George Esunge Fominyen is currently Coordinator of the Multi-Media Editorial Unit of the PANOS Institute West Africa (PIWA) in Dakar, Senegal.
PANOS Institute West Africa
6, Rue Calmette Dakar, Senegal
Email: esungeft@gmail.com
AFRICAphonie AFRICAphonie is a Pan African Association which operates on the premise that AFRICA can only be what AFRICANS and their friends want AFRICA to be.
Bakwerirama Spotlight on Bakweri Society and Culture. The Bakweri are an indigenous African nation.
Bate Besong Bate Besong, award-winning firebrand poet and playwright.
Bernard Fonlon Dr Bernard Fonlon was an extraordinary figure who left a large footprint in Cameroonian intellectual, social and political life.
Fonlon-Nichols Award Website of the Literary Award established to honor the memory of BERNARD FONLON, the great Cameroonian teacher, writer, poet, and philosopher, who passionately defended human rights in an often oppressive political atmosphere.
France Watcher Purpose of this advocacy site: To aggregate all available information about French terror, exploitation and manipulation of Africa
Jacob Nguni Virtuoso guitarist, writer and humorist. Former lead guitarist of Rocafil, led by Prince Nico Mbarga.
Martin Jumbam The refreshingly, unique, incisive and generally hilarous writings about the foibles of African society and politics by former Cameroon Life Magazine columnist Martin Jumbam.
Nowa Omoigui Professor of Medicine and interventional cardiologist, Nowa Omoigui is also one of the foremost experts and scholars on the history of the Nigerian Military and the Nigerian Civil War. This site contains many of his writings and comments on military subjects and history.
Postwatch Magazine A UMI (United Media Incorporated) publication. Specializing in well researched investigative reports, it focuses on the Cameroonian scene, particular issues of interest to the former British Southern Cameroons.
Simon Mol Cameroonian poet, writer, journalist and Human Rights activist living in Warsaw, Poland
Victor Mbarika ICT Weblog Victor Wacham Agwe Mbarika is one of Africa's foremost experts on Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). Dr. Mbarika's research interests are in the areas of information infrastructure diffusion in developing countries and multimedia learning.
Tunduzi A West African in Arusha at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda on the angst, contradictions and rewards of that process.
Dr Godfrey Tangwa (Gobata) Renaissance man, philosophy professor, actor and newspaper columnist, Godfrey Tangwa aka Rotcod Gobata touches a wide array of subjects. Always entertaining and eminently readable. Visit for frequent updates.
Francis Nyamnjoh Prolific writer, social and political commentator, he was a professor at University of Buea and University of Botswana. Currently he is Head of Publications and Dissemination at CODESRIA in Dakar, Senegal. His writings are socially relevant and engaging even to the non specialist.
Ilongo Sphere: Writer and Poet Novelist and poet Ilongo Fritz Ngalle, long concealed his artist's wings behind the firm exterior of a University administrator and guidance counsellor. No longer. Enjoy his unique poems and glimpses of upcoming novels and short stories.
Scribbles from the Den The award-winning blog of Dibussi Tande, Cameroon's leading blogger.
Enanga's POV Rosemary Ekosso, a Cameroonian novelist and blogger who lives and works in Cambodia.
GEF's Outlook Blog of George Esunge Fominyen, former CRTV journalist and currently Coordinator of the Multi-Media Editorial Unit of the PANOS Institute West Africa (PIWA) in Dakar, Senegal.
The Chia Report The incisive commentary of Chicago-based former CRTV journalist Chia Innocent
Voice Of The Oppressed Stephen Neba-Fuh is a political and social critic, human rights activist and poet who lives in Norway.
Bate Besong Bate Besong, award-winning firebrand poet and playwright.
Bakwerirama Spotlight on the Bakweri Society and Culture. The Bakweri are an indigenous African nation.
Fonlon-Nichols Award Website of the Literary Award established to honor the memory of BERNARD FONLON, the great Cameroonian teacher, writer, poet, and philosopher, who passionately defended human rights in an often oppressive political atmosphere.
Bernard Fonlon Dr Bernard Fonlon was an extraordinary figure who left a large footprint in Cameroonian intellectual, social and political life.
AFRICAphonie AFRICAphonie is a Pan African Association which operates on the premise that AFRICA can only be what AFRICANS and their friends want AFRICA to be.
Canute - Chronicles from the Heartland Professional translator, freelance writer and a regular contributor to THE POST newspaper. Lives in Douala, Cameroon
When a social science researcher takes to fictional literature, it is hard to draw the line between reality and imagination. It is the case with Cameroon’s Francis Nyamnjoh; a sound academic who knows how to tell a story simply and vividly. Apart from deliberate exaggerations by the author, any Cameroonian who has lived in the country for the past quarter of a century reading The Travail of Dieudonné, could easily find their space or that of a person they know in the colourful characters in the novel’s setting of Mimboland.
What’s in a name? Mimbo in Cameroonian pidgin means a drink (from palm wine to champagne). So doped of this potent nectar, are the characters of The Travail of Dieudonné that, they readily accept their unfortunate fate. Theirs is a world of misery in which insultingly rich and corrupt officials reap of an undemocratic government in which poor governance thrives, while the masses abandon themselves to sexual perversity and self-pity with the help of alcohol. In many ways, it is Cameroon seen through a glass of beer and Cameroonians locked inside a bottle of lager.
In December 2008, the American newspaper Star Tribune reported that a woman of Cameroon origin had filed a lawsuit in a US Federal Court accusing another woman for using voodoo to steal her man and ruin her life. By February the woman had withdrawn the case citing the power of prayer as the final sword in her battle to regain "her man". This affair drew a mix of contempt, ridicule and sympathy for her, as it seemed absurd that one would dare to file such a case in a court of law.
If this woman had been well advised she would have simply taken the case to the land of her forefathers. Article 251 of the Cameroon penal code provides that anyone found guilty of practising sorcery could be punished with imprisonment for up to 10 years and fined 100,000 FCFA ($200). All she needed to do would have been to prove her allegations. Well, that's where things become awkward. How do you prove the existence of what is essentially supernatural?
The Al Jazeera television programme People and Power recently broadcast an investigative report by Sorious Samura on the penal implications of witchcraft in the Central African Republic. I shared the version published on Youtube (below) with some friends. It sparked a debate over the presence of the occult in the minds and lives of Africans. Is this whole thing about witchcraft a figment of people's imagination? Are some African governments right to maintain witchcraft as a crime punishable by law? Where does one draw the line between a true para-normal occurence and idle and defamatory accusations?
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