The Entrepreneur - Cameroon's Premier Economic & Business Journal

Will The Real Civil Society Please Stand Up!

By Tazoacha Asonganyi

Civil society is made up of associations, mainly non governmental organisations (NGO) and trade unions that are distinct from the public sector, and are not part of political parties. Civil society is also composed of diversified groups concerned with issues related to development, and various aspects of human rights. In its nature, it is diverse, dynamic, and constantly changing because new members are regularly cropping up as new societal issues arise. The main role of civil society is to defend the interests of citizens, based on principles and values of justice, equality, and equity. It is supposed to ensure that these values and principles guide policy formulation and implementation in all areas of society to the benefit of all, especially the poor and disabled.

Africa's Public Policy Challenge

Why appropriate policies are not adopted
The Case of Nigeria

By Martin Oluba

We need appropriate public policies. No doubt about it? They cushion or eliminate many of the challenges that we face. With many of such across the public sector decision-making terrain, many of our challenges as acountry will inevitably be resolved. However, beside the fundamental issues pertaining to the adequacy andappropriateness of policy components and processes, concerns have revolved around the determination of the actual point where chances of unriddling the identified chain of Nigeria's problems are frustrated. Many such points are identifiable and comprise stages where (a) the intention of the government is made known (b) goals to be achieved aredeclared (c) means for achieving the goals are stated (d) announcement ofthe collateral programmes for achieving those goals as well as (e)specific actions taken in order to implement programmes are made.

Economic Implications of the Manichaean Stigmatization of Africa

By Peter Wuteh Vakunta

It is hard to disagree with a weighty viewpoint expressed by a concerned Africanist.
 In an article titled “Masks and Marx: The Marxist Ethos vis-à-vis African Revolutionary Theory and Praxis” (quoted in Olaniyan and Quayson, 496-503), renowned Ghanaian writer, Ayi Kwei Armah, contends  that Eurocentric racism is Manichaean in that it splits the world along racial lines, then  assigns a negative, lower value to the world’s non-Western peoples. The assumption is that the rest of the world is primitive, savage, barbarian, and underdeveloped, and that the West is civilized and developed.  Manichaean stigmatization is seldom based on knowledge of non-Westerners; it is often based on ignorance reinforced by disingenuous denial disguised in misleading intellectual jargon. Its source is racial prejudice. Teleologically, stigmatization cretinizes non-Westerners, especially Africans. The result is that Africans start to doubt themselves. Worse still, they begin to buy into the fallacy that African history does not exist; therefore, Africans have nothing to be proud of. This reasoning produces the stereotypical epithet of Africans as a “people without history,” to borrow from Eric Wolf (Quoted in Booker, 25), denies African peoples access to a usable past from which they can rely in order to construct a viable future.

View Point: Opening the Door for Africa's Diaspora Expertise

By Ekema J. Manga

I have opined in the past on the need for African leaders to start requesting for auxilliary support from their citizens in the diaspora - which is economical than taking loans from the World Bank and or Western Governments as foreign aid. In my view, it is time to give African citizens a chance for them to return home and contribute to national development instead of scaring them away from the country with tough bureaucracy. Policies such as stringent customs and immigration laws are  indeed wrong to the diasporans and it hurts the national reconstruction and development efforts. There is need to assist our policy-decision makers and leadership in designing a much vibrant economic policy that would enhance their policy delivery framework in stimulating growth and job creation. Africa's bureaucrats need help from academics and researchers. This is exactly what we do in Canada, whereby the federal, provincial and municipal governments work very closely with universities and think-tanks around the country. But the ice between African leadership and their diasporan population must be broken.

A Rallying Call for True Patriots: In the Defense of the Cameroon Homeland

A Tacit Declaration on Cameroon's Cyber Detractors & Terrorists

By Ernest L. Molua

Technology and its associated innovations have been acknowledged in seasoned studies to be veritable ingredients for economic progress and development. The rapid evolution of the Information Communication Technology (ICT) in Cameroon since the mid 1990s has been heralded as a double-prong mechanism to educate the Cameroon masses and inform the outside world of the workings of the ecology and socioeconomics of the nation state. In other words, ICT has been acknowledged within and out of Cameroon's policy circles to be a tool to brand the Republic of Cameroon and re-engineer the productive force of its citizenry and usher the kind of growth that private firms in the northern hemisphere have reaped from the exploitation of ICT. For contemporary Cameroon, however, this objective has been anathema to the illusion of some selfish forces. The advent of economic parasitism has not only led to the abuse of ICT as a basic weapon of mass economic development, but increasing economic ‘refugeeism’ by Cameroonians seeking ‘supposedly’ better living conditions abroad have intensified not only the abuse of ICT but also its increasing deployment for selfish gain and the spread of lies. This is unfortunate. This should not be accepted by any bonafide Cameroonian. This is a cancer more dangerous than other challenges that the republic faces as it builds a progressive democratic nation state.

