Southern Cameroons digital businesses still relying on La Republique!! Diaspora won’t talk ⁰

Young businessmen and women from British Southern Cameroons have established a center at Bonako, a village some few kilometers from French Cameroun from where they are able to have access to internet services from La Republique du Cameroun.

Not to see their businesses crumble, the Southern Cameroons entrepreneurs particularly start-ups have decided to create an “oasis” of the Internet following cuts ordered by the 84 year old dictator, President Paul Biya.

Bonako has become the largest internet hub in the world for Southern Cameroonians. “Several start-ups have rented rooms in the village of Bonako, furnished it with chairs and tables and installed electricity using generators. Dozens with start-ups now operate here, each using their own phone as an internet modem.’

It is tedious and the remoteness of the village is not easy to manage. However, the so-called Anglophone CPDM political elites are satisfied with the internet shutdown and have claimed that La Republique du Cameroun will eventually stifle the Southern Cameroons revolution.

Southern Cameroons have been cut off from the world after months of violent protest. The Francophone dominated government decided to deprive the Anglophones of any internet connection-a radical policy that has endangered the highly developed digital ecosystem in the Southern Cameroons.

The absence of the internet does not only affect exchanges among British Southern Cameroonians, but it has also weighed heavily on the economy and the fact that the Southern Cameroons Diaspora is maintaining a kind of deliberate silence on the matter is disturbing.

By Chi Prudence Asong