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Power cuts quadrupled in Cameroon between 2018 and 2021

30/03/2025

Electricity outages in Cameroon became four times more frequent between 2018 and 2021, according to a new audit by the Supreme Court’s Audit Bench. The findings are part of a report on the government’s “Access to Energy” program, run by the Ministry of Water and Energy.

Published on March 15, the report shows that not only did power cuts become more frequent, but their average duration also increased. In 2018, an outage lasted around 98.5 minutes on average. By 2020, that had jumped to 142.7 minutes before dropping to 43.7 minutes in 2021.

The audit takes direct aim at Eneo, the country’s main electricity distributor and owner of some power generation infrastructure. The report says the company failed to meet key performance targets meant to reduce the frequency and length of outages. “There was no real improvement in Eneo’s performance during the period under review,” the report states.

At the same time, auditors noted a rise in the amount of electricity generated but not delivered to customers. In 2019, 71.3 gigawatt-hours were wasted. By 2020, that number had jumped to 103.5 GWh. The reasons are multiple: aging transmission and distribution infrastructure, scheduled maintenance works, and limited output from the Lagdo Dam, which supplies the northern grid. The dam’s water level dropped from 2 billion cubic meters in 2020 to 1.7 billion in 2021, weakening its power capacity.

Inspectors also raised concerns about poor service quality in the field. They found voltage fluctuations, out-of-service transformers, and neglected infrastructure. Many wooden electric poles were in bad shape and had short lifespans due to age and lack of maintenance.

Source: Business in Cameroon

Bank lending rates fall in CEMAC despite tight monetary policy

30/03/2025

Interest rates charged by banks in the CEMAC region dropped over the past year, even as the regional central bank tried to tighten credit.

Data from the Bank of Central African States (BEAC) shows that the average interest rate on loans between July and September 2024 was 9.45%, down from 9.78% during the same period in 2023. That’s a drop of 33 basis points, despite BEAC’s ongoing efforts to cool down inflation by making borrowing more expensive.

Since the end of 2021, BEAC has been trying to rein in inflation with a stricter monetary policy. It stopped injecting liquidity into banks, increased its key interest rates, and took steps to drain cash from the banking system. In theory, this should have led to higher lending rates, making it harder for businesses and consumers to borrow. But that’s not what’s happening.

Instead, rates went down—and at the same time, banks actually gave out more loans. According to BEAC, the amount of new credit issued in the region rose 1.52% between the third quarter of 2023 and the third quarter of 2024.

The situation highlights a disconnect between BEAC’s policy and how banks are behaving on the ground—raising questions about how effective the central bank’s tools really are in the region.

Source: Business in Cameroon

Financial scandal rocks Mkpot Oil Mill Project!! Manyu Chiefs won’t talk

30/03/2025

Chronic embezzlement, abetting assassinations and intimidations are the currencies of tyrants. Michael Mbi Oruh, the traditional ruler of Mkpot village in Manyu Division has gained prominence in demonstrating that supporting extrajudicial killings, hijacking communal farms and embezzling funds intended to stimulate employment in his village are fundamentally his persona.

Cameroon Concord News is on the verge of completing an 18-month investigation into one of the nastiest and most inhumane killers in Cameroon. Our meticulous investigation, which spans 12 years, covers three continents (Africa, Europe, and North America). Over the coming weeks, this publication will lay bare the vicious criminal empire the so-called Chief Michael Mbi Oruh rules over. Our findings are jaw-dropping, shocking, and profound.

We have uncovered a bandit who used his position as technical adviser in Cameroon’s Ministry of Industries, Mines and Technological Development to apply for and obtain part of four million six hundred and fifty-six thousand forty US dollars (USD 4,656,040) total cost of a project with the title, improving income generating potential of Oil Palm in Nigeria and Cameroon—CFC/FIGOOF/28. The project was jointly facilitated, sponsored and overseen by the Common Fund for Commodities (CFC), the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), and the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO).

Cameroon Concord News Kingsley Betek uncovered a scheme where Chief Oruh swindled donation money meant for the building of a health centre in a region where the average person lives on less than $1 a day.

