Domestic Politics

The political situation in Cameroon was relatively stable. The ruling party, the ‘Rassemblement Démocratique du Peuple Camerounais’ (RDPC) consolidated its grip on power in the face of a divided and ineffective opposition. On 21 July, the Cameroonian president, Paul Biya, was re-elected president of the RDPC at the party's third extraordinary congress in Yaoundé. In his acceptance speech, he sought to mobilise party militants ahead of legislative and municipal elections scheduled to take place in 2007. He called for tolerance and dialogue to promote debate, and promised to open the party to new ideas, with greater participation by youth, women and intellectuals. Despite such promises, many party members felt disappointed. They had hoped for an overhaul of the party's central committee and political bureau, the members of which were last elected in 1996.

Bitter internal disputes within the main opposition party, the Social Democratic Front (SDF), exploded in mid-February when the party split into two rival factions, one led by the long-serving SDF ‘chairman’, John Fru Ndi, and the other led by Professor Clement Ngwasiri, an SDF parliamentarian who was one of the party's founding fathers and chairman of its National Advisory Council (NAC). There were various reasons for Ngwasiri's dissent, but one major factor was undoubtedly the growing unease among a number of the party's executive with Fru Ndi's style of leadership: they accused him of running party affairs in a dictatorial fashion and of instituting a personality cult. On 26 May, the two rival factions held simultaneous party conventions, albeit in different locations: the Fru Ndi faction in Bamenda and the Ngwasiri faction in Yaoundé. The Bamenda convention re-elected John Fru Ndi as leader, conferring on him the power to appoint an 18-member shadow cabinet and the party's secretary-general. The Yaoundé convention elected as SDF leader Bernard Achu Muna, a renowned lawyer and erstwhile close ally of Fru Ndi, who pledged to end Fru Ndi's personality cult. The Yaoundé convention also repealed the controversial article 8.2 of the SDF constitution, under which many of Fru Ndi's opponents had been expelled from the party. Subsequently, the two factions became embroiled in a battle for recognition as the ‘authentic’ SDF. Many SDF militants feared that this factional rivalry would split the SDF vote in the 2007 polls and increase the influence of the ruling RDPC in the regions from which the SDF used to draw its core support.

A few days after the Yaoundé convention, 23 members of the SDF faction loyal to Fru Ndi were arrested. They were part of a larger group of SDF ‘vanguards’ who had stormed the party's headquarters in Yaoundé in an attempt to prevent the Ngwasiri faction from holding its own convention. During the clashes, one leading member of the Ngwasiri faction, Grégoire Diboulé, was brutally murdered and 30 others were injured, five of them seriously. Among those arrested for the murder was a retired army colonel, James Chi Ngafor, who had recently been appointed by Fru Ndi as SDF coordinator for the Centre province. Events took another dramatic turn on 22 August when prosecutors summoned Fru Ndi to answer questions about the murder. Afterwards, Fru Ndi constantly denied that he had been formally charged with murder or that he had ordered the attack.

Some other opposition parties also organised congresses to prepare for the 2007 polls. The ‘Union Démocratique du Cameroun’ (UDC) of Adamu Ndam Njoya held its congress from 31 November to 2 December, while the ‘Union des Populations du Cameroun’ (UPC) faction of Augustin Frédéric Kodock held its congress on 30–31 December. As was the case with the RDPC and the SDF, their leaders were re-elected too.

A cabinet reshuffle carried out by President Biya on 22 September did not lead to major changes, although some minor ministers were sacked and several others exchanged portfolios. The cabinet reshuffle tended to strengthen the position of the prime minister, Ephraim Inoni, since some of those sacked were known to have had previous confrontations with him. Those who were looking forward to a more dynamic, younger team of ministers were disappointed, because the president brought back a number of former ministers. The president was also careful to preserve an ethnic balance, a characteristic of all his cabinets since his coming to power in 1982. The opposition parties dismissed the changes as cosmetic and criticised the president for maintaining the size of the cabinet at more than 60, a number they considered too costly for the country.

On 22 February, the government announced its intention to amend the electoral laws to enhance transparency in the electoral process. The announcement fuelled speculation that an independent electoral commission would be created in line with the demands of the Commonwealth as well as the opposition and certain civil-society organisations. The government's decision in September to ban the initiatives by civil-society groups, such as the Roman Catholic church, to debate the issue publicly dampened hopes that such a body was being seriously considered. In response, the opposition parties threatened at the beginning of November to boycott the forthcoming legislative elections unless an independent electoral commission was established. Prime Minister Inoni then started inviting opposition groups and civil-society groups in late November to discuss the structure of the new institution. Subsequently, on 14 December, he summoned parliament to an extraordinary session to examine a bill concerning the introduction of an independent electoral body called ‘Elections Cameroon’ (ELECAM). SDF and UDC parliamentarians immediately boycotted its examination for two main reasons. First, the bill largely empowered the president of the republic to nominate ELECAM members and second, article 42 of the bill stipulated that ELECAM would be introduced only progressively. In the end, however, government agreed that ELECAM would come into operation within 18 months of approval of the bill.