African Nations Cup 2012: Togo Sanction Stays

CAF Shows it is in Charge of African Football

By Bright Lokenge

Togo's sanction by the Confederation of African Football (CAF) stays. In the just completed draws for qualifiers for the 2012 African nations Cup in Lubumbashi, Congo, Togo is conspicously absent as one of the continent's elite teams that would be vieing for the converted trophy. Togo's national team was sanctioned after the team failed to honour its commitments at the recent 2010 African Nations Cup (AFCON) in Angola. Embroiled in a terrorist attack in Cabinda, with some of its players and officials wounded or killed, the Togolese Football Association (FA) failed to communicate with CAF and the organising committee of the tournament. Rather, the Togolese relied on media reports to convey messages to CAF and simply boarded a plane to Lome sent by their all-powerful Head of State Faure Gnassimbe.

The New Africa in the Eyes of Modern Colonists

Recycling Myth and Revisionism in the Post-Colonial Discourse

By Divine Che Neba

Myriad of critiques, even at the dawn of the 21st century, still hark back to the clothes of 18th century philosophers  that "… as we see (Negroes) today, so have they always been", with no sense of developing beyond what nature provides them, except through external influence, which to some hardened skeptics, is even impossible. This persistent critical cadence which, seemingly, may never be vectorised amongst “Nation State" scholars, is rooted in centuries of denigration of Blacks as a whole, and from the disdainful treatment of African values in particular.....Despite centuries of trying precisely to define what Africa is, many a critic, to date, still finds it difficult to face up to the fact that Africa has entered history. Without raising the ghost of 18th and 19th centuries racist philosophers and critics, the American geneticist Nobel laureate, James Watson, in a newspaper interview (the Independent) this year (2007), reopened an explosive debate about race and science, by stating that he is:

...inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa … all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really… people who have to deal with black employees find this not true (Qtd, Ronald Bailey,1)

This 21st century racist cadence espouses the view of the French leader, Nicholas Sarchozy, in a controversial speech delivered at the University of Cheikh Anta Diop (UCAD) Dakar (2007), where he asseverated at length that

The tragedy of Africa is that the African has not fully entered into history. The African peasant, who for thousands of years has lived according to the seasons, whose life ideal was to be in harmony with nature, only knew the eternal renewal of time, rhythmed by the endless repetition of the same gestures and the same words. In this imaginary world, where everything starts over and over again, there is no place for human adventure or for the idea of progress...More

Modern Banking (I): Time to catch up in Cameroon?

By Epizitone Anabi Ebodume

Banking is no more safe boxing of money and extending loans. Maximizing transaction speed and minimizing timing have become all new parameters for modern banking. This means that banking is lot more than numbers. Cash in wallet is becoming very insignificant to customers' overall transactions in most of the west because less than a tenth of the people use debit and or credit cards for their transactions. With recent advances in Banking services, anyone can benefit from a host of banking products ranging from opening normal daily transaction accounts to saving and deposit accounts, as well as trading accounts with commercially supposed banks. The uniqueness of these accounts are just that, they are  simple account structures like you find in Cameroon, but rather their  operation and gadgets attached to it varies.

Celebrating Cameroon's Statehood: A Synopsis

By Ernest L. Molua

 "There are three kinds of people in the world: those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who wonder, "What just happened?"

It is an awesome opportunity and responsiblity to use this forum to publicly express my thoughts on the state of the Cameroon union, as Cameroon celebrates in 2010, its 50 years of independence. The identity of Cameroon as an independent people was recognized by the whole world in 1st January 1960 and 1st October 1961. This was solidified on 20th May, 1972.

Cameroon's Newspapers, A Betrayal of the Country's Bilingual Heritage

Mathias Victorien Ntep

Given Cameroon’s bilingual heritage, it is oftentimes expected that an average Cameroonian ought to be fluent in English and French, just as Bernard Fonlon felt comfortable in French and in English. In this guise, a typical Cameroon newspaper must not cater for only French-speaking or exclusively for English-speaking Cameroonian. An average paper ought to run news, commentaries, editorials and features in the country’s two official languages. However, in-depth examination of the newspapers in the country show that most of them are either French-language or English-language dailies, weeklies or monthlies. The most serious bilingual newspapers in Cameroon are the state-owned “Cameroon Tribune” and the independent and aspiring “The Entrepreneur”.