• Cameroon crude output on track for 100,000 bpd in 2012
• Cameroon government cracks down on illegal logging
• Cameroon's 2012 growth seen at 5.5 per cent

• Cameroon: Industrial palm oil plantation displaces people, threatens livelyhoods
• Foreign poachers target Cameroon elephants
• WWF: Elephant killing continues in Cameroon

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Positive Trends
Short Summaries of Top Stories

Cameroon crude output on track for 100,000 bpd in 2012
18 March 2012 - Cameroon is on target to double crude production to 100,000 barrels per day in 2012 after independent oil producer Perenco raised output from the Baf 3 oilfield to 50,000 bpd, an official at Cameroon's state-run hydrocarbons corporation said. (more)

Cameroon government cracks down on illegal logging
5 March 2012 - The government of Cameroon has intensified a crackdown on illegal loggers in a measure aimed at conserving the country's forest resources and combating the effects of climate change. Philip Ngole Ngwese, the country's minister of forestry and wildlife, recently announced the suspension of licenses for 27 companies that had failed to comply with legislation governing activities in the forest sector. (more)

Cameroon's 2012 growth seen at 5.5 per cent
6 February 2012 - Cameroon's economy is expected to grow by 5.5 per cent in 2012, a World Bank official said on Monday. Cameroon is the region's main port and breadbasket, supplying Chad, Central African Republic, Congo Republic, and Gabon. Non-oil economic activities, particularly growth in the primary and tertiary sectors, helped Cameroon's economy grow in 2011 to 4.1 per cent, and will be the main drivers in 2012. (more)

Cameroon: Yaounde Handicraft Show - ingenuity in craftsmanship
25 January 2012 - Some 20 craftsmen and women from the Republic of South Africa were present in Yaounde for the ongoing third edition of Cameroon's International Handicrafts Exhibition (SIARC). Elizabeth Thabethe, Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry of South Africa, sees in Cameroon an investment destination and hopes frank collaboration on win-win basis would accelerate the two country's socio-economic development. (more)

Energy company Kosmos to explore for oil in Cameroon
12 January 2012 - US Kosmos Energy signed an agreement with Cameroon's state oil company SNH on Thursday allowing it to explore in the central African state's offshore Fako block, SNH said. Kosmos explore near Cameroon's productive Rio del Rey and Kribi-Campo basins, for six years, SNH said in a statement. Kosmos helped discover in 2007 the Jubilee oil field offshore Ghana, which began pumping in late 2010. Cameroon is one of Africa's oldest oil producers but has seen output decline from its peak in 1985. (more)

Cameroon eyes 50 per cent hike in oil output in 2012
27 November 2011 - Cameroon could produce some 36.5 million barrels of oil next year, the equivalent of 100,000 barrels a day and over 50 per cent up on the 'conservative' estimate of the central African state's 2012 budget, a state oil company official told Reuters. The senior National Hydrocarbons Corporation (SNH) official said two new wells were expected to go into production during the first quarter of 2012. (more)

Cameroon targets 5.5 per cent growth in 2012
18 November 2011 - Cameroon will raise spending 8.9 per cent in 2012 in an effort to stimulate the economy of the oil-producing central African state, according to a draft budget due to be delivered to parliament on 18 November. Cameroon -- central Africa's largest economy -- will see GDP expand 5.5 per cent next year, up from 4.1 per cent this year, according to the budget. (more)

Cameroon economy grows 4.4 per cent in Q1: government
28 June 2011 - Cameroon's economy grew 4.4 per cent in the first quarter compared to the same period last year, helped by an increase in raw materials prices, the Finance Ministry said on Tuesday. Cameroon's government is targeting 3.8 per cent growth in 2011, versus 2.9 per cent in 2010. (more)

Nigeria, Cameroon in new plan to save rare chimp
24 June 2011 - Cameroon and Nigeria plan to enlarge their protected forest areas and boost conservation programmes to save a rare chimpanzee subspecies from going extinct. Cameroon plans to enlarge its protected areas by 10 million hectares (24.7 million acres), by creating 10 new parks or reserves that would boost the country's conservation area to 21 per cent of its total land surface, from 19 per cent. (more)

Cameroon GDP growth seen at 3.8 per cent in 2011: Prime Minister
15 November 2010 - Cameroon's economy is expected to grow at 3.8 per cent in 2011, up from 2.1 per cent this year, Prime Minister Philemon Yang said on Monday during a presentation of the draft budget. (more)

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Flops
Short Summaries of Top Stories