On 4 January, four days after pledging to renew the fight against corruption in his new year speech, President Biya sacked two local magistrates for corruption and abuse of trust – this being the first time that the president had publicly sacked members of the judiciary for graft. Between 11 and 24 February, the former heads of three state-owned companies and several of their subordinates, as well as a number of senior government officials, including the energy and water minister, Alphonse Siyam Siewe, were arrested and detained on charges of corruption. The arrests were made with considerable fanfare, supporting claims that the president was mounting a show to convince donors of the seriousness of his intentions and to improve Cameroon's chances of reaching completion-point status under the IMF-World Bank's enhanced HIPC initiative. Some newspapers tried to fuel the so-called ‘opération épervier’ (Operation Sparrow-hawk) by publishing lists of the wealthiest Cameroonians. Several members of the political and administrative elite featured on the lists, including the finance minister, Polycarpe Abah Abah, who successfully filed lawsuits against the newspapers for defamation.

Several new, often somewhat overlapping institutions and laws were launched to curb corruption. On 25 January, there was the inauguration of the ‘Agence Nationale d'Investigation Financière’ (ANIF), which was charged with investigating financial crimes, such as misappropriation of public funds, counterfeiting, illegal capital flight and money laundering. A few months later, on 11 March, President Biya established a new anti-corruption commission, the ‘Commission Nationale Anti-Corruption’ (CONAC) to replace the ‘Observatoire National de Lutte contre la Corruption’ (created in 2000 and reporting to the prime minister), which was to report to him directly. CONAC would be responsible for the monitoring and evaluation of the government's anti-corruption and good governance programme. In addition, it was mandated to investigate cases of corruption. On 22 March, the National Assembly adopted a law that made it compulsory for public officials to declare their assets and property in accordance with article 6.6 of the 1996 constitution. Apparently, in a deliberate effort to maintain the confidentiality of this information and allow officials to avoid public scrutiny, the law stated that the declaration would be made to an assets and property declaration commission, whose members were to be appointed by the president of the republic. Despite all these anti-corruption measures, the Corruption Perceptions Index of Transparency International (TI) showed no improvement in the country's level of corruption. While the 2005 TI report ranked Cameroon 137th in a survey of 159 countries, the 2006 TI report ranked Cameroon 138th in a survey of 163 countries.

Activists of the Anglophone secessionist movement, the Southern Cameroons National Council (SCNC), continued to be subjected to various forms of repression. On 27 March, for instance, some 30 activists of the militant Southern Cameroons Youth League (SCYL) were arrested by gendarmes in the towns of Mutengene and Muea in the South West province and detained. They were charged with recruiting members into the so-called Southern Cameroons Defence Force. On 27 April, 65 SCNC activists were arrested and detained in Oku in the North West province for holding an illegal meeting in a private home. They were later released, but two weeks later rearrested and detained in Bamenda. Notwithstanding an administrative ban on SCNC activities and heavy troop deployments during the celebration of the Southern Cameroons independence day on 1 October, SCNC activists were once again able to hoist flags in several Anglophone towns.

A temporary setback in the improvement in the country's human rights situation occurred on 30 June when parliament adopted a bill postponing the implementation of the new Criminal Procedure Code from 1 August 2006 to 1 January 2007. This code, which constituted an attempt to harmonise the Anglophone and Francophone judicial systems, was thought to stop arbitrary arrests and detentions, to better protect human rights during criminal proceedings, to curb judicial delays and ensure the rapid execution of judgments.

One of the most significant events on the media scene was a government attempt to curb what it described as media excesses. In March, the government introduced a bill in the National Assembly to tighten press laws. The bill sought to increase the powers of government officials to shut down newspapers for up to six months, but was quickly abandoned when the government realised that it could damage Cameroon's democratic credentials. This attempt to clamp down on press freedom occurred after three relatively unknown local newspapers, ‘Le Méteo’, ‘L'Anecdote’ and ‘Nouvelles d'Afrique’ had published lists of presumed homosexuals among the national political, economic, religious and cultural elite. Many of those named by the newspapers came out publicly to strongly deny the allegations of homosexuality, which in Cameroon is a crime punishable by a jail term. Others, such as the parliamentary affairs minister, Grégoire Owona, went to court to clear their names, eventually leading to the conviction of the publishers. Another significant event on the media scene was what was generally seen as a revolt among the staff of the state-owned Cameroon Radio-Television Corporation (CRTV). On 24 August, 68 CRTV employees wrote an open letter to the newly appointed general manager, Ahmadou Vamoulké, accusing him of mismanagement and neglecting their interests.

