George Esunge Fominyen is currently Coordinator of the Multi-Media Editorial Unit of the PANOS Institute West Africa (PIWA) in Dakar, Senegal.
PANOS Institute West Africa
6, Rue Calmette Dakar, Senegal
Email: esungeft@gmail.com
AFRICAphonie AFRICAphonie is a Pan African Association which operates on the premise that AFRICA can only be what AFRICANS and their friends want AFRICA to be.
Bakwerirama Spotlight on Bakweri Society and Culture. The Bakweri are an indigenous African nation.
Bate Besong Bate Besong, award-winning firebrand poet and playwright.
Bernard Fonlon Dr Bernard Fonlon was an extraordinary figure who left a large footprint in Cameroonian intellectual, social and political life.
Fonlon-Nichols Award Website of the Literary Award established to honor the memory of BERNARD FONLON, the great Cameroonian teacher, writer, poet, and philosopher, who passionately defended human rights in an often oppressive political atmosphere.
France Watcher Purpose of this advocacy site: To aggregate all available information about French terror, exploitation and manipulation of Africa
Jacob Nguni Virtuoso guitarist, writer and humorist. Former lead guitarist of Rocafil, led by Prince Nico Mbarga.
Martin Jumbam The refreshingly, unique, incisive and generally hilarous writings about the foibles of African society and politics by former Cameroon Life Magazine columnist Martin Jumbam.
Nowa Omoigui Professor of Medicine and interventional cardiologist, Nowa Omoigui is also one of the foremost experts and scholars on the history of the Nigerian Military and the Nigerian Civil War. This site contains many of his writings and comments on military subjects and history.
Postwatch Magazine A UMI (United Media Incorporated) publication. Specializing in well researched investigative reports, it focuses on the Cameroonian scene, particular issues of interest to the former British Southern Cameroons.
Simon Mol Cameroonian poet, writer, journalist and Human Rights activist living in Warsaw, Poland
Victor Mbarika ICT Weblog Victor Wacham Agwe Mbarika is one of Africa's foremost experts on Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). Dr. Mbarika's research interests are in the areas of information infrastructure diffusion in developing countries and multimedia learning.
Tunduzi A West African in Arusha at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda on the angst, contradictions and rewards of that process.
Dr Godfrey Tangwa (Gobata) Renaissance man, philosophy professor, actor and newspaper columnist, Godfrey Tangwa aka Rotcod Gobata touches a wide array of subjects. Always entertaining and eminently readable. Visit for frequent updates.
Francis Nyamnjoh Prolific writer, social and political commentator, he was a professor at University of Buea and University of Botswana. Currently he is Head of Publications and Dissemination at CODESRIA in Dakar, Senegal. His writings are socially relevant and engaging even to the non specialist.
Ilongo Sphere: Writer and Poet Novelist and poet Ilongo Fritz Ngalle, long concealed his artist's wings behind the firm exterior of a University administrator and guidance counsellor. No longer. Enjoy his unique poems and glimpses of upcoming novels and short stories.
Scribbles from the Den The award-winning blog of Dibussi Tande, Cameroon's leading blogger.
Enanga's POV Rosemary Ekosso, a Cameroonian novelist and blogger who lives and works in Cambodia.
GEF's Outlook Blog of George Esunge Fominyen, former CRTV journalist and currently Coordinator of the Multi-Media Editorial Unit of the PANOS Institute West Africa (PIWA) in Dakar, Senegal.
The Chia Report The incisive commentary of Chicago-based former CRTV journalist Chia Innocent
Voice Of The Oppressed Stephen Neba-Fuh is a political and social critic, human rights activist and poet who lives in Norway.
Bate Besong Bate Besong, award-winning firebrand poet and playwright.
Bakwerirama Spotlight on the Bakweri Society and Culture. The Bakweri are an indigenous African nation.
Fonlon-Nichols Award Website of the Literary Award established to honor the memory of BERNARD FONLON, the great Cameroonian teacher, writer, poet, and philosopher, who passionately defended human rights in an often oppressive political atmosphere.
Bernard Fonlon Dr Bernard Fonlon was an extraordinary figure who left a large footprint in Cameroonian intellectual, social and political life.
AFRICAphonie AFRICAphonie is a Pan African Association which operates on the premise that AFRICA can only be what AFRICANS and their friends want AFRICA to be.
Canute - Chronicles from the Heartland Professional translator, freelance writer and a regular contributor to THE POST newspaper. Lives in Douala, Cameroon
I gather Paul Ngamo Hamani, the last provisional administrator of the now dead Cameroon Airlines company, has been arrested on allegations of corruption.
