling CPDM crime syndicate was thus experiencing his second marriage after the controversial disappearance of his first wife, Jeanne Irène, who died on the 29^th of July 1992.

Chantal Biya, the young bride became the third First Lady of Cameroon after Germaine Ahidjo and Jeanne Irène. The couples who actually reside in Geneva, Switzerland have come a long way since then, giving birth to Junior Biya and Anastasie Brenda Eyanga Biya.

The 26th anniversary of their union comes in a context of containment imposed by the coronavirus pandemic- a health crisis that has already impacted some wasteful celebrations at Mvomeka’a.

By Rita Akana in Yaounde

Social media platform, Facebook is expanding its Coronavirus Information Centre to 17 more countries in sub-Saharan Africa, including Nigeria.

The others include Benin Republic; Burkina Faso; Cameroun; Cape Verde; Chad; Cote d’ Ivoire; Ethiopia and Gabon.The rest are Guinea; Kenya; Mali; Mauritania; Senegal; Seychelles; the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Togo.

The centres form part of the organisation’s efforts to help the global fight against COVID-19 by providing people with the latest news from trusted health authorities as well as resources and tips to stay healthy and support the society.

The Coronavirus (COVID-19) Information Centre is featured at the top of News Feed that provides a central place for people to keep informed about the epidemic.

It includes real-time updates from national health authorities and global organisations such as the World Health Organisation (WHO) as well as helpful articles, videos and posts about social distancing and containment of the virus.

Facebook explained yesterday that users could opt in to follow the centre to get notifications and see updates in their News Feed from official government health authorities.

According to the company’s Head of Public Policy, Africa, Kojo Boakye, “we have built the information centres, in collaboration with national health partners, to ensure that people can get access to information from trusted health sources.”

Source: The Guardian

Skin whitening is no longer a strictly female affair. With so many cosmetic products, men are getting into it too, reducing their melanin levels in order, they say, to “look better”. However, some fear that skin whitening might not only lead to medical problems, but also a loss of identity.

“I always wanted to have lighter skin. I find it cleaner and more presentable. I buy cosmetic products once in two months. It’s not to imitate women, it’s my personal choice”, Séverin, a travel agency manager from Douala, who started lightening his skin several years ago, said.

It is no longer surprising to see a man with black arms or legs and with a lightened face on the streets of the country’s large cities. Some are following fashion, while others want to look like their favourite celebrities. This is the case of Kévine. At 28, this aspiring singer admits to having started whitening his skin to look like his idols.

“I’m a fan of some Congolese celebrities who have lightened skin. The skin of many of those who I admire has become lighter over time. And since I identify with some, of them, I try to be like them by using skin depigmenting products”, he said.

The phenomenon is gaining ground. Beauty stores have noted their new clientele. Karest, a perfume shop manager from Douala, admits having been surprised by men contacting her via social networks to place orders.

“The first time a man contacted me [to buy these products], he told me that he was buying them for his wife. But I ended up realising that those products were for him. He said that next time he bought them, admitting the change and effectiveness. Every week, I get at least five orders from men”, she said.

Online stores have dozens of male customers. Non-lightening cosmetics seller Lucy Ngah confirms this. According to her, most men use products that she sells to smooth out the effects of skin whitening products.

“Some of my male clients who lighten their skin often buy natural soap to reduce the negative effects on their skin, such as greenish veins that appear, acne and redness”, she said.

In Cameroon, women who engage in skin lightening are often criticised, but men are criticised even more. Celebrities suspected of skin lightening are mocked and criticised on social networks. So far, very few male celebrities have dared to take the plunge. Sputnik talked to psychosociologist Maurice Somo to discuss the causes of this social phenomenon.

“From the psychological point of view, skin lightening is a rejection of one’s self-image and a desire to change oneself in accordance with the ideal created in one’s mind. The main motivation of both men and women stems from being admired or lack of admiration”, the specialist explained.

According to the psychosociologist, this behaviour results from the “prestige” of white-skinned people, as well as other people with a light skin tones, in Africa. In addition, some start lightening their skin to imitate others, or to demonstrate their socioeconomic success.

“In sub-Saharan Africa, fair skin is considered very close to the white ideal. By the way, mestizos are very popular. Fair skin is also proof of the economic status, which makes it possible to make the skin tone you want. Ultimately, the main motivation is the inferiority complex regarding to the natural skin colour”.

