Amindeh Blaise Atabong

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Hi Quartz Africa members,

A few months back, investors unveiled plans of setting up a global multimedia hub in the Indian Ocean Island of Mauritius. Touted as “Africa’s first integrated, international hub for the media and creative industries,” the envisaged MediaCity Mauritius will be based within the Beau Plan smart city.

A recent spate of deportations of African asylum seekers from the US in the last weeks of the Trump administration has attracted widespread condemnation from human rights advocates.

Cameroon’s long drawn-out, neglected Anglophone crisis has again come under a harsh global spotlight with the killing of at least six school children in the country’s troubled southwest region.

Earlier this week (Oct. 19) in Cameroon, president Paul Biya ordered the deferment of the collection, by digital means, of custom duties and taxes on imported phones and other electronic devices. A new automated system for the collection had been scheduled to go operational on Oct. 15.

A new automated system for the collection of customs duties and taxes on imported phones and other electronic devices in Cameroon is not being welcomed. The move, which shifts the burden of payment to the end user, in the event of default by the importer, has attracted widespread condemnation—both online and offline.

This Nov. 6 will mark 38 years president Paul Biya has clung on to power in Cameroon—making him Africa’s second longest-serving head of state, after his peer Teodoro Obiang of Equatorial Guinea.

Anti-migrant sentiments reared its head again this week in South Africa. On Sept. 23, hundreds of protesters under the banner of #PutSouthAfricansFirst movement marched along the streets of the capital Pretoria to the Nigerian High Commission, where they handed over a memorandum.

Earlier this year, Jawar Mohammed, the prominent political activist and media entrepreneur, who had returned home to Ethiopia from the US, looked set to challenge his former ally, prime minister Abiy Ahmed, in the country’s election. But there was immediately uncertainty created over Jawar’s eligibility simply because he had been a US citizen. Ethiopian law does not allow dual nationality and even though he written letters saying he’s renounced his US citizenship that uncertainty remains.

Like elsewhere, Cameroonians at home and abroad are very worried over the novel coronavirus which has been rapidly spreading across the country.

The legendary Cameroonian Afro-jazz saxophonist, Manu Dibango died this week in a Paris hospital at 86 from complications after contracting the coronavirus while being treated for another illness.

Not far from Hôtel 2 Février in downtown Lomé, the capital city of Togo, middle-aged men and women hawk medical disposables and assorted drugs outisde in the humid hot weather, not far from a pharmacy store. The packaging of the medicine looked visibly battered by the scorching sun and the cardboard was peeling leaving the expiry dates and batch numbers barely visible.

In 2009, Tsige Gebre-Mariam, professor of pharmaceutics and drug delivery at Addis Ababa University was excited when he discovered a drug to expel worm-like parasites from the human body.

Pan-African e-commerce giant Jumia has suspended its Marketplace business in Cameroon.

Ten leaders of the most influential Anglophone separatist movement in Cameroon have been convicted.

The tiny oil-rich central African nation of Equatorial Guinea is carrying on plans to erect a wall along its 183km-long border with Cameroon.

Yaoundé, Cameroon-based video game company, Kiro’o Games, has rolled out the comic book version of “Aurion: The Legacy of the Kori-Odan”; an African-themed role-playing game which debuted in 2016. Kiro’o is using Aurion’s colored comic strip to target comic lovers in the US.

In Africa, crop pests and disease have been hampering agriculture productivity for decades. Africa farmers lose an estimated 49% of expected total crop yield per annum—the highest in the world – according to the Centre for Agriculture and Biosciences International.

Last month the World Health Organization’s Global Surveillance and Monitoring System for Substandard and Falsified Medical Products issued an alert over the circulation of confirmed fake meningitis vaccines in Niger.

The news that over 7,500 kilograms of pangolin scales have been seized in the last five years in Cameroon has again brought to light the devastating reach of international poaching and trafficking in Africa. Even more shocking, this month, was the seizure in Vietnam of 2,500 kg of pangolin scales in just one consignment from Nigeria, which the federal government has decided to investigate.

Cameroon’s main opposition leader, Maurice Kamto, who has continuously claimed he won the last year’s contentious presidential election, is in detention after he was arrested alongside dozens of protesters in the economic capital Douala on Monday (Jan. 28) for organizing and participating in street demonstrations.

The Cameroon government is backing a new technology hub to be called “Cameroon Silicon River” in its capital city Yaoundé, in a move that is likely to move attention from its small, but already thriving ecosystem in the country’s southwest region.