Dibussi Tande: Scribbles from the Den

Cameroon Drops Nine Places on the 2006-2007 Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) Rankings

Cameroon has dropped from the 99th to the 108th position on the Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) rankings for 2006-2007 released this week by the World Economic Forum (WEF). 

According to the WEF, the index “contains a detailed country/economy profile for each of the 125 economies featured in the study, providing a comprehensive summary of the overall position in the Index rankings as well as a guide to what are considered to be the most prominent competitive advantages and competitive disadvantages of each.”

"Save My Wife" (3): How to Help

N. Kristof

When I wrote about Prudence the first time, readers reached for their wallets and asked how they could help. I’ve been thinking about it for a week, and here are some suggestions.

First, a good introduction to the world of maternal issues is the website of AMDD, the Averting Maternal Death and Disability program at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.

"Save My Wife: (2): Prudence’s Struggle Ends

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

YOKADOUMA, Cameroon: As Prudence Lemokouno lay on a hospital bed here, spitting blood, her breath coming in terrible rattles, it was obvious that what was killing her wasn’t so much complications in pregnancy as the casual disregard for women like her across much of the developing world.

Prudence's last hours (c) N. Kristof

Sending the Wrong Message

When driving through the English speaking region of Cameroon, one comes across many billboards with gramatically incorrect messages that have the potential to confuse or even endanger the public. This is the case with some of the billboards put up by the Ministry of Public Health as part of its national AIDS awareness and prevention campaign.

Book Review: The International Law of Responsibility for Economic Crimes

Ndiva Kofele-Kale. The International Law of Responsibility for Economic Crimes. Holding State Officials Individually Liable for Acts of Fraudulent Enrichment. (Second Edition). Ashgate Publishing. Sept. 2006. 424 pages. $154.95

Ashgate publishers have just released the second edition of Professor Ndiva Kofele-Kale’s groundbreaking 1995 publication, The International Law of Responsibility for Economic Crimes.  Like the first edition, the second focuses on “the problem of indigenous spoliation in developing countries,” and “explores the controversial issue of spoliation by national officials of the wealth of the states of which they are custodians."

‘Save My Wife’ [A Snapshot of Cameroon's Health System]

By Nicholas D. Kristof [New York Times]

YOKADOUMA, Cameroon: Prudence Lemokouno was lying motionless on a bed in the bleak hospital here, her stomach swelled with a fetus that had just died, her eyes occasionally flickering with fright but mostly dull and empty.

Prudence at the Yokadouma hospital (c) N. Kristof

Dr. Pascal Pipi, the lone doctor in the public hospital, said she had a few more hours to live, and then she would join the half-million women a year who die around the world in pregnancy and childbirth.

The Legacy of 9/11 in Numbers

From The Independent

• 2,973 Total number of people killed (excluding the 19 hijackers) in the September 11, 2001 attacks.
• 72,000 Estimated number of civilians killed worldwide since September 11, 2001 as a result of the war on terror.
• 2,932 Total number of US servicemen and women killed in Afghanistan and Iraq since September 2001.

Grahamstown to Host Africa's First Conference on Blogging

Africa's first conference on blogging, the Digital Citizen Indaba on Blogging, will take place at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa from September 14 - 15, 2006. According to the organizers, "the aim of the Indaba is to equip Africans with skills relating to new media so as to empower them and the organizations they work for by creating an effective digital voice."

The Indaba will bring together bloggers, citizen journalists, media practitioners, industry experts and representatives from civil society from all over Africa and beyond.

2006 Economic Freedom of the World Report: Cameroon 102nd out of 130

Cameroon has dropped three positions in the 2006 Economic Freedom of the World Report released on Thursday by the Cato Institute in conjunction with the Fraser Institute. Although the country's score is the same as last year's (5.6 out of 10), it has nonetheless dropped from the 99th to the 102nd position (tying with Nigeria and Mali). The report surveyed 130 countries and used data from 2004, with 1970 as its base.

A Lesson of Tolerance in an Era of Religious Fundamentalism

In the past week, the US media has been replete with commentary about the most recent Al Qaeda threat calling on the Christian West, “even the crusader-in-chief George W. Bush”, to either “abandon their unbelief and repent and enter into the light of Islam” or face its wrath.

Sultan Mbombo Njoya, King of the Bamoun at the Ordination of Father Mbouapegnigni

University of Buea's Anti-Pidgin Campaign in Pictures

Pidgin is "the language of playfulness, informality, vulgarity, transgression, trade, celebration, and family." To ask students to "shun it" is to ask them to enter the English-speaking public sphere--which is already fraught in majority-Francophone Cameroon--and not look back.” Dr. Juliana Nfah-Abbenyi - University of Southern Mississippi, USA