Cameroon: Industrial palm oil plantation displaces people, threatens livelyhoods
14 December 2012 - Campaigners opposed to a large palm oil plantation in a rainforest covering part of the Korup National Park in southwestern Cameroon say up to 45,000 people risk losing their livelihoods if the project proceeds. 'The plantation will economically displace approximately 25,000 people and put at risk many others who depend on that land for small-scale food production, hunting, and non-timber forest products. Thus, the net impact on employment will actually be negative. This is not a fair deal,' Nasako Besingi, one of the campaigners against the plantation, told IRIN. Campaigners argue that a large industrial plantation could destabilize the area's rich ecosystem and that the environmental and socioeconomic gains from preserving the rainforest outweigh the promised benefits from the plantation. 'Our people used to live in harmony with animals in this forest but recent forest exploitation, aggravated by SGSOCs bulldozing of forest areas', has upset the sensitive human-animal eco-balance, Besingi said, leading to a number of recent cases of elephants attacking farmers. SGSOC still lacks presidential approval and the project has been in violation of the law since 2010, say campaigners. The company had been clearing forest and developing oil palm nurseries prior to submitting an Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) or obtaining the Certificate of Environmental Conformity as required by law. (more)

Foreign poachers target Cameroon elephants
4 December 2012 - Despite armed guards, Cameroon's dwindling elephant population is being decimated by heavily armed gangs of international poachers, according to a top official of the World Wide Fund for Nature. In the first quarter of this year, poachers travelled more than 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) on horseback from Sudan, crossing through the Central African Republic to reach northern Cameroon's Bouba Ndjida National Park where they killed more than 300 elephants in two months. The killings wiped out about 80 per cent of the park's elephant population. The high demand for ivory in Asia threatens the remaining elephant population in Cameroon and the Central African sub-region with possible extinction, said United States Ambassador to Cameroon Robert P. Jackson. Africa is home to roughly 600,000 elephants, just a third of the number recorded a decade ago, according to data released by the US embassy. Conservationists say that at least 25,000 elephants were killed in the continent in 2012 alone, due to the demand for ivory, as the bodies of the animals were abandoned after their ivory tusks were removed. It is feared that Nigeria's Islamist extremists Boko Haram could be involved in the poaching, as well as gangs from Chad and the Central African Republic, which surround northern Cameroon. (more)

WWF: Elephant killing continues in Cameroon
15 March 2012 - Soldiers in Cameroon are losing the battle to save the last elephants in a remote frontier park from marauding horsemen believed to be invading from Sudan, the World Wildlife Fund said Thursday. 'The forces arrived too late to save most of the park's elephants, and were too few to deter the poachers,' said Natasha Kofoworola Quist, director of the fund's Central Africa programme. 'WWF is disturbed by reports that the poaching continues unabated in Bouba N'Djida National Park and that a soldier's life has been lost.' She said at least half of the park's 400 elephants have been killed. This past year has seen an unprecedented increase in poaching of elephants for their tusks which are smuggled mainly to China and Thailand to make ivory ornaments. (more)

Cameroon: 126 arrested over independence protest
2 October 2011 - An official says police have arrested 126 protesters seeking independence for English-speaking Cameroon. The police official says they were arrested Saturday and Sunday for defying public order. They follow the arrests of 50 activists from the Southern Cameroons National Council who demonstrated Saturday. The official asked for anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to journalists. The protest follows other recent unrest as 9 October elections approach. On Thursday, gunmen carrying signs opposing President Paul Biya blockaded a bridge and shot at police in the city of Douala. (more)

Cameroon attacks show pirates are heading south
19 May 2010 - An attack by gunmen on two ships anchored off Cameroon's major port of Douala shows pirates are extending their range in the Gulf of Guinea, an increasingly important source of oil to western markets. Two Russian nationals from the cargo ship North Sea, and a Lithuanian captain from another vessel were seized in the back-to-back raids 16 May. The raid is the latest in a string of pirate attacks in the Gulf of Guinea -- which stretches from the Guineas in the northwest to Angola in the south -- and marks a shift beyond the Cameroon-Nigeria maritime frontier where most attacks have been clustered. 'There seems to be a pattern emerging. They are moving south,' said Rolake Akinola, Africa analyst at Eurasia Group. 'It is obviously a real concern. Douala is the hub for the CEMAC (Central African Economic and Monetary Community) region. Insecurity appears to be following increased investor activity.' (more)

Cameroon: 'Silent emergency' persists
19 April 2009 - Each year in Cameroon at least 45,000 children die due to malnutrition, according to the UN Children's Fund. In northern Cameroon global acute malnutrition (GAM) -- weight deficit for height -- stands at 12.6 per cent, striking 115,000 children under five, according to UNICEF. Nearly forty per cent of children -- some 350,000 -- suffer chronic malnutrition. The World Health Organization classifies a GAM between 10 per cent and 14.9 per cent as 'serious', warranting supplementary feeding; 15 per cent and above constitutes an emergency. The causes of malnutrition in Cameroon are many and varied, and similar to those in many Sahel countries, according to Garnier: lack of basic healthcare, food insecurity, poor access to essential child-survival services, and poor infant feeding practices. Isolation of these zones is also a contributing factor. Exacerbating difficult living conditions in eastern and northern Cameroon are influxes of refugees from Central African Republic and Chad. (more)

Central African Republic: Donor conference begins in Cameroon
22 February 2006 - In an effort to deflect an impending humanitarian disaster in the Central African Republic (CAR), a UN-sponsored conference this week in Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon, will see UN agencies and NGOs ask donors for US$6 million in humanitarian funds. The deteriorating situation in CAR's north is regarded by some as the world's most neglected crisis. (more)