Hmmmmm!!!!
Slowly and steadily, there is a full football team (complete with reserves) of former ministers and top managers of state corporations in Cameroon that is rising in the Yaounde and Douala Central prisons. It makes me wonder if there is a need to splash and celebrate when a friend, "brother from the village or region" is appointed to a top position. Who knows, it may be time for Donny Elwood to revisit his song "en haut". And Cameroon is not the only place where some mighty people are falling after supposedly milking dry the national cow!
By George Esunge Fominyen (originally published in Flame of Africa)
African civil society representatives have warned that the signing of Interim Economic Partnership Agreements (EPA) between the European Union and some African countries will undermine the fledgling processes of regional integration on the continent. They held this position at a seminar organised under the banner of the African Trade network (ATN) during the 2009 Social Forum in Belem
Forget Obama now. Look at the picture below. Take a really hard look at the picture below and tell me what you see…
Let me help out. What you see is not an abandoned latrine. That is a school: Government School Pomla near Figuil in the North Region of Cameroon. That building is the same classroom for all the different grades of the school. I saw the different blackboards (or what passes for that) per grade (class) at different wall angles. Now that’s the face of poverty on our side of the world.
A young Cameroonian child who was locked in a battle against a maglinant tumor has lost his fight despite efforts by a huge Cameroonian military living in the Diaspora.
As the days passed, the pictures on the CRTV website of four year old Fuh Bright became more and more disturbing. Thecondition of the boy's severe retinoblastoma or orbital tumor was worsening. The ailment finally overcame the kid's resistance.
He passed away on the morning of 8 January 2008.
What had become a national (if not international) effort to save his life is left behind him.
The President of the Republic yesterday signed two decrees, on Elections Cameroon, ELECAM. The first appoints the 12-member team of the body. The members are:
Mbomba Nkolo Cecile Njeuma nee Effange Dorothy Limunga Sadou Daoudou nee Lady Bawa Abdoulaye Babale Adamou Ali Ebanga Ewodo Justin Efandene Bekono Pierre Roger Ejake Mbonda Thomas Fonkam Samuel Azu’u Mana Nschwangele Jules Massi Gams Dieudonne Mbonda Eli
It's customary for some people to make presents to loved ones at the end of the year. President Paul Biya certainly had this in mind for his people (certainly his pals) when he finally appointed the members of the election management (supervisory) board - that is Elections Cameroon. Or did he? African home-training requires that if a father provides a gift one should not look too deeply at the matter. But can that hold in this case?
The year 2008 started with young people dying in the February riots. Many just wanted things to improve in Cameroon. The year is ending with a young person dying to register for an entrance exam into the national police. Elvis Wirba just wanted to beat the registration deadline and have an opportunity to obtain employment.
Rather unusual occurrences have been replete in Cameroon in 2008. The most recent is this reported bomb scare on an Air France flight on the night of Monday 22 to Tuesday 23 at the Douala International Airport.
It is the end of the year and many persons are trying to make some fast money to celebrate properly. Like it or not, one means of getting rich quickly is setting up a scam through the Internet. Of course, 4-1-9 and fey-men do not only wait for this moment but you surely receive more intriguing emails at this time of the year... A Cameroonian blogger - Kamer Stories - weaved an interesting post entitled "see me trouble" based on a letter sent to the author's email box by one of these scammers. She told off the scammer: "My man think again, I'm not that gullible. Better luck next time ya". Evidently she thought the author was definitely Nigerian.
True. Our Nigerian neighbours have made themselves infamous through racketeering via the Internet and other tools... BUT, it could have just been another Cameroonian. We are not so clean either! Our fey-mania has grown (or crossed?) from fake money-doubling deals to selling dogs and monkeys on the net and now we are offering abandoned babies for adoption. There is even a view that this is new capitalist model...
Is the ongoing hostage crisis off the coast of Cameroon in the Bakassi Peninsula taking a nasty twist? Some rather confusing information has been circulating about a (supposed) failed attempt to rescue the hostages.
Given that I do not have first hand details and don't want to delve into suppositions, here's a round up of the conflicting details that abound in the media and particularly on the web.
I often remember one of my lecturers at the department of journalism and mass communication of the University of Buea saying, if ever we heard that CNN's Christiane Amanpour (Chief International Correspondent) was in Cameroon with a crew of reporters, we should consider that the country had collapsed. The class was about major news organisations and conflict/war reporting.
