The Cameroon Dispatch

The former general manager of the Cameroon cotton production company, SODECOTTON, Iya Mohamed incarcerated on September 3, 2015 for embezzlement of state funds is critically sick. Reports say Iya who held the post of president of the Cameroon Football Federation, FECAFOOT till he was arrested in 2014, and later sentenced to 15 years in prison by the Special Criminal Court, SCC, has been under medical attention at the Centre Hospitalier d’Essos in Yaounde. file photo: Iya(R) Roger Milla (L) Contrary to other high profile prisoners whose hospitalisation prompted the deployment of heavily armed security forces, security around the ex-FECAFOOT president’s ward on the second floor of the hospital is inconspicuous. Meanwhile, a confusion set into the federation after Iya’s imprisonment has remained in a continuous twirl. Its current president, Tombi a Roko Sidicki, imposed by a ministerial order after a disputed election, last Friday May 27, lost a suit to have control o...

A new non-profit organisation has been founded to provide support to Cameroonian children who lose a parent in a war front. The Fallen Patriots Foundation, as it is called, was launched in Yaounde on Saturday May 28 in the guise of a press conference which was attended by wives and toddlers of some soldiers who fell while fighting the war against Boko Haram. Its founder, Laura Ndiwane, told reporters at the news conference that the main goal of the foundation is to provide sustainable and assured assistance to the children through scholarships. This, she added would be done in collaboration with other philanthropic organisations and well as individuals of goodwill. “We will be providing support to push children of soldiers of all ranks and grades who die at war; provide them with counselling and psychosocial assistance to families of war victims in order to relieve them from trauma” said Ndiwane who is equally a senior official at the ministry of environment, nature pr...

The Minister of Livestock, Fisheries and Animal Husbandry, Dr. Taiga is alleged to have received death threats from influential poultry farm owners for raising an alarm on a possible resurfacing of Bird flu, or avian influenza in Yaounde;  The Cameroon Journal  learned. A source who refused to be named, told  The Cameroon Journal  that the threats are coming from some members of gov’t who are themselves major suppliers of chickens in Yaounde. They are concerned that the alarm being raised would result to a drop in sales of their poultry products.      D r.Taiga Officials of the Yaounde-based giant poultry (known as Complexe Avicole de Mvog-Betsi) in which the virus was first discovered are reported to equally be fuming by government’s mass killing of some 15, 000 chickens after it was discovered that bird flu had previously killed another 15,000 in the farm within a week. We also gathered that the brain behind the poultry is a foreign n...

The minister of public works, Emmanuel Nganou Djoumessi has once again shown proof of his determination to eradicate corruption and inertia in the execution of public contracts and day to day running of his ministry. Minister Nganou Djoumessi, recently installed a nine-man no-nonsense team to kick-start the running of an anti-corruption unit within the public works ministry. The team is expected to come up with a road map that would facilitate the implementation of the Rapid Results Initiative drawn up by the national anti-corruption commission, commonly known by its French language acronym, CONAC.  The initiative would require the team to produce a report of anti-corruption activities it carried out within 100 days. While installing the team headed by the inspector general of the ministry, Charles Bertrand Dipanda Ekwa , Minister Djoumessi told them leave no stone unturned in the exercise of their duties in order to live up to the expectations of the ministry a...

It is not in every bank that customers walk in and are served traditional snacks such as kola nuts, cashew nuts, groundnuts, fried maize, garden eggs and other African snacks. Only customers and guests of the United Bank of Africa are currently privy to this special treatment reserved for them every year during the celebration of the Africa Day-on May 25.     Celebrating this year’s edition under the theme “ Africa Rising ”, officials and employees of UBA Cameroun, joint their colleagues in 18 other countries across the continent in keeping the tradition. Besides sharing traditional snacks to customers, they dressed in purely African traditional outfits and played African music all daylong in commemoration of the continents splendor and enormous potentials. An official of the pan-African bank stated during the celebrations in Douala, that “We celebrate today with renewed commitments to the dreams of the founding fathers of the continent; w...

Tony Elumelu, Chairman of the United Bank for Africa, UBA, Heirs Holdings, Transcorp and founder of the Tony Elumelu Foundation has said he is satisfied with his investment in Cameroon and urged other international investors to invest in Cameroon. Elumelu who has once been ranked among the most influential Africans by Forbes magazine,  made the declarations in a keynote speech he presented at an the International Economic Conference that kicked off in the main auditorium of the Yaounde Conference Centre yesterday, May 17. Taking the floor right after President Biya, Jose Manuel Barroso, Former President of the European Commission, and Dr. Un-Chan Chung, Former Prime Minister of South Korea, Elumelo held guests at the jam-packed 1500 capacity conference hall spellbound. President Biya and Elumelu, chatting hand in hand; flanked by Barosso(L) and  Un-Chan   The theme of his keynote speech was; “Economic philosophy of Africapitalism: Serving customers and fin...

YAOUNDÉ, 5 April 2016 A military court in Cameroon last month sentenced to death 89 men on terrorism charges related to Boko Haram violence. A reporting blackout made it unclear if the sentences had been carried out or, if not, where those convicted were being held. I was determined to find out more. UN Photo/Rick Bajornas At the Ministry of Defence, the communications division said it wasn’t allowed to discuss the verdict, delivered on 16 March under a controversial December 2014 anti-terrorism law. “Even here, we don’t talk about it,” explained Tar Tar, presenter of ‘Honour and Loyalty’, a weekly programme on state radio for the armed forces. The information was still “classified”, so he pushed me up the chain of command. “Go on, the colonel is in his office.” Colonel Didier Badjeck’s office was just down the corridor. The soldier-secretaries in reception were friendly – an encouraging start. Unfortunately, the words “journalist” and “Boko Haram”...

President Paul Biya will welcome several multi-billion investors to the international economic conference which opens at the Yaounde Conference Center today. We gathered the Head of State will officially open the two day event which theme is theme is “investing in Cameroon; a land of attractiveness,”at 11am after a welcome note from the government to Yaounde City Council. Keynote speakers at today’s ceremony will include the former president of the European Union Commission Jose Manuel Barosso who is equally a former Portugese PM. Former Korean prime minister Chung Lin-chan and the chairman of the United Bank for Africa, Tony Elumelo are expected to equally present keynote addresses. Meanwhile economy minister Lousie Paul Motaze said at a press conference in Yaounde on Sunday that the confab which is expected to bring together some of the finest economic and business experts from around the world, seeks to once more showcase Cameroon’s huge potentials to prospective bill...

Somewhere in the small Lade Gore village, 64 km from Garoua, chief town of Cameroon’s Far North region, Yvette Goulo sits on a small stool between two huts with grass roofs. She and Maxime Vondou, her robust 2 and a half years son are surrounded by 11 nursing mothers fondling their babies in their arms. Their babies are about 6 months old or younger. Goulo tells them how vital it is to feed new born babies exclusively with breast milk until they are 6months old. Vondou is her fourth child and his older siblings are as healthy as he is. It is on this basis that she was chosen to be a member of support teams created to sensitise women in their communities on proper child feeding and hygiene. This, within the framework of an on-going implementation of the pilot phase of a UNICEF programme against malnutrition and anemia in children between the ages of 6 to 23 months and coupled with the promotion of proper feeding for younger children. The pro...