There were again a number of confrontations between students and university and government authorities. The most violent incident started at the University of Buea (UB) on 27 November. UB students protested against what they considered to be grave fraud. Their vice-chancellor, Cornelius Mbifung Lambi, had previously signed a list of candidates who were to participate in the oral entrance examination of the newly created UB medical school, all of them Anglophone. However, shortly afterwards the minister of higher education emerged with another list with 26 names added, all of them Francophone. This sparked off a riot on the campus that lasted for two weeks, during which security forces shot to death two students and severely wounded several others. Besides calling for the immediate implementation of the original list of candidates, in a memorandum the students denounced the hike in fees for postgraduate courses, the payment of CFAfr 1,000 for the provision of transcripts and the poor quality of food in the UB restaurant. They also demanded the immediate publication of the findings of the presidential commission into the killing of two UB students during the April-May 2005 university strike.

Foreign Affairs

Relations between Cameroon and Nigeria could improve following a landmark agreement between the heads of state of both countries on the modalities of the Nigerian withdrawal from the Bakassi peninsula in accordance with the October 2002 ICJ judgment and with due respect for the well-being of the Nigerian inhabitants. The agreement was concluded on 12 June at a summit meeting on the Greentree estate in Manhasset, New York under the auspices of the UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan, and attended by representatives of four witness states (the US, UK, France and Germany). The so-called Greentree agreement, which was widely commended as a shining example of peaceful conflict resolution in Africa, contained the following main provisions. First, Nigeria would withdraw its estimated 3,000 troops from the territory within 60 days and formally cede the territory to Cameroon. Second, the islands of Atabong and Akwabana, which were populated almost exclusively by Nigerians, would be administered by Nigeria for two years. Third, Nigerian inhabitants of Bakassi would have two years to decide whether to remain on the peninsula as Nigerian citizens, take Cameroonian nationality or be relocated to Nigeria. Fourth, a special transitional provision granting Nigerians free access to the Bakassi region would be in force for five years. Fifth, a follow-up commission composed of 10 representatives – two each from Cameroon, Nigeria and the UN plus one from each of the four witness states – would be set up to implement the agreement.

In the weeks leading up to the handover, local Nigerian chiefs and their subjects organised into the so-called Bakassi Movement for Self-Determination filed a suit in the federal high court in Abuja, Nigeria, to demand a halt to the process, rejecting the Greentree agreement and vowing to fight their relocation. According to BBC, they even proclaimed the independence of Bakassi on 27 July. Nevertheless, Nigeria began to withdraw its troops from the peninsula on 1 August, and on 14 August Nigerian and Cameroonian officials took part in a ceremony at Akwa village formally marking the handover of the territory to Cameroon. Soon afterwards, however, a new source of conflict arose. During the 15th session of the Cameroon-Nigeria mixed commission – a body set up by the UN to implement the ICJ ruling – held in Yaoundé on 6–7 September, Nigerian representatives alleged that Nigerian citizens living in Bakassi and other parts of Cameroon were returning to Nigeria with awful stories of maltreatment by Cameroonian gendarmes. Between 22 and 30 August, more than 6,000 Nigerians had been shipped from Douala and Limbe to Nigeria. The commission then resolved to send an observer mission to the peninsula to be made up of 15 UN representatives and five delegates each from Nigeria and Cameroon.

Cameroon's relations with regional and continental organisations in Africa continued to be marked by the absence of active diplomatic initiatives. There were two CEMAC summit meetings. President Biya, renowned for his regular absence from meetings of African organisations, did attend the first CEMAC meeting at Bata in Equatorial Guinea from 14–16 March, a move widely interpreted as a gesture to improve Cameroon's strained relations with its neighbour arising from the latter's alleged mistreatment of Cameroonian migrants and its continuing support for Nigeria in the border dispute with Cameroon. During this meeting, President Biya fell ill, causing panic in Cameroonian government circles. He decided to send the president of the National Assembly, Cavaye Yegui Djibril, to the second CEMAC meeting, which was held in N'Djaména, Chad, on 7–8 August. Both CEMAC meetings aimed at overcoming what the president of Equatorial Guinea, Obiang Nguema, called during the Bata meeting “the catastrophic balance of CEMAC”. Djibril also represented Cameroon at the sixth AU summit in Khartoum on 23–24 January, which dealt with education and culture. Prime Minister Inoni participated in a meeting of heads of state from the Gulf of Guinea region in Libreville on 25 August, held to discuss the structure of a newly established commission for the peaceful resolution of conflicts in this strategic oil-rich region. Since Cameroon had failed to ratify the treaty that had instituted the Commission of the Gulf of Guinea, it was not granted any function in the new organisation.

