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Like last year, they are again five in 2016, to be featured in the Choiseul ranking of 100 future African Economic Leaders, which has just been released. First Cameroonian in this African Top 100, Jean Paul Mélaga (39 years), MD of Whitestone Finance and former Africa Director for Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi (2008-15), has remained in this ranking for the past three years. The same is the case for Bony Daschaco (39 years), CEO of Acmar Media Group, and Tony Smith, CEO of Limitless Corporation and former Project Manager at Microsoft (2009-2011).
This year, the newcomers in the Choiseul are called Ingrid Etoke (36 years), Central Africa MD of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), the British multinational specialised in pharmaceutical products. Ex-Cameroon Director at Laboratoires Sandoz (2010-2014), this former student of the Université de Lille joins this ranking at the same time as Tonjé Bakang (35 years), a self-taught man who became CEO of Afrostream, after being Project Manager at Europacorp in 2013.
As a reminder, the Choiseul ranking, published every year for the Institute of the same name, “identifies, lists and ranks young African leaders aged 40 years or less, who may play a major role in the economic development of the continent in the near future”.
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The Cameroon lone air fleet, Camair-Co has indicated interest to extend flights to Bafoussam in the West Region from October 14.
This was a fallout of the 25th extraordinary board meeting of the Ministry of Transport Chaired by the Board Chair Mefire Oumarou, Secretary of State at the Ministry of Transport.
As other recommendations from the extraordinary board, the quality of civil aviation in the country will be improved in the services offered to clients. To add, a complete project to restructure airports in the country was agreed upon.
According to the Board Chair, two other planes will be added in the days ahead to help swell the air space and satisfy passengers.
The restructering of the civil aviation comes at a time Cameroon will be hosting two big football jamborees in the continent in 2016 and 2019.
CRTV
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The airline has been grappling with financial and managerial crisis since it launched operations in March 2011.
Reports say the firm's most profitable route is Douala-Paris, the flag-carrier’s lone intercontinental route.
An extra-ordinary board meeting in Douala on Friday, agreed that the Paris route be suspended for the company to concentrate on its domestic routes.
Board Chairman Mefire Oumarou said Camair-Co would focus on expansion of domestic destinations.
Safety challenges
He said the new routes to the northwestern and western cities of Bamenda and Bafoussam would be launched soon.
Camair-Co is the successor to Cameroon Airlines, the central African country’s pioneer flag-carrier, which was dogged by losses and safety challenges.
Five years later, observers say there were no indication that Camair’s successor would be profitable.
Camair-Co operated three planes untill the end of last year; the aged Boeing 767-300ER named The Dja, which it inherited from Camair, and two 737-700s leased from US-based Aviation Capital Group.
Serious handicap
The firm later acquired two small Chinese-built MA 60 planes, which were commissioned in January, raising the company’s fleet to five.
So far, the fleet has been cited as a serious handicap for the company, occasioning endemic flight cancellation, making the airline less competitive.
In one embarrassing incident in September last year, angry customers stormed Camair-Co’s office in Yaoundé and threatened to torch it over frequent flights cancellations.
Management hurdles
Only recently, the Cameroon Civil Aviation Authority (CCAA) banned Camair-co from flying to the Europe for what it termed non-compliance with safety standards.
The airline management and the Cameroon Transport Ministry, however, insisted that the ban was due to some administrative and management hurdles. The regulatory body later lifted the ban.
An independent assessment by US firm Boeing Consulting revealed that Camair-Co posted $59 million loss between 2012 and 2014.
The US consortium proposed a new business strategy, that government bailout Camair-co and also inject $101 million into the corporation.
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Participants were senior police, military and Civil Service officials employing Information and Communication Technologies.
Growing cyber criminality across the world has bled economies, stirred terrorism and leaked State sensitive information. The situation necessitates that experts must swim against the wave of cyber attacks that cost Cameroon 3 Billion FCFA last year. Cameroon has taken up various arms against cyber crime, including the creation by a presidential decree in 2010 of the National Agency for Information and Communication Technologies (ANTIC).
The agency seeks to check the escalation of the hydra-headed phenomenon. This and other security techniques against cyber crime have earned Cameroon the 15th position in the world and the fifth in Africa. This ranking is contained in the 2015 report by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). ANTIC Director General, Dr. Ebot Ebot Enaw, who made the disclosure, was addressing participants at one-week workshop in Buea from September 19-24, 2016.
Dr. Ebot Ebot Enaw explained that the workshop was intended to enable security officers carry out conclusive forensic research against cyber crime as well as improve the skills of civil servants with latest techniques in managing and securing Information and Communication Technology (ICT) tools. The human element was identified as the weakest link in the cyber security chain. The cyber training modules included extracting and analyzing digital evidence on media like hard drives, tablets and smart phones.
