Increasingly determined and bold separatists seeking the international recognition of the self-proclaimed “Federal Republic of Ambazonia” (Southern Cameroons) have created a crypto-currency which they claim is the first to be fully nation-backed.
The Wednesday (Nov. 7) release of 78 school students who were abducted by gunmen in the city of Bamenda a few days earlier, has done little to ease suspicion or reduce the number of unproven allegations between the Cameroon government and separatist militants in the country’s Anglophone regions.
On Monday (Nov. 5), witnesses said gunmen abducted dozens of mostly teenage students from a secondary school in Nkwen, on the outskirt of the city of Bamenda in Cameroon’s troubled English-speaking northwest region.
The shooting of a American missionary on Monday (Oct. 30) has for the first time publicly pulled the United States into Cameroon’s long-drawn conflict raging in the English-speaking parts of the country.
Over the last two years, Cameroon’s government has gained a poor reputation for being repressive when it comes to internet freedoms. It’s had one of the longest-running intermittent internet shutdowns on record of 230 days between January 2017 and March 2018 as it tried to prevent political activists in the English-speaking regions of the country from using social media platforms to share information or organize.
On Monday Oct. 1, Cameroon’s Anglophone separatists marked the first anniversary of their self-declared breakaway state, the Federal Republic of Ambazonia (Southern Cameroons) in a somber mood. This was a marked difference from last year’s outpouring of celebrations and rhetoric by locals to unilaterally and symbolically declare independence of Cameroon’s two English-speaking regions.
*This story has been updated
Hampered by an internet shutdown in Cameroon’s troubled English-speaking regions in January 2017, Zuo Bruno, a young ethical hacker, was inspired to develop a car-tracking application using SMS. The application named Zoomed, whose adoption has been fast in Cameroon, is now on the verge of spreading across the continent.
Cameroon is grappling with the threat of escalating violence in different crisis locations across the country even as the authorities prepare for run-up to the presidential elections set for Oct. 7.
Kumba, Cameroon
Yaoundé, Cameroon
*Updated with Amnesty International death toll
Yaoundé, Cameroon
Yaoundé, Cameroon
Yaoundé, Cameroon
Yaoundé, Cameroon
Internet connections have been completely shut down in the northwest and southwest of Cameroon, its two main English-speaking regions as a long drawn out mass protest against marginalization by the French-speaking led government persists.
Maiduguri, Nigeria
Yaoundé, Cameroon
Yaoundé, Cameroon