Cameroon's relations with Western countries, the major donors to its development programmes, were generally good. Most Western countries continued to believe that they could exert a positive influence on good governance and democratic reforms through cooperation. France remained Cameroon's foremost ally in the West. President Biya visited France from 26 to 28 July. During his visit, French President Jacques Chirac expressed the hope that the new ‘contract of debt relief and development’ signed between France and Cameroon in June, which made Cameroon the primary beneficiary of French aid, would open a new chapter in mutual cooperation (see below). Many observers, however, underscored the growing orientation of Cameroon's foreign policies towards the US. On 15–16 February, the US assistant-secretary of state for African affairs, Jendayi Frazer, visited Cameroon to open the new $ 57 m US embassy at Bastos in Yaoundé and to strengthen US relations with Cameroon. Prime Minister Inoni, in turn, went on a predominantly economic mission to the US on 19 October. This was his third mission to the US since his nomination as prime minister in December 2004.

Cameroon continued to maintain close relations with a number of international organisations, in particular the ‘Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie’ (OIF) and the Commonwealth, membership in both of which reflected the ‘bilingual nature of the country’. President Biya participated in the conference of OIF heads of state and government in Bucharest from 28–29 September. The Commonwealth once again demonstrated its persistent interest in political reforms in Cameroon. Following a meeting on 20–22 February with a Commonwealth delegation led by Joe Clark, the ex-prime minister of Canada, the government announced its intention to establish an independent body to manage future elections in the country.

Cameroon was eager to intensify its relations with some Asian countries, notably Japan and China. President Biya visited Japan from 16 to 22 April, where he had an audience with Prime Minister Koizumi. Japan then allocated CFAfr 8.5 bn to Cameroon to be used to construct schools, provide rural water and rehabilitate Ahmadou Ahidjo stadium. President Biya was also among the large number of African heads of state who attended the third meeting of the forum on China-Africa cooperation in Beijing from 3 to 5 November. On that occasion, China agreed to grant Cameroon tourism-destination status and to provide it with a gift of CFAfr 2.5 bn for social projects.

Socioeconomic Developments

On 28 April, the World Bank and IMF announced that Cameroon had finally reached the completion point under the enhanced HIPC initiative. As a result, Cameroon benefited from generous debt relief, including $ 1.3 bn under the enhanced HIPC initiative, $ 1.1 bn under the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI), and additional Paris Club write-offs on a bilateral basis, amounting to about $ 2.6 bn. In a related development, on 22 June Prime Minister Inoni signed the ‘contract of debt relief and development, (C2D) with the French minister-delegate for cooperation and development, Brigitte Girardin. The agreement covered the period 2006–11, and granted Cameroon total debt relief worth $ 680 m, which would be awarded in five equal annual disbursements. The funds had to be used for poverty alleviation and would be focused on five areas: health and the fight against AIDS; basic education; infrastructure; agricultural development and food security; and the environment. According to an IMF-IDA report, published in April, Cameroon's total public external debt was expected to fall from an estimated $ 6.2 bn at the end of 2005 to just $ 525 m at the end of 2006.

The announcement that Cameroon had reached completion point, which was described by government officials as an historic event in the country's struggle for development, raised high expectations among ordinary Cameroonians of an immediate improvement in their living conditions, and civil servants started demanding substantial salary increases. Taken aback by the heightened expectations, the government sought to dampen them. In an address to the nation on 12 May, President Biya recognised that debt relief provided an unprecedented opportunity to combat poverty effectively and improve standards of living, while highlighting that it would not solve all the country's problems. He urged Cameroonians to work hard and to expect to make further sacrifices. Delegations of senior government and RDPC party officials held numerous meetings throughout the country in August to explain the prospects and challenges that the country was facing after reaching the completion point.