The 100 participants from State institutions, including the military, security services and Civil Service, equally built skills in detecting intrusions, monitoring social media, protecting computers and mobile phones and elaborating deep web.
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The African Development Bank has announced that it will seek to bail out Nigeria with a $4.1 billion loan (3.6 billion euros) over the next two years and $10 billion by 2019.
Akinwumi Adesina, the President of the African Development Bank (AfDB) who is on a three day visit to Nigeria, said he would go to the pan-African lender's board next month to seek approval for an initial $1 billion loan for Nigeria as the country grapples with its first recession in more than 20 years.
The money will help Nigeria revamp its power and agricultural sectors and also develop its infrastructure. It is his first official visit to the country since his appointment as president of AfDB last year.
The loan also comes at a time when Nigeria, Africa’s biggest economy, has been going through a recession due to the fall in oil prices. In addition, its currency is falling, inflation is above 17 percent and the country is suffering from a lack of foreign currency.
Adesina, a former Nigerian agriculture minister, said that the loans will move the country away from a reliance on oil revenue and focus on other productive sectors like agriculture and agro-industrial sectors and to small and medium enterprises (SMEs), an important job creator.
"What is needed is not only to spend your way out of the recession but to also incentivize your way out of the recession," Adesina told a news conference following his meetings with President Muhammadu Buhari and his Economic Management Team.
Nigeria’s Finance Minister Kemi Adeosun said that the loan has been a great economic relief to the country and that most of the sectors that the bank is focusing on are the very sectors that Nigeria would like to focus on to grow its economy.
"What we have to do is to make sure that the money we borrow is used on the key infrastructure that will drive the economy," Adeosun said.
Shrinking oil production
Attacks on energy facilities in the Niger Delta have cut crude production by around a third since the start of the year. That has left Nigeria struggling to fund a record 6.06 trillion naira ($18.6 billion, 16.6 billion euros) 2016 budget that aims to stimulate growth by tripling capital expenditure.
James Shikwati, an economist and head of the Inter Region Economic Network, told DW that with inadequate infrastructure in place, capital expenditure would not yield desirable results.
"Nigeria, having good infrastructure, would be able to take its goods to neighboring countries at the same time export to European markets. Infrastructure has been one of the key challenges that have been holding back agricultural products from getting to the markets," he told DW.
Shikwati also said that Nigeria has been over-reliant on the export of raw material which made it unattractive for many potential financiers.
"Adesina, as a former agriculture minister, knows the challenge of having a one-sided approach to a rich economy. As the AfDB head, he might be carrying a message of diversification of the Nigerian economy if it has to sustain its vibrancy as a leading economy in Sub-Saharan Africa." The AfDB has also invested $500 million dollars in the Development Bank of Nigeria which is being set up by Nigerian authorities.
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High consumer goods like cooking oil, soap, sugar, breakfast stuff and rice, are on promotional sale at the May 20 Avenue. A golden opportunity for Yaounde denizens who can make it to the sales point where most local companies have reduced the prices of their goods by 5, 10, 15 and even 20 per cent to relieve the public of the financial burden of school resumption.
Some vegetable oils have dropped from FCFA 6,000 to FCFA 5,500 for five liters, spaghetti from FCFA 500 to FCFA 400 for 500 grams, a packet of sugar from FCFA 700/750/800 to FCFA 625 and 25 kg of perfumed rice from FCFA 11,500 to FCFA 10,500. Unperformed rice remains relatively cheap while breakfast cookies like biscuits and milk have also seen prices sliced by some local importers and manufacturers. Some 1,800-gram containers of milk sell at the fair ground at FCFA 8,000, down from FCFA 9,000, 400 grams at FCFA 1,500, down from FCFA 2,500 and 2.5 grams for other companies at FCFA 5,000, down from FCFA 7,000. A litre of palm oil sells at FCFA 600, down from FCFA 800. The fair ground is a veritable avenue for business.
The Minister of Trade, Luc Magloire Atangana Mbarga, launched the second promotional sale exercise on Friday September 23, 2016, stating that it was government’s response to assisting parents after financial constraints from school resumption. He said the operation was not only limited to Yaounde, but all the 10 regional headquarters. “We are exhibiting Cameroon-made goods.
The goal is to promote local-made as a means to revive the industry,” the Minister said. He however stated that each enterprise at the sales ground had its marketing policy but notwithstanding, must agree with organizers to reduce the prices of its goods.
Cameroon Tribune
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Technology Article Count: 102
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