In one of our publications in 2020, we raised concern that Chief Michael Mbi Oruh with the aid of Egbe John Besong, Orock Thomas Nchung, and Otang Ivo Enow supported the execution of a series of extrajudicial killings and other crimes against humanity in Mkpot Village.

Our chief correspondent in Mamfe now has ample, authentic and critical audio, text, and other forms of recorded evidence linking Chief Michael Mbi Oruh and his crime syndicate to these gross human rights violations and heinous crimes. The recent revelation is Chief Michael Mbi Oruh’s failed harsh ploy to assassinate Sesekou Dr Mbu Phillip Eno and Sesekou Otang Wilfred Obi aka NseMgbe.

In Nigeria, where Michael Mbi Oruh lived as a young man, he has been told never to come back! And in the USA where he claimed to have undertaken some university education, Manyu citizens have openly questioned his professed academic qualifications and have often painted a picture of a loner with a disturbing mind.

In this first of four articles, we intend to highlight the Mkpot Oil Mill scandal in which Chief Michael Mbi Oruh siphoned and misappropriated CFA Francs 750,000,000 (over one million dollars) grant, as part of the USD 4,656,040, allocated for the construction of an Oil Mill in Mkpot, as a palm oil processing centre intended to accommodate and enhance the production capacity of farmers under Central Ejagham Palm Oil Producers’ Union (CEPOPU). The remainder of the total funds (USD 4,656,040) intended to improve the income-generating potential of the oil palm in West and Central African regions (Cameroon and Nigeria) was allocated to Teze/Ngie, Sombo (Cameroon) and AkwaIbom State (Nigeria).

Cameroon is a major palm oil producer in Central Africa but according to reliable estimates, the country still imports about 60,000 tons annually to meet domestic demand. To address this shortfall, this project that was jointly sponsored by CFC and UNIDO, over a decade ago, was intended to support a sector characterized by obsolete production equipment and little access to technology and financing. The project’s objective was to establish and equip four medium-scale palm oil processing centres in Cameroon and one in Nigeria. The processing capacity of the mills was established to be 2 tons per hour and one of the sites selected for this was Mkpot village in Manyu Division, Southwest Region, Cameroon. This particular project was overseen by Chief Michael Mbi Oruh, the then technical adviser in Cameroon’s Ministry of Industries, Mines and Technological Development and the supposed chief of the village. Chief Michael Mbi Oruh told Voice of America in an interview on the 1st of November 2009 that “the goal of the project was to help the country use palm oil to generate income…” Kingsley Betek says this project was a con from Mbi Oruh who is somehow addicted to fiddles.

In applying for the grant, Michael Mbi Oruh told UNIDO that the money was to train “farmers in new and more efficient ways of processing palm oil and also to buy planting material and equipment.” Astonishingly, the good people at UNIDO provided what he asked for. However, very little happened on the ground in Mkpot village!

Our reporters were shown a dilapidated building, posturing as an Oil Mill, which Michael Mbi Oruh built for less than 5% of the millions he received from CFC and UNIDO.

According to the grant documents seen by Cameroon Concord News reporters, and the CFC 2016 and 2018 Annual Report, the mill in Mkpot had to create over 250 new jobs and improve household incomes in the Manyu local area, especially Eyumojock. Over the last few years, Michael Mbi Oru has been blaming the current crisis in the Southwest and Northwest regions for the lack of productivity in the oil mill but his subjects told Cameroon Concord News reporters that the mill never actually got off the ground. One of the villagers who spoke on grounds of anonymity said “Mbi Oruh built this sub-standard building here to take pictures and justify to his superiors in Yaoundé that the project was genuine, it was just a scam all along”. According to some disturbing facsimile of documents, Chief Mbi Oruh lured Minister Victor Arrey Mengot into the scam by selling the minister shares in the project.

The disgusting structure built in Mkpot village to pass for an oil mill is certainly not a 700 Million FCFA building. Correspondingly, our reporters were taken to a beautiful house that Michael Mbi Oruh had constructed in Mkpot for himself during the oil mill project. There is enormous evidence that his houses in Yaoundé and Limbe were built or restructured and modified from the proceeds of this oil mill theft.

