GEF's Outlook

Celebrating Cameroonians on the Go: DULCE CAMER'S TOP 50 LIST 2011

On an internal flight in Brazil, I met a Brazilian wearing a replica Cameroon football shirt with Samuel Eto'o inscribed on it. He said I was the first Cameroonian he'd seen in flesh and blood but he loved our country because of the footballer's exploits. "Cameroon, Cameroon," he screamed in the stuffed aircraft. Hmmm, if we could have several Eto'os in other fields, I thought. Well, some are heading in that direction. A few are show-cased in Dulce Camer's Top 50 List 2011.

Dulce Camer is a weblog by U.K. based young Cameroonians who believe there is more to their country than than politics, corruption and crime. 

About a year ago, Dulce Camer bloggers decided to launch a list of what they perceived were their country's future trailblazers. It was in reaction to a list of Cameroon's Top 50 Most Influential People released by the Paris based pan-African magazine - Jeune Afrique.

The feed-back from Dulce Camer's target audience was...erm...interesting. Some loved the initiative others accused it of bias towards its promoters' Facebook pals, etc.

The bloggers took the criticism with grace and tasked themselves to improve the selection criteria and nomination process. They asked the public to nominate those they thought merited to feature on the list in 2011.

"Remember our list of 50 most promising Camers last year? Well we're doing it again. And this time, we'd like to invite you to nominate your favourite Cameroonian change agent...To nominate a candidate (this could be yourself), please write to [email protected] and explain in 100 words or less why they should be considered," said one of the messages I received. 

Dulce Camer's list is not perfect. These things rarely are...But they can be inspirational.

I remember spending my adolescence reading (my mother's) Ebony magazines - and the successful African (Black) Americans presented therein became my point of reference.

Surely, somewhere in Saker Baptist College Limbe, a girl will be inspired to become a successful poet,writer and academic like Joyce Ashutantang upon seeing the latter celebrated among this year's Top 50 Cameroonians to watch.

Certainly there is a world beyond Eto'o'...Click here and be the judge.        

What African Women think inside - A review of poetry on Batuo’s World

Blog reviewed by George Esunge Fominyen

Is it easy to be an African woman? Always having other people deciding what you do, have, like or say; and how you should feel and act. Except if you are a woman like Joyce Ashutantang; a Cameroonian literary academic, actress, playwright, scriptwriter and poet.

In a series of poems posted on her blog –Batuo’s World – she masterfully brings out women's  innermost feelings about love and life that some of society’s “protectors” in her country and continent of origin would want gagged and buried inside.

One of those issues is whether to allow women choose to keep or terminate pregnancy within given conditions. In “Sarah Palin: A Poem for Women” Ashutantang writes: “She can kill a moose, I can’t / She touts a gun, I hate guns / She derides abortions; I stand by them; my body is mine…”

Recently in Cameroon, persons who speak for women (and who seem to know better than women about choices they should make) got thousands of men and women to march on the streets against the parliament’s decision to ratify the Protocol to theAfrican Charter on Human and People's Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa which simply provides that right to choose.

Timothy Kasolo: Journalists Need to be Trained to Blog

By George Esunge Fominyen

Timothy Kasolo is a Zambian journalist cum entrepreneur cum blogger. He was recently in Dakar to collect an award (coupled with a $2000 cheque) on behalf of lusakatimes.com. This online/citizen media  project had won the prize for the Best African Civil Society Organization’s Blog in the Waxal Blogging Africa Awards.

The ceremony included a debate on the marriage between blogging and journalism. So how do the likes of Timothy deal with this union? I stole into Timothy's time at the reception (with clicking plates and spoons in the background) for a conversation on the matter. One thing he said was that journalists need to be trained to be good bloggers but started by introducing lusakatimes.com...

Timothy Waxal Award Winner.mp3 -

Conversation With...Rosebell kagumire -Award Winning Journalist-Blogger

By George Esunge Fominyen

Rosebell Kagumire, winner of the  Waxal Award for Best English-Speaking African journalist's blog, says ordinary Africans can use blogging to change people's perception of Africa. She spoke to me after receiving her award in Dakar, Senegal on Monday, 9 March 2009.

This investigative journalist for "The Independent" news magazine in Kampala - Uganda thinks if blogging is made close to everyone in Africa it could serve as a counterweight to the depiction of Africa by international media like the CNN and the BBC as a place of suffering, despair and poverty. She supposes it might even make these media view Africa differently.

My conversation with Rosebell also delved into the difference between blogging and journalism and how she copes with both caps...

Best English Journalist Blogger - Rosabell Kagumire

Ivorian Community Radio Producers Discover the Joy of Blogging

By George Esunge Fominyen

Towards the end of January 2009, I recieved a mail from the editorial team of Global Voices online about a meme to "teach someone you love to blog or mini-blog" on the occasion of Valentine's day. That was a dream action to take but I couldn't. As they say better late than never. On the occasion of a workshop organised for community radio broadcasters in Grand Bassam - Côte d'Ivoire, I decided to spread the blogging gospel. That's how my colleague, Judith Lenti Sidibé and I set up Bassamony!  

Hello 4-1-9 Man...Check out my Dog, Monkey and Baby Fey-Scam!

By George Esunge Fominyen

It is the end of the year and many persons are trying to make some fast money to celebrate properly. Like it or not, one means of getting rich quickly is setting up a scam through the Internet.  Of course, 4-1-9 and fey-men do not only wait for this moment but you surely receive more intriguing emails at this time of the year... A Cameroonian blogger - Kamer Stories -  weaved an interesting post entitled "see me trouble" based on a letter sent to the author's email box by one of these scammers. She told off the scammer: "My man think again, I'm not that gullible. Better luck next time ya". Evidently she thought the author was definitely Nigerian.

True.  Our Nigerian neighbours have made themselves infamous through racketeering via the Internet and other tools... BUT, it could have just been another Cameroonian. We are not so clean either! Our fey-mania has grown (or crossed?) from fake money-doubling deals to selling dogs and monkeys on the net and now we are offering abandoned babies for adoption. There is even a view that this is new capitalist model...