In the three-year, $ 26.8 m poverty reduction and growth facility (PRGF), which was awarded in October 2005, the government had committed itself to reinvigorating the stalled privatisation and restructuring programme for public enterprises. However, an IMF mission visiting Cameroon in late August noted little progress in public-enterprise reform. On 29 June, the government announced the winning bidder for the troubled national airline, Cameroon Airlines (CAMAIR), namely First Delta Air Services, a consortium comprising the Belgian national airline, SN-Brussels, and a Cameroonian venture-capital fund, Central Africa Investments (CENAINVEST). A few months later, on 12 September, a Cameroonian newspaper, ‘The Post’, reported that President Biya had halted CAMAIR'S privatisation following a better offer from a US company. In July, the government launched the tender for the privatisation of its fixed-line telephone company, Cameroon Telecommunications (CAMTEL), and plans were once again advanced for the privatisation of two huge agro-industrial parastatals, the ‘Société de Développement du Coton’ (SODECOTON) in northern Cameroon and the Cameroon Development Corporation (CDC) in Anglophone Cameroon. The government also promised to increase its efforts to restructure the national refinery, the ‘Société Nationale de Raffinage’ (SONARA), the national postal company, Cameroon Postal Services (CAMPOST) and the national water utility, the ‘Société Nationale des Eaux du Cameroun’ (SNEC). In addition to ranking low on public-sector reforms, the government undertook few initiatives to boost private investment. On 6 September, the World Bank and the IFC published a report, “Doing Business in 2007” that ranked Cameroon 152nd out of 175 countries for ease of doing business. This represented a drop from 147th in their previous report.

On 21 November, Prime Minister Inoni presented the budget for 2007 to the National Assembly, amounting to CFAfr 2,251 bn, an increase of CFAfr 390 bn compared to the 2006 budget. The increase in the 2007 budget was mainly due to the expected high oil and cocoa prices and the substantial debt relief under the HIPC initiative. The budget aimed at real GDP growth of 4% and an average inflation rate of 2%. It sought to consolidate government's tight fiscal policies as stipulated in the three-year PRGF arrangement. It made provision for only a slight reduction in the value-added tax (VAT) on some food items, such as rice and fish. Agricultural output could even be badly affected by the introduction of VAT on agricultural inputs.

In June, the primary education minister, Haman Adama, announced a programme to improve provision of education at primary level. This included the hiring of 3,000 new teachers each year between 2006 and 2015, and the construction of 40,000 new classrooms by 2015. The programme's estimated CFAfr 500 bn cost was expected to be financed by donors, the government and funds freed up by the recent debt write-off under the enhanced HIPC initiative. The government's growing attention to educational expansion at primary level was largely responsible for the slight improvement in Cameroon's ranking on the Human Development Index published by the UNDP in its “Human Development Report 2006”. Its position rose from 148th out of 177 countries in the previous year to 144th this year.

On 31 May, Cameroon's National Institute of Statistics (NIS) published the results of the first phase of its national survey on employment and the informal sector. As expected, the survey revealed high levels of unemployment and underemployment, with an estimated 9.3% of the working-age population unable to find work and 75% classified as underemployed. The worst affected included those aged from 20 to 29, women and university graduates, 36.5% of whom were unable to find work after finishing their degree. The report highlighted the importance of the informal sector in providing jobs – it employed an estimated 90% of the workforce – with only 20% of workers having a formal contract and 7.9% having regular salaries.

Workers in various sectors of the economy resorted to strike action to protest either against their lay-offs during the privatisation and restructuring of state enterprises or their precarious living and working conditions. The most protracted and violent strikes took place in the Tole and Ndu tea plantations, which had been sold in October 2002 by the CDC to Brobon Finex of South Africa. The Tole strike lasted from 26 February to 15 September. The Ndu strike started on 28 August and had not been called off by year's end. The workers complained of unpaid wages and social benefits, the withdrawal of the healthcare and other social services they had enjoyed prior to privatisation, and what they described as inhuman treatment by management. On 1 December, security forces killed two strikers and wounded several others at Ndu.

Cameroon's poultry industry fell into deep crisis after a government announcement in March that the deadly avian flu virus had been detected in a small village close to the northern provincial town of Maroua. This triggered a slump in sales throughout the country. Consumption of chickens and eggs fell dramatically and market prices collapsed.

Trading began at the Douala Stock Exchange (DSX) on 30 June – more than three years after it was inaugurated – with the listing of 9,200 shares of the bottled water company ‘Société des Eaux Minérales du Cameroun’ (SEMC).

On 25 September, almost a year after signing a memorandum of understanding with the government, a US transport company, Parker Transnational Industries (PTI), launched its urban service in the capital, Yaoundé. PTI became the majority owner of a joint-venture company – ‘Le Bus’ – in partnership with the government. By the end of October, the company had put 16 buses into service.