According to his family members, the people of Mkpot fought bitterly against their brothers in Bakwelle for the land they acquired to cultivate a communal palm plantation for the village, which has now been hijacked by Michael Mbi Oruh as his private estate. A source in the US hinted Cameroon Concord News that Peter Nayongho, the man who supplied the land for the building of the mill was given a 2,500,000frs CFA hut, not the 25,000,000 frs CFA that Mbi Oruh promised him as compensation.

The people of Manyu Division must be prepared to pick up the pieces as they deal with the reality of a chief in a never-ending sequence of mischief and sinfulness.

Cameroon Concord News has contacted CFC through its headquarters in Amsterdam, Netherlands for further details on project execution and closure report including safeguards that were put in place to monitor and deter such outrageous embezzlements with impunity.

Cameroon Concord News will also begin a campaign of alerting multi-national and multi-partnership agencies to track and hold Michael Mbi Oruh accountable for serious rights violations and financial crimes.

There seems to be a majority now in Mkpot village determined that he will be the first Manyu chief in over 130 years to be deposed by his people. Though he has further descended into intimidating progressive voices by inviting them to police and military interrogations, there is growing anxiety among many in Mkpot that gentleness is a strategy that won’t work with this corrupt leader.

As Michael Mbi Oruh prepares to end up on the scrapheap of history as a disgraced and deposed chief, it won’t be because of the people of Mkpot, it will be because, in the end, he, Michael Mbi Oruh was his own biggest problem.

By Kinsley Betek and Rita Akana with additional editing from Soter Agbaw-Ebai

BRICS to establish ‘digital’ payment system for members

28/03/2025

Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov says BRICS members are working on various financial innovations including the development of a “digital” cross-border payment system to carry out monetary services within the economic bloc.

“We are considering our various financial innovations on the BRICS floor, including the cross-border payment system that can be based, further to bilateral settlements, on national currencies with consideration of digital technologies and digital financial assets,” Tass quoted Siluanov telling reporters.

BRICS current members are Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Iran, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and Ethiopia.

Some developing countries, namely Algeria, Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Turkey, Uganda, Uzbekistan and Vietnam, have expressed interest in joining the economic bloc.

Siluanov said, “The buildup of the financial infrastructure is very important for development of trade and economies of our countries.”

In an attempt to dissuade BRICS from replacing the US dollar, US President Donald Trump has threatened BRICS member countries against any move that undermines the “mighty US dollar,” warning that nations abandoning the dollar “should say hello to tariffs and goodbye to America.”

“We are going to require a commitment from these seemingly hostile countries that they will neither create a new BRICS currency nor back any other currency to replace the mighty US dollar—or they will face 100 percent tariffs,” Trump has said. “There is no chance that BRICS will replace the US dollar in international trade, or anywhere else.”

Although BRICS does not have a common currency, discussions on reducing reliance on the US dollar have gained momentum in past years, especially after the West imposed sanctions on Russia over Ukraine.

Source: Presstv

Douala: Alice Nkom to appear in court next Apr. 7

27/03/2025

Lawyer Alice Nkom is scheduled to appear in court on April 7 before the Douala-Bonanjo Court of First Instance, facing charges of breaking seals. The seals in question were reportedly “legally affixed” to the doors of the building housing the headquarters of the Central Africa Human Rights Defenders Network (Redhac) in Douala.

The case originates from last December, when Paul Atanga Nji, the Minister of Territorial Administration, decided to suspend Redhac’s activities, along with those of other civil society organizations. The stated reason for the suspension was the alleged financing of so-called terrorist networks.

Richard Tamfu, one of Nkom’s attorneys, confirmed that Alice Nkom does not dispute that she is the individual seen in a widely circulated video removing the seals. “However, she clearly maintains that she removed seals that had been affixed illegally,” Tamfu stated. He promptly added that his client, who co-chairs Redhac’s board of directors, was acting in “self-defense.”

This defense has been consistent for Nkom since the case began. In an interview with the pan-African magazine Jeune Afrique in February, she stated, “There is a law that governs this procedure, and it was not respected.”

During that interview, Alice Nkom already exhibited unwavering determination, a characteristic that remains unchanged, according to her lawyer. “She’s a warrior with more than 50 years at the bar […] She is calm and composed,” said Attorney Richard Tamfu.

