Central Africa Archive

On Dec. 11, three days after four people were reportedly killed in the latest clashes between protesters and security forces in the city of Bamenda in northwestern Cameroon, the government’s communications minister issued a statement suggesting the demonstrators’ main grievance was a nonissue. For more than a month, Cameroonians in the country’s English-speaking regions had been publicly criticizing the use of French in courts and schools and, more broadly, the perceived marginalization of the minority Anglophone population. That issue, which has roots in Cameroon’s colonial history, is a decades-old source of tension. Yet in his statement, the minister, Issa Tchiroma […]

The race to lead the African Union is entering a critical stage, as candidates to succeed outgoing AU Commission Chair Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma make their final pitches and struggle to overcome regional divisions that stalled the election process five months ago. On Dec. 9, the five contenders made their most public appeals yet, in a first-ever televised debate broadcast from the AU’s headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, that marked an overt effort to popularize the organization across the continent. Traditional divides along regional and linguistic lines forced a six-month delay of the election in July, when heads of state failed to […]