The negative impact of skin lightening is not only limited to psychological disorders, of which it is indicative. This social phenomenon also indicates serious health problems. In a country where they are struggling with fake medicines, which can still be found on the market, many cosmetic products enter the market without having previously obtained the necessary authorisations.

Cameroon regularly holds awareness campaigns to draw attention to the long-term effects of skin lightening, but apparently they are ineffective. Until minds change, people will continue lightening their skin…

Source: Sputniknews

African jazz has lost another of its best-known icons.

Emmanuel N’Djoké Dibango, popularly known as Manu Dibango, was, like Hugh Masekela who died last year, a global star of Afro-jazz and funk.

The saxophonist Dibango leaves a huge legacy spanning more than 60 years of musical production that will continue to echo in global music. His brand of Afro-jazz drew enormously from makossa, a genre of popular music invented in the 1950s in Cameroon’s major economic and cultural centre, Douala. The music blended Afro-Cuban rumba and local musical forms such as assiko and ambasse bey with other styles such as the Congolese soukous.

Tellingly, one of Dibango’s most successful albums is titled Soul Makossa (1972), with a title song that has been repeatedly sampled (though most often unacknowledged) by stars ranging from Michael Jackson to Rihanna, Kanye West and A Tribe Called Quest. This one track alone has been referenced by so many globally famed artists that it has infused the pop culture zeitgeist from dance floors to catwalks at various times over the decades.

Dibango’s work has resonated with so many of his peers and audience because of its eclectic and ecumenical character. The richness of its multiple sources of inspirations across a wide range of traditions was only enhanced by Dibango’s deft ability to combine and recompose them into new symphonies and rhythms.

In an interview in 2018 for Quincy Jones’ Qwest TV, he spoke about his life and musical journey, moving between jazz, rumba, funk, and reggae, crossing paths with Sidney Bechet, Quincy Jones, Herbie Hancock, Bob Marley and Mohamed Ali along the way.

In Africa, Dibango’s appeal as an artist stemmed not only from his great talent, but also his simple ability to work with artists across a wide range of generations and backgrounds to advance African music and social causes on the continent. He famously led a humanitarian effort to raise money for the fight against famine in Ethiopia through a number of initiatives, including a charity record, Tam-Tam for Ethiopia (Drum for Ethiopia) in 1985.

Resilience

Dibango was an avid collaborator in African musical production, working with contemporaries like Cameroon’s Francis Bebey, the DRC’s Joseph Kabasele, Nigeria’s Fela Kuti and South Africa’s Masekela. He also produced music with notable figures among the younger generation like the DRC’s Papa Wemba, Mali’s Salif Keita and Senegal’s Youssou N’dour.

Personally, I have been drawn to how Dibango’s brand of music speaks to the political aesthetics of everyday life in authoritarian settings, much like Kuti’s. This includes a resilient capacity to laugh and be joyful, a determined refusal to capitulate to violent oppression. This is what Kuti described as “suffering and smiling”.

Dibango’s music was not directly about political commentary in its lyrics, except for a few songs like Ah! Freak Sans Fric (Africa Without Money). The song bemoaned a continent impoverished despite its natural wealth. But in its poetry of everyday life on the continent, Dibango’s music addressed the aesthetic, ethical, political, economic, material and even the psychological states of Africa in the wake of the multiple crises that people have had to live through.

Political hostility

Born in 1933, Dibango left Cameroon in his teens to undertake high school studies in Paris. From this moment on, his life as a world journeyman and musical joy maker began. He aptly defined himself as a “Negropolitan”, an African of the world.

He never really returned to Cameroon. His occasional efforts to initiate cultural projects to promote music in the country were frequently frustrated by the political establishment.

As Francis Nyamnjoh and Jude Fokwang, two notable Cameroonian anthropologists, wrote in their seminal study of Cameroonian music and the repressive order in the country, Manu Dibango’s genre of makossa brought world fame to Cameroon’s popular music,but his efforts to win recognition for music as art and musicians as artists met with repeated frustrations by politicians.