Source: Sbbc

Biya’s election season stirs renewed anxiety in Southern Cameroons

27/03/2025

While Biya’s re-election in October seems all but inevitable, his prolonged stay in power – without meaningful dialogue or efforts toward a peaceful resolution – signals continued suffering and a deepening crisis for the Anglophone population.

At 92, Paul Biya, Africa’s second-longest-serving leader, announced in January that he would seek his eighth presidential term in the October elections, ending months of speculation over his candidacy.

In Anglophone Cameroon – the Northwest and Southwest regions – years of alleged electoral fraud, a deadly and protracted conflict and political exclusion have eroded faith in democratic participation. For the millions living there, daily life has become a constant struggle against fear, displacement and uncertainty.

Anglophone Cameroon has been engulfed in a deadly conflict for years, characterised by violence and deepening mistrust between separatist groups and the central government, which many in the region accuse of systemic human rights violations.

In search of recruits

On some nights in Tiko, a coastal town in Cameroon’s troubled Southwest region, 39-year-old Mbuh Margaret* stays awake while her two young daughters, both under 12, sleep nearby. Her eyes remain fixed on the door, her mind racing with fear of what might come.

“I don’t think I’ll ever recover,” she says, still haunted by the traumatic ordeal she endured in 2018 – an event that continues to cast a long shadow over her life.

That year, just weeks before the presidential election, separatist fighters stormed her home in a remote part of Bamenda, the Anglophone capital of Cameroon’s Northwest region. They arrived at midnight, demanding that her 43-year-old husband join their movement.

“They wanted more manpower against the government forces and were recruiting by any means necessary,” she recalls.

When he refused, they shot him in the head.

“I didn’t believe what I saw; everything happened in a second,” Margaret recalls.

Two days later, fearing for their lives, she fled with her daughters to Tiko, her late husband’s hometown. Now working as a farm labourer in a nearby village, she earns between CFA2,500 ($4) and CFA7,500 ($12) a week – barely enough to survive. Her meagre income forces her to borrow constantly, and the debts continue to mount.

Call for election boycott

Biya’s announcement of his candidacy for the October elections has reignited calls from separatist groups to boycott the vote in the Anglophone regions. Despite ongoing government crackdowns, separatist leaders argue that participating would only serve to legitimise Biya’s decades-long rule over their communities.

For Margaret and many others in the Anglophone regions, already enduring nearly nine years of conflict between separatist fighters and government forces, the election season brings renewed fear and uncertainty.

“In 2018, separatist groups first warned us to stay away from the election, using threats and violence to enforce compliance,” Margaret tells The Africa Report.

“At night, whenever I think about what led to my husband’s death, and how easily it could happen again, I lose my peace,” she says.

More than 6,000 killed

In October 2016, civil unrest broke out in Cameroon’s Anglophone regions when lawyers and teachers led protests against the marginalisation of English-speaking Cameroonians. The Francophone-led government in Yaoundé responded with force, shutting down internet services and branding the demonstrations a “terror procession”.

By 2017, what began as peaceful protests had spiralled into a full-scale separatist rebellion. Rebel leaders declared the independence of the self-styled Federal Republic of Ambazonia, claiming the Anglophone Northwest and Southwest regions. Though these areas make up just 3% of Cameroon’s territory, they are home to nearly 20% of its population.

As the conflict escalated, the government responded with a brutal crackdown, arresting thousands and opening fire on protesters. President Biya deployed the elite Rapid Intervention Battalion (BIR), a unit repeatedly accused of severe human rights abuses, to crush the separatist movement.

Nearly a decade later, the war drags on. More than 6,000 people have been killed, thousands remain missing, and hundreds of thousands have been displaced – many of them children struggling with malnutrition and disease in overcrowded camps or remote villages.

“It’s an ugly situation, and no one is safe,” says Beatrice*, 45, a resident of Kumba in the Southwest region. She lost her husband and three sons in a fire during a clash between separatists and government forces. She was the only one who survived.

