To 10:40 p.m. local time precisely, the presidential plane landed on the tarmac of Yaoundé International Airport. French President Emmanuel Macron arrived for his first visit to Cameroon and Central Africa, with the aim of reviving the political and economic relations between the two countries, which are losing momentum, in a context where the presence of France in its former colonies is increasingly questioned.
The menu is copious for the French leader: from security in the Gulf of Guinea to the fight against Boko Haram through the conflict opposing in the North-West and South-West for more than five years armed separatist groups to the forces from order to the economy, the program is very different from that of his predecessor, François Hollande, who made a whirlwind visit to the country in 2015.
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The succession of Paul Biya in the minds
But above all, Emmanuel Macron is expected for an interview this Tuesday morning before a lunch with Paul Biya and his wife Chantal at the presidential palace. The interview with his counterpart Paul Biya, 89, who has ruled Cameroon with an iron fist for nearly forty years, should be an opportunity to discuss all subjects, even those that annoy, it is said. Emmanuel Macron had provoked the indignation of power by declaring in 2020, after being arrested by an opponent, that he had “put pressure on Paul Biya” on the “intolerable” violence in these regions.
Today, Paul Biya’s succession is on everyone’s mind. Despite a clearly degraded state of health in recent years, Paul Biya continues to give the impression of administering the country alone, certainly relying on a very small circle, but whose members he ruthlessly appoints and banishes as he pleases. The lucky ones have known disgrace, others prison. In power since 1982, he only makes brief public appearances, clearly struggling to get around, and his rare recorded speeches are laboriously delivered. From then on, rumors regularly swell about a dead or moribund Paul Biya, denied each time by a video or photos, while talking about his succession is taboo, even for those closest to him. No one has ever dared to come out of the woodwork, nor even sketched, at least publicly, the slightest intention.
The candidate who will be promoted by the all-powerful Democratic Rally of the Cameroonian People (RDPC) will undoubtedly be elected, as Paul Biya was, seven times without firing a shot on behalf of the CPDM. “The opposition is not sufficiently united and solid to seriously seek the supreme magistracy”, judges political scientist Jacques Ebwea, to AFP. On the other hand, the CPDM “risks crumbling into several factions upon the death of the president” and of splitting over the suitors, warns his colleague Louison Essomba. Among the most serious: the secretary general of the presidency, Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh, reputed to be close to the very influential first lady Chantal Biya. It exercises de facto by delegation a good part of the executive power and has placed its pawns at the top of the administration.
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Opposition still suppressed
Finally, Paul Biya has ruthlessly repressed, especially since his highly contested re-election in 2018, any dissonant opinion with the arrests and heavy convictions of hundreds of opposition executives and activists following peaceful marches in 2020. Last December, around fifty people were sentenced to between one and seven years in prison for “rebellion” and Amnesty International accused the authorities in January of having had some of them “tortured”. Recently lectured or blamed by the UN, international NGOs and Western capitals, including France, for the repeated violations of human rights by the security forces and the justice according to them, Paul Biya does not make much of these criticisms.
Another subject of concern to the opposition is that concerning the question of the colonial period. “We have a historic dispute with France. It is not the arrival of Macron that causes the problem. We take the opportunity to wake up Cameroonians to the problem with France which is to put all the crimes of France on the table and settle it definitively if we want to have a peaceful relationship, “said Bedimo Kuoh, member of the Movement. African for the New Independence and Democracy (Manidem), during a press conference in Douala.
After the defeat of Germany in 1918, the League of Nations (SDN, ancestor of the UN) had entrusted most of the German colony of Kamerun to the tutelage of France and the rest – the western part bordering Nigeria – to Great Britain. Before the country’s independence in 1960, the French authorities bloodily repressed the “maquis” of the UPC (Union des populations du Cameroun), a nationalist party founded in the late 1940s and engaged in the armed struggle against the colonizer and his Cameroonian allies, particularly in Bamileke country. Several tens of thousands of pro-UPC activists, including the independence leader Ruben Um Nyobè, were massacred first by the French army, then after independence by the Cameroonian army of the Ahmadou Ahidjo regime. During the press conference, Valentin Dongmo, also a member of Manidem, called on the French head of state to “recognize the crimes of colonial France as it began to do in Algeria”.
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France in decline
In terms of bilateral cooperation, the French President’s visit comes at a time when France, a former colonial power, is seeing its influence eroded, particularly in economic and commercial terms, in the face of China, India and Germany. French companies now represent only around 10% of the economy compared to 40% in the 1990s. World Bank middle-income country category.
Its economy is not, by far, up to its potential after four decades of promise of power accused of corruption and bad governance. The country is ranked 144e out of 180 in Transparency International’s 2021 Corruption Perceptions Index and fails to attract enough investment, especially foreign, according to the World Bank. A third of its 28 million inhabitants live on less than 2 euros a day and the poverty rate is nearly 40%, according to the UN. Only 10% of workers have a job in the formal sector.
In this context, the Central African country has largely turned to other partners in recent years, the Russian Minister of Defense signed in April a five-year military cooperation agreement with Cameroon.
This visit should also be an opportunity for President Macron to highlight youth in the wake of the Africa-France summit in Montpellier. Accompanied by several ministers including Catherine Colonna (Foreign Affairs), he will meet representatives of youth and civil society. He will end the day in “the Noah village”, hosted by former tennis champion Yannick Noah, who is developing a leisure and education center in a popular district of Yaoundé, where he lives for several months a year.
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