There was therefore no love lost between the musician and the authorities in the country of his birth. No surprise, then, that there was no credible public statement from either the president of Cameroon, Paul Biya, or from the country’s Ministry of Culture in the days after the announcement of the death of this cultural icon.

No leading national authority had called for the public to honour Manu Dibango’s memory and to recognise his cultural contributions to uplifting the national spirit of joy and resilience in the face of everyday hardships that Cameroonians endure.

This stands in stark contrast to the global outpouring of grief and celebration of this cultural genius at the news of his demise. Dibango was an object of “Cameroonian and African pride”, as N’dour puts it.

Dibango gave his life’s work to the entire continent of Africa and the rest of the world, producing soul-reaching musical sensations with mind-boggling energy in his music. It is perhaps only just that it is the entire continent and the rest of the world that have been quick to sense his demise as our collective loss.

Dibango passed away in Paris after contracting COVID-19. He was 86 years old.

Culled from The Conversation

Congolese music star Aurlus Mabélé has died in hospital in France’s capital Paris, aged 67.

Posts on social media from friends and relatives say he died of coronavirus but this is not confirmed.

His fans called him the king of soukous – a high-tempo Congolese dance music popular across Africa.

His daughter, French singer Liza Monet, tweeted on Thursday that her father had died of coronavirus. “I am inconsolable” she wrote.

Fellow member of the supergroup Loketo, Mav Cacharel, also said on Facebook that he had died of coronavirus.

His manager, Jimmy Ouetenou, however, told BBC Afrique that it was not confirmed he died of coronavirus and that he had long-term health problems.

He was admitted to hospital on Thursday and died on the same day.

Mabélé, whose real name is Aurélien Miatsonama, was from Congo-Brazzaville and moved to France in the 1980s.

His hits include the track Embargo.

Mr Ouetenou said talks were already underway with the Congolese government for him to be buried in his home country.

In the meantime, his coffin will be placed in a burial vault until travel restrictions due to coronavirus are lifted, reports BBC Afrique’s Rose-Marie Bouboutou.

Mabélé took soukous around the world

Under his real name Aurélien Miatshonama, Mabélé founded Les Ndimbola Lokole with his friends in Brazzaville and recorded some of the hottest hits that moved the African continent in the 1970s, such as Embargo, Zebola and Waka Waka.

Later, he moved to Paris where he founded another band, Loketo, meaning “hips” in Lingala – the language of most soukous songs, which is widely spoken in western DR Congo and Congo-Brazzaville.

With more than 10 million albums sold over a 30-years of musical career, Aurlus Mabélé took soukous beyond Africa, around the world.

Source: BBC

 86 year old mega star Manu Dibango the author of “Soul Makossa” has tested positive for the Coronavirus. However, according to his manager, the artist is recovering and is not in any danger.

In France, where the Cameroonian superstar lives, the Coronavirus epidemic has already caused the death of 175 people.

French public health officials also did announce that the European nation now has 7730 confirmed cases of COVID-19.

By Chi Prudence Asong

Cameroon Prime Minister and Head of Government, Dion Ngute who is 65 years old has gotten married again and this time around to a lady from the Beti ruling clan. Cameroon Concord News has not been able to confirm if it is his fifth or sixth wife.

Polygamy forms part of his Oroko culture and is legal in Cameroon particularly when one is a senior government official with access to free money from the state. Ngute, a traditional chief from the Ndian constituency has a sea of children.

The premier reportedly formalized his relationship with one of his many fiancés by having a private traditional ceremony at the prime minister’s Lake Side residence in Yaoundé.

Bodo Nelly hails from the same tribe as Cameroon’s 87 year old leader, President Paul Biya and has numerous academic qualifications.

Bodo Nelly and Sister

We gathered that none of Mr. Dion Ngute’s other wives were on hand to help him marry Bodo Nelly.

Ngute’s private home in Yaoundé is currently getting a multi million upgrade that included four new double-storey thatch rondavels for his wives and children.

A source at the prime minister’s office hinted Cameroon Concord News that for official events, Dion Ngute will have to take one wife on a rotating basis to serve as the prime minister’s favorite lady.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai with files from Rita Akana in Yaounde

Valentine’s Day is celebrated throughout the world as a time for love and romance. This year, the Irish Republic witnessed an African touch into the normal desire to sell cards, flowers and chocolates as members of the Swords Centre, African Chaplaincy in the Archdiocese of Dublin made history by staging one of the most colorful St Valentine’s Day party ever.