‘We lost everything’

From Northwest’s Kumbo and Bamenda to Mamfe and Buea in the Southwest region, the scars of war are visible throughout Anglophone Cameroon. Bullet-riddled homes and abandoned buildings, left in ruins, have become common sights in communities where violence is now part of daily life.

Entire villages lie empty, silent evidence of what many describe as a partial genocide and a host of underreported war crimes. In these conflict-affected areas, children are among the most vulnerable. Many are forced into harsh agricultural labour or degrading work just to help their families survive.

“In late 2019, as government soldiers and separatist fighters exchanged gunfire in our village in Buea, my mother’s grocery shop was looted and set on fire,” says Peter*, a 15-year-old fisherman’s assistant in Limbe, a coastal town in the Southwest region. “I remember how we lost everything and became even poorer that night.”

Peter now earns between CFA15,000 ($24) and CFA24,000 ($38) a week, most of which goes toward supporting his family of five. According to UNICEF, nearly 500,000 children – including Peter and his childhood friends – were out of school across Cameroon’s Anglophone regions in 2024, as the conflict continues to disrupt education and displace communities.

As the crisis grinds on, Cameroon’s healthcare infrastructure continues to deteriorate, particularly in the English-speaking regions where medical facilities under Yaoundé’s control are often targeted in the conflict. The violence has forced many healthcare workers to flee, leaving residents to rely on private or religious clinics that are frequently overpriced, understaffed or ill-equipped.

Joy Francis*, a 19-year-old from a small village near Bamenda, tells The Africa Report that menstrual hygiene has become an overlooked emergency. Menstrual pads have either become unaffordable or completely unavailable, forcing many girls to use old rags or even thick leaves.

It’s a similar situation for Margaret, whose 12-year-old daughter also relies on scraps of old cotton during her period.

“It is disgusting and cruel for Paul Biya, a man who calls himself the father of the nation, to ignore the plight of Anglophone Cameroonians,” says a Douala-based political analyst, speaking anonymously due to a media ban on openly criticising the president.

“Without genuine political reform,” he warns, “we may be heading toward deeper anarchy in the English-speaking regions.”

Wave of violence

Ahead of the 2018 presidential election, Biya declared that Cameroon’s national unity was non-negotiable. Yet, both during his campaign and after securing re-election, he publicly acknowledged the severity of the Anglophone crisis, pledging to pursue a peaceful resolution. In 2019, he launched the Major National Dialogue aimed at addressing the grievances of the separatist movement.

However, separatist leaders and political critics dismissed the initiative as inadequate and unrealistic, arguing that it excluded key secessionist figures and failed to address fundamental demands, such as power-sharing or the prospect of independence.

“The crisis worsened, but Biya was not interested in recognising the separatist movement or their demands,” says a Yaoundé-based political analyst. “The peace plans were largely a political manoeuvre to convince the international community that the Anglophone unrest was merely a domestic issue that could be easily resolved.”

In reality, critics argue, little changed. Separatist leaders continued to be arrested and allegedly tortured, and before long, the dialogue collapsed – triggering yet another wave of violence and deepening the crisis.

Requests for comment from both the Cameroonian ministry of defence and the prime minister’s office went unanswered.

Possibility of Biya election loss?

Despite heavy media censorship in Yaoundé and state-controlled praise of Biya, French-speaking Cameroonians still discuss the future of their country, politics and economic policies in markets, offices and homes.

However, “when Cameroonians speak about their country, regime change rarely comes up”, says a senior lecturer and political analyst in Yaoundé. He explains that beyond Biya’s deep-rooted ties to France and the West, his regime’s longevity is due in part to its ability to suppress dissent and avoid the mistakes that toppled other long-serving leaders. “From the Arab Spring to the rise of anti-French sentiment, Biya seems to learn from leadership gaps that have ended other regimes,” he says.

English-speaking Cameroonians seldom debate the possibility of Biya losing an election – because survival, not politics, is their most pressing concern.

“It’s about our lives first,” says Margaret. “We don’t know if we’ll be even more forgotten by our countrymen – and the world.”

As external funding dries up, separatist fighters have increasingly turned on the very communities they claim to defend, looting homes, kidnapping civilians and extorting so-called “liberation taxes”. Women are often the most vulnerable. “I pay these taxes,” Margaret says. “Many women have been raped on the farms for failing to pay.”

