Citizenship in the Age of Globalization
During the African Athletics Championship which took place earlier this month in the Ethiopian capital
of Addis Abeba, Ethiopia, one of the star attractions was Cameroon’s hammer throw representative, Georgina Toth. Georgina attracted lots of media attention because she is white. A 26-year old native of Hungary, Georgina moved to the United States in 2006 after she obtained a scholarship for the Northern Arizona University where she is a Business major.
Georgina’s story an intriguing one because she does not have any tangible connection to Cameroon; she is not married to a Cameroonian, does not have children of Cameroonian ancestry and has never lived in Cameroon.
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Press freedom declined on a global scale in 2007, with particularly worrisome trends evident in the former Soviet Union, Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa. This marked the sixth straight year of overall deterioration. Improvements in a small number of countries were overshadowed by a continued, relentless assault on independent news media by a wide range of actors, in both authoritarian states and countries with relatively open media environments…
32-year old Ebenizer Folefack Sontsa, the Cameroonian national whose violent repatriation caused a mini revolt last Saturday on a Brussels Airline flight to Douala and led to
On March 27, 136 Nigerian passengers were
In the past couple of weeks, there have been numerous stories in the national and international media about the arrest of prominent Cameroonian protest singer Lapiro de Mbanga. However, the arrest, summary trial and sentencing of the less known protest singer, Joe La Conscience, has not received as much attention.
YAOUNDE, April 10 (Reuters) - Cameroon's parliament adopted a constitutional bill on Thursday removing a two-term limit to allow President Paul Biya to extend his 25-year rule over central Africa's biggest economy past 2011.
Leaving Yaoundé, Cameroon's capital, after a recent business trip, my colleagues and I settled into our airliner's seats and breathed a sigh of relief. We had planned a retreat for emerging African leaders to devise practical ways to produce change within their individual countries and institutions. We had selected Yaoundé as the meeting place because of Cameroon's presumed political stability, relatively reliable infrastructure and easy access.
the public's bluff and submitted a draft bill to Parliament amending the constitution of Cameroon. Although it had been expected in many quarters that the regime would propose an extensive overhaul of the constitution – even if only to placate those opposing the scrapping of presidential limits but nonetheless believe that the 1996 constitution was a poorly drafted document believed that the constitution – the regime did no such thing. The Biya regime has instead proposed a very limited overhaul which focuses almost exclusively on the clauses related to the Presidency. Most significantly, it effectively scraps presidential term limits and grants the president immunity for acts committed while exercising his duties as Head of State.
It’s hard to believe that the night before last the news was buzzing insanely with stories that Mugabe was on the brink of stepping down and going.
corruption campaign, picked up again yesterday with the arrest of two former ministers and some of their collaborators.
The role of the Diaspora in national development
They say you died in enemy territory
We are paying close attention to events in Cameroon.
After about a year of online teasers on Youtube and elsewhere, Volcanic Sprint, the long-awaited film on the Mount Cameroon race by Steve Dorst and Dan Evans is now available on DVD. Extreme sports enthusiasts and fans of the Mount Cameroon race will not regret the long wait. The final product is a beautifully produced, visually stunning and compelling hour-long film built around the trials and tribulations of a handful of athletes trying to conquer “The Chariot of the Gods” or Mount Fako, as the locals call it.
Cameroon has made many positive changes in the past decade. You should be proud of your press freedoms, religious tolerance and improvements in human rights. The 2006 Criminal Procedure Code was a major step forward. Cameroon’s role in supporting international peacekeeping, in combating wildlife trafficking, and in hosting refugees shows an ability to adapt positively to a changing world environment. I would like to acknowledge my government’s appreciation for the excellent support we have received from the Government of Cameroon in evacuating our Embassy personnel from Chad this week – it underscores our long and broad-based friendship.
To suggest that Cameroon embodies the tragedy that befell African peoples when European colonialism imposed itself on the continent is quite an understatement.
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia: The man was nervous. He was afraid, he said, of the secret police. So he advised me to hire a random taxi. I was to park at a certain church. And there, I was to wait. A few minutes later he called again, this time on a different cell phone. He gave me directions to a nondescript house with an iron gate.
After close to a year of subtle and not-so-subtle calls by members of the ruling CPDM for an amendment of Article 6(2) of the constitution of Cameroon which imposes presidential term limits, President Paul Biya finally took a stance on the debate last December 31. During his nationwide end-of-year address, Paul Biya backed the opponents of term limits by arguing that: “In fact, there are arguments for a revision, particularly of Article 6 which indeed imposes a limitation of the people’s will, a limitation which is out of tune with the very idea of democratic choice.”
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