It was a humorous bit of learning but the message stuck.
That is why I suspect there is big trouble in the offing when news organisations like France 24 and BBC World Service start having top headlines on Cameroon. Especially if it is not about a plane crash but about "rebels" taking persons hostage and threatening to kill them if the government does not react within a three days.
In my last post, I was ranting about the follies of African Airlines. I thought I had seen too much. Lies! The following ordeal experienced by passengers on transit in the busiest airport in Cameroon (my country) and narrated by Alexis Grant blogging at Inkslinging in Africa beats everything I have encountered.
Douala airport officials are known for demanding bribes from foreigners trying to leave the country.But two South African men I met in the airport while waiting for my flight told me a story that trumps all the rest.
Today 5th October is World Teachers' Day. In Cameroon, it is a day of celebration. Usually there is a special loin for teachers, there are parades all around the country, teachers' unions make statements, government officials make promises and the media buzzes with stories about teachers'. I am currently in Bamako the capital of Mali. This morning I walked the streets to see if the atmosphere would be same. Not quite - is the least I could say. Consequently, I spent the rest of the time reminiscing the struggles in the daily lives of teachers (in Cameroon) that I witnessed in my years of covering education news. Some of them could be seen in the comment I wrote for the radio news magazine - Cameroon Calling on the occasion of World Teachers' Day in 2003. The theme that year was: "Teachers and the Fight Against Poverty". I wonder whether the situation of teachers in Cameroon has improved since then...
First October is a complicated date in Cameroon. In recent times, it has been replete with stories about troop deployment to the English-speaking parts of Cameroon and the arrest of activists of the Southern Cameroons National Council (SCNC) and members of other anglophone nationalism organisations. The period leading to this date, until last year, usually saw Anglophone elite -mainly ministers and people linked with government - travelling to their places of origin to discourage their kin and kith from gulping the seccessionist theories of the anglophone movements. I had a strange experience of this October 1 fever back in 2000.
How time flies and things stay the same in Cameroon. We are living another year when the date of the Cup of Cameroon is kept close to the President of the Republic's chest. Don't we have the right to know when this big event should take place?
The MTN Elite 1 championship ended over two months ago. The finalists of the Cup of Cameroon (Aigle Dschang and cotonsport Garoua) are known since July. The date of the final remains mystery.The Ministry of Sports is allegedly stifling plans by the country's football governing body FECAFOOT to start the new season on 27 September 2008 until the Cup final is held in the presence of the President of the Republic.
Following is an article entitled "The President's Time..."from the column "Geof's Game Plan" published by the Herald newspaper in November 2007 in the In the middle of a similar mess. It's a shame to see that one simply has to change the dates and the names of the teams and the story will be same one year after...
By **Fai Fominyen Ngu Edward and George Esunge Fominyen
On 31 August 2008, traditional healers in Cameroon celebrated the 6th African Traditional Medicine Day. The theme for the year was “the role of traditional health practitioners in primary health care”. Prime Minister Ephraim Inoni represented Cameroon’s President at the official ceremony which was attended by Minsiters of Health in Africa and the experts from the World Health Organisation (WHO). Panel discussions were organized on traditional medicine as a primary approach to health care and Africa’s traditional medicine’s pharmaceutical manufacturing plan. Did they discuss the lack of collaboration between traditional healers and “modern” medical practitioners?
By **Fai Fominyen Ngu Edward and George Esunge Fominyen
The nascent 21st century has seen poverty across the world. It has also witnessed the re-emergence of some diseases (e.g. tuberculosis) and the difficulty to find permanent solutions to health care challenges like malaria, river blindness and HIV/AIDS. By defining priority health care programmes in areas like HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and immunisation, Cameroon’s government seems determined to provide good health for its citizens. However, for such priority health programmes to be effective in such an under-developed and poor country, it is essential that there is adequate collaboration between traditional healers, biomedical practitioners and health authorities.
Regular buyers of daily newspapers in Cameroon noticed on 1 July 2008 that they had to spend an extra 100 FCFA at the newsstands for their favourite paper. Instead of 300 FCFA a copy of Mutations, Messager or Le Jour now sells at 400 FCFA. This decision by newspaper publishers is supposed to help them measure up to the costs of production. In fact, since the 2007 finance law that cut the little existing exonerations on imports for material for media production, newspaper owners had consistently threatened to increase the price of their product. The current morose world economic situation and the steep rise in the cost of production surely got them to match words with action.
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