Though some separatist factions have allowed schools to reopen, fear still lingers. For Margaret, the risk is too great. “Until my daughters’ safety is assured, they stay at home,” she says. “It’s better they lose their education than their lives.”

Culled from The Africa Report

Revealed: Boko Haram fighters kill 20 Cameroonian troops

26/03/2025

Boko Haram fighters disguised as herders killed at least 20 Cameroonian troops in a Tuesday morning raid on the Nigerian border town of Wulgo, local security sources and residents told AFP.

Cameroonian troops are commonly stationed across the border in Nigeria as part of anti-jihadist operations around Wulgo, which is near the volatile Lake Chad — home to both Islamic State and Boko Haram fighters.

The militants had disguised themselves as herders and traders in a nearby city and then infiltrated Wulgo to attack its surrounding military positions, said two intelligence sources.

The sources were assisting troops in the long-running fight against the militants and requested anonymity to speak freely.

“The insurgents attacked the bases around 1:00 am and fighting continued for two hours before they subdued the troops and burnt the bases, after taking away heavy weapons,” one of the sources said.

“Twenty Cameroonian troops were killed in the fighting and their bodies were transported across the border into Cameroon this morning,” the source added.

Neither the Nigerian military nor the Cameroonian side responded to an AFP request for comment.

Soviet-made Shilka guns — lightly armoured, radar-guided anti-aircraft weapons — were among the cache seized by the Boko Haram fighters, said the second source, who offered the same death toll.

On Monday, the fighters had blended among herders at the weekly market in the town of Gamboru, a commercial hub 15 kilometres (nine miles) away, the sources said.

They then moved into Wulgo under the cover of night to launch a “surprise attack”, said the second security source.

– Military bases raided –

Sounds of heavy guns and explosions were heard by people in Gamboru who had been awake to observe Ramadan vigils, local resident Muhammad Sani Umar told AFP.

“I saw three Cameroonian military trucks conveying 13 bodies across the border into Cameroon this morning,” said Umar, who visited Wulgo on Tuesday.

The attacked military bases were a mess, with the building torched and vehicles burnt, Umar said.

Since 2009, jihadist violence in northeast Nigeria has killed 40,000 people and displaced 2.3 million, according to the UN, with the conflict spilling into neighbouring countries.

The Lake Chad region in particular — stretching across Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon — has become a jihadist stronghold, disrupting fishing, farming and herding, on which the 40 million people who live there depend.

Recently, however, officials have complained about a lack of coordination in the multi-country coalition fighting militants in the region, particularly as Nigeria and Niger have seen relations deteriorate after a coup toppled Niamey’s civilian government in 2023.

Since losing its Sambisa stronghold in Nigeria in 2021 to the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), a rival offshoot, Boko Haram has shifted its presence to areas around Lake Chad as well as Wulgo, Waza, Gwoza, Pulka the Mandara mountains on the border with Cameroon.

Wulgo and Waza have been repeatedly targeted by Boko Haram, who have kidnapped and killed loggers, herders and scrap metal scavengers they accuse of spying on them for the military or local militias.

Earlier this year, clashes with Boko Haram jihadists near the Lake Chad town of Baga left nine Nigerian soldiers dead.

The attack came days after ISWAP militants killed scores of farmers in nearby in Tumbun Kanta and Kwatar Yobe, with accounts ranging between 40 and 100 dead.

In March 2021, two Cameroonian soldiers were killed in a Boko Haram attack in Wulgo, with three other Cameroonian troops and a Nigerian soldier injured.

Source: AFP

Fraud complaints target French billionaire Vincent Bolloré’s Africa port deals

26/03/2025

Groups from five African countries filed fraud and corruption complaints Wednesday accusing French billionaire Vincent Bolloré and one of his sons of illegally obtaining and benefitting from port concessions.

A collective made up of non-governmental organisations in Togo, Guinea, Ghana, Ivory Coast and Cameroon called Restitution for Africa are accusing the Bolloré Group, Bolloré and his son of unlawfully receiving the rights to run ports and then “laundering” money in those countries through the sale of its Africa logistics business.