Speaking during the event that was hosted at the Royal Plazza Chinese Restaurant, the chairman of the Catholic Men Organization Swords Centre, Sir Dr Denis Chima observed that historians have revealed much about St Valentine considered the patron saint of love and courting couples.

Sir Dr Denis Chima furthered that Valentine lived in the third century and was executed for his Christian beliefs and for performing illegal wedding ceremonies for soldiers that angered the authorities because married men did not have to go to war.

For her part, the president of the Catholic Women Organization Swords Centre, Lady Sabrina Ada pointed out that there should be more to love and marriage than just a practical affair for couples to pair off to increase their wealth and status.

Romantic love thrived among couples who attended the celebration which ended with a memorable exchange of gifts between the Catholic Men Organization and the Catholic Women Organization.

By Soter Agbaw-Ebai

Bikutsi, a dance celebrating sexuality and relationships, has taken centre stage across Cameroon in the past three decades.

The form arose in patriarchal communities where women were forbidden “to raise their voices in public”, Cameroonian ethnomusicologist Jean Maurice Noah wrote in his book on the subject.

Olivia Beyene, Bikutsi singer said: “That’s the soppy, frilly side, that’s what it is. It’s a bit seductive too, it’s part of bikutsi, especially on stage and it’s specific to Cameroon, it’s specific to the Cameroon bikutsi show.”

An artistic director says Bikutsi is hyper erotic, sensual and expresses what is basic. The, ground, the earth, the essence and at the end of the day, and at the end of all that we have done, there is what is essential to man, to human being, a rapprochement between man and woman.

Olivia adds: “It’s kind of popular. In Cameroon the population likes it, the population likes the perverse side, that’s what attracts attention. It’s just to attract attention and to play to the gallery. But if not, behind all this, there is always a message to convey.”

Bikutsi was born in pre-colonial times in the fang, bulu and beti ethnic areas of central and southern Cameroon, where women would gather together after a hard day’s work, without the men, to sing and dance of joys, sorrows and frustrations.

In this era of freedom, some women expressed, the pain of living next to a violent husband, while others shared the secrets of a successful marriage with the younger ones.

Source: France 24

There is an acute shortage of native doctors today in the country’s two English-speaking regions of the country due to the ongoing civil war that is tearing the country apart.

Most native doctors, who used to say they could even prevent thunder from striking, have all vanished ever since the civil war broke out.

Native doctors have been targeted by both government forces and Amba fighters for different reasons.

Government troops accuse them of preparing the amulets, known as Odeshi, which are supposedly protecting the fighters against the military’s superior fire power.

Amba boys, for their part, have been targeting these doctors whose ability to protect anybody against death has not been tested.

Some Amba fighters have even had to take the native doctors with them to their jungle for them to spend time on practices that can protect them against bullets.

But some of the native doctors have been killed by bullets during fierce confrontations between the warring factions. Strangely, they could not protect themselves.

Speaking to a native doctor from Kumba who has become an IDP in Douala in East Cameroon, he said that the fighting had ruined his business.

Asked why he had to leave Kumba due to the fighting, he said bullets did not need a visa to reach anybody, adding that it would be foolhardy for anyone to stand in the way of a roaring bullet.

He added that most of his work tools had been ruined due to the fighting; stressing that living in East Cameroon was like living in Hell as he could not speak French.

He said he was praying for the fighting to end, adding that he had embraced God and would be mixing western religion and his native medicine to produce better results.

He urged his colleagues who had fled to Nigeria to return home so that they could work together to bring about peace in the war-torn country.

He pointed out that poverty was stalking him like a stubborn shadow since he had lost his clients and constituting a new client base in East Cameroon was indeed challenging.

He stressed that there were many mentally-ill people today in the two English-speaking regions of the country because of the war, adding that if the war had stopped, he and his colleagues could have helped to stabilize those who have been mentally and psychologically scarred by the war.

He opined that more native doctors would be required, as many had died due to poverty and lost business opportunities.

He indicated that there was a lot of work for new native doctors, especially those who could stand the pressure and stress of dealing with mentally-ill persons.

By Joachim Arrey