News stories by Ngala Killian Chimtom, page 3

MORA, Cameroon, Nov 07 (IPS) - Cameroon's new biometric registration of voters may end up disenfranchising many potential voters, especially women in the country's predominantly Muslim north where cultural practices may prevent them from having their photos taken.

YAOUNDÉ, Aug 22 (IPS) - Victorine Fomum is Cameroon’s 2005 African table tennis champion. She often used to “train without rackets, without balls, without appropriate clothing and without good tables.” But despite this, she won gold at the 2005 African Nations Championship. And as a reward for her achievement the government handed her a cheque – for 25 dollars.

As Lysette Mendum listens to the sound of bulldozers crashing through the forest clearing a road to a mining site near her small village of Assoumdele in the Ngoyla-Mintom forest block in Cameroon’s East Region, she has never been more fearful in her life.

Olivier Forgha Koumbou washes some freshly picked carrots in a small brook and eats them with relish. His thriving farm in Santa, in Cameroon’s North West region, looks like a miracle in the midst of surrounding farms where carrots, lettuce, potatoes and leeks have withered and died.

Kokpa Pascale Moangue, a Baka Pygmy in southeastern Cameroon, has given his children the one thing he always longed for, but his parents could not give him — an education. And he was able to achieve it by obtaining a simple piece of paper: a birth registration certificate.

Sala Aminata, a housewife from the Logone and Shari Division in Cameroon’s Far North Region, looks at her six kids with apprehension as she tries to figure out how to feed them with her meagre salary.

Ahmadou Lamine has been forced to close his business selling fuel imported from Nigeria, known locally as 'zoa-zoa', because of the Islamic extremist group Boko Haram.

When Cameroon’s President Paul Biya announced that the 50th anniversary of the reunification of French and British Cameroon will take place later this year, it resurrected bitter feelings among Anglophone Cameroonians who say they do not feel like equal partners with their Francophone counterparts.

The Cameroon government is increasingly turning to China as a privileged partner in its development efforts. But there are many discordant voices who say the long-term effects of China’s economic relations with Cameroon could be disastrous for domestic industry.

Maya Stella, a restaurant manager in the capital of Cameroon, no longer uses plastic to wrap the corn-fufu that she sells to her customers. She now uses banana or plantain leaves instead, because these are 'natural and it is our African culture to use leaves in wrapping food.'