Bolloré Group’s African ports and logistics business, which the tycoon sold off in 2022, employed more than 20,000 people in 20 African countries, running 16 ports as well as warehouses and transport hubs across the continent.

Cyrille Bolloré, his youngest son, became head of Bolloré Africa Logistics in 2019, taking over from his father.

French investigators have already looked into allegations that the Bolloré Group had, through its consulting business, illegally backed the 2010 presidential campaigns of Faure Gnassingbe in Togo and Alpha Conde in Guinea, in exchange for port concessions in Lome and Conakry.

The group’s lawyers managed to negotiate a settlement, but French financial prosecutors in 2024 requested Vincent Bolloré be tried on charges of corruption and complicity in breach of trust.

Wednesday’s complaint now accuses Bolloré of corruption, benefitting from influence peddling and unlawfully accepting favours from local officials in Cameroon, Ghana and Ivory Coast.

It charges that this is how the group obtained concessions to run the ports of Douala and Kribi in Cameroon, Tema in Ghana, and Abidjan in Ivory Coast.

The collective alleges that the 2022 sale of Bolloré Africa Logistics, whose profits came from these allegedly illegally obtained port concessions, amounted to money laundering.

Bolloré’s holding company sold Bolloré Africa Logistics to the MSC shipping group for €5.7 billion ($6.05 billion) in 2022.

It was thought at the time to be the mainstay of the tycoon’s fortune. Bolloré and his family are estimated to be worth $9.9 billion, according to Forbes.

Bolloré owns several right-wing media outlets in France.

Source: AFP

Over 10 Cameroon gov’t soldiers killed, 20 injured in Boko Haram attack

25/03/2025

More than 10 Cameroonian soldiers were killed and 20 others injured after the terrorist group Boko Haram raided a military outpost in the country’s Far North Region, according to local and security sources.

The attack took place overnight into Tuesday.

Boko Haram militants ambushed and attacked the Wulgo military camp located at the border with Nigeria, an army official in the region told the Chinese News Agency by phone on Tuesday.

“The terrorists came from Nigeria in large numbers and took our brave soldiers by surprise. They were well-armed with sophisticated weapons and technology. Our brave soldiers are pursuing them,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Local officials said the death toll could be higher as they were still investigating.

It is one of the deadliest attacks on the Cameroonian army since Boko Haram started operating in the region in 2014, according to local media.

Source: Xinhuanet

1982-2025: How long will Biya hang on?

25/03/2025

President Paul Biya may not be ready to give up power any time soon, according to Cameroon Intelligence Report sources. The country is at the mercy of Biya and his appointees and remains in the limbo of an uncertain presidential election moment. Biya’s prolonged grip on power has generated crises. Cameroon Intelligence Report is aware that a crackdown had begun that included the arrest of journalists and senior opposition militants.

Our editor-in-chief Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai says at 92, Paul Biya is not in any hurry to leave office. He spoke to Cameroon Concord News in an interview after reports came out that the Minister-Secretary General at the presidency of the republic Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh had met the Archbishop of Douala, His Grace Archbishop Samuel Kleda.

As members of the ruling CPDM crime syndicate close ranks around their beleaguered president and suggest that he will face off with any opposition candidate, Soter Agbaw-Ebai, is one of the few Cameroonian journalists with insight into Biya’s thinking and a willingness to share it.

“Mr. Biya has lived and ruled Cameroon from the InterContinental Hotel in Geneva for 42 years, and that is his problem,” says Soter Agbaw-Ebai.

“Frankly speaking, Biya’s acolytes are giving him the impression that people love him and I don’t know if there is anyone deep within his entourage who can muster the courage and make him understand that the people have taken the decision to vote against him in October.”

Cameroonians will reject Biya this 2025, Soter Agbaw-Ebai says, but Biya and his men are likely to seek a way to hang on to power. “I personally think the elections will be rigged and there will be an uprising that will put Biya to shame.”

“Biya’s government is broke and doesn’t have the money to pay for any elections. Parliamentarians are happy that he extended their failed mandate and they are pushing Biya to use presidential powers and develop plans to work in his favor against the Cameroonian people” Agbaw-Ebai concluded.

By Chi Prudence Asong in Dublin

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