Growing Discontent Over:
* CFA Currency
– Pegged to Euro
– Guaranteed by French Treasury
– Is it a colonial relic?
Cameroon Govt. reaction to mounting
Separatism in English-speaking
West Cameroon.
Is the marriage of English speaking to French-speaking doomed to collapse?
Growing African agitation Against the CFA as a “Colonial Currency”.
The symbol of this agitation is a controversial Franco-Beninese activist, Kemi Seba, who lives in Senegal.
Seba was recently charged with publicly burning a 5,000 CFA note but was acquitted by a court in the Senegalese capital, Dakar. The charge followed a complaint by the Central Bank of West African states (BCEAD), a Franco-Phone institution.
The C.F.A introduced by France in the colonial era (1940s) is still being used in nearly all its former colonies in Africa.
Mr. Seba is prominent among many African activists calling for the abolition of the CFA, “a relic of French colonialism”
Kemi Seba’s flamboyant real name is Stellio Gilles Robert Capochichi. He had held a symbolic demonstration against the CFA where he burnt a 5,000 CFA bank note.
12 Franco-phone countries, including Guinea Bissau, and Equatorial Guinea, use the CFA.
The notes are printed by the BCEAD, for Franco-phone west Africa, which complained about Mr Seba’s public destruction of its “property”.
UPROAR: AS THE CAMEROONIAN GOVERNMENT BANS OPPOSITION ENGLISH-LANGUAGE TV CHANNEL
Embattled Cameroon authorities want to stop English-speaking West Cameroonians from viewing an English-language television station amid continuing anti-government protests.
To enforce the ban, cable-TV providers have been told they will be punished if they do not stop relaying the South-African based Channel SCBS.
However, reports say the TV Channel can still be viewed on-line.
There have been months of sometimes violent protests by the Anglo-phone population, in the two provinces of North-West and South-West Cameroons against discrimination by the francophone majority.
The authorities have accused the English speaking militants of agitating for a separate country.
What are the contents of the TV channel?
CFA Currency protest
Mr. Seba would have been jailed for five years if found guilty. But the Senegalese court acquitted him on a technicality – Senegal’s penal code punishes the destruction of banknotes rather than a single bank note.
What is the Currency CFA ?
It was created by France in the later 1940s to serve as a legal tender in its African colonies. The currency’s retention, several decades after the independence of these countries, has helped promote France’s continued strong influence over its former colonies. It is pegged to the Euro, with the financial backing of the French Treasury.
Arguments for and against the CFA
Supporters argue that it shields the 14 African countries using it from inflation and uncertainty.
Sekou Toure’s Guinea, in a rare show of rugged independence, opted for its own currency and not the CFA.
Since Sekou Toure’s demise, Guinea has experienced currency shortages and instability.
In contrast, critics, spearheaded by Mr. Seba’s anti-CFA movement, stress that true economic development for the 14 African nations can only be achieved if they abandoned the currency.
They point out that the system channels more money to France than the African countries receive in aid – hardly, they say on adequate compensation for the “guarantees” provided by the French treasury. Furthermore, the system deprives the African countries of a say in determining monetary policies formulated by the European Eurozone members.
The anger of the agitators are also directed at African leaders, who, they say are complicit with France in maintaining a symbol of foreign economic and financial domination!
it airs programmes about the history and culture of the Anglo-phone region, interviews with exiled lawyers and documentaries about human right abuses in the West African country. According to agency reports, the Central Cameroon Government has tried and failed to pressure the South African authorizes to stop the Southern Cameroon Broadcasting transmissions.
Recall that the country, previously called Kamerun, was colonized by Germany. Following German defeat in World War I, It was spilt into British and French areas, In a referendum in 1961, the southern part of the English-speaking area, which was formerly part of Eastern Nigerian, “Voted” to join French Cameroons, While the northern area, now called Adamawa province, “Voted” to remain in Northern Nigeria.