In July 2005, leaders of the G8 group of developed nations promised a $50bn (£33bn) aid-boost to poorer countries. Five years on, we explore how the decision affected the lives of some people in Africa.

It was 12 years ago when Ethiopian cancer survivor Fantu Shoamare had her first cancer scare.
She had just had a baby and noticed a lump while breastfeeding. Her family raised money for her treatment, and she was able to arrange to receive drugs from abroad. They were not available inside Ethiopia at the time.

While the prospect of Guinea’s return to constitutional rule after its recent election is cause for hope, the recent resurgence of military takeovers in Africa may not yet have run its full course. Cameroon is one country where many of the conditions conducive to a coup apply today.

In Cameroon the problems can be broken down into three categories: governance, legality and the army.

On the governance front, Cameroon is one of the most centralised states in the world. All state resources, whether cash or jobs, flow from the centre, and mostly from President Paul Biya’s office.
Not only does a consequent absence of meaningful oversight encourage corruption, but it also makes grabbing power at the top overwhelmingly attractive. Those who miss out can feed only on crumbs.
For years Cameroon has worked on the basis of re-distributing those crumbs. But if the current president died or was incapacitated, then there could be a desperate fight for the top job. In short, there is too much at stake.

The use of theatre to sensitise the local population and administration in Cameroon on an estranged albeit important subject like climate change and its devastating effects is evidently a cutting –edge communication and education method.

The sensitisation through theatre performances dubbed “Climate Change Road Show” is a UK-sponsored project that recently took off, criss-crossing some selected towns where the effects of climate change are very glaring and passing on salient messages through exhilarating theatre performances.

“We are just amazed by the unprecedented encouraging population turn out and the enthusiasm by the local population to watch and listen to the messages, a clear departure from what obtains with other sensitisation campaigns” said the acting British High Commissioner to Cameroon, Timothy Fisher, recommending that the approach be used by other stakeholders.

The recent seizure of more than two tonnes of cocaine, worth an estimated $1bn (about £675m) in The Gambia has once again shone a light on West Africa as a major transit point for narcotics making their way from Latin America to Europe.

However, in the last three years, seizures of narcotics have gone down in the region. The latest figures available from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) show that 5.5 tonnes of cocaine were seized in West and Central Africa in 2007 whereas an unconfirmed 15 tonnes passed through a year previously.

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But despite the falling figures, the UNODC and people on the ground in West Africa say that the drugs trade is on the increase.

It is just that the traffickers are getting more sophisticated and the narcotics are getting harder to seize.

“Criminal organisations understood that there was a lot of noise, a lot of talk in the media, so they stood back to assess the risk,” says Cyriaque Sobtafo, deputy regional representative of the UNODC in the Senegalese capital, Dakar, referring to the media attention on Guinea-Bissau and Senegal after massive drugs heists in 2006.

Not long ago, Cameroon celebrated its 50th anniversary.  Soon, it will celebrate reunification.  Such milestones provide the perfect time to take stock of our past, present challenges, and future prospects and opportunities.  Evaluating Cameroon at 50 is, however, a depressing exercise:  a catalogue of woes, of lost opportunities, of wasted resources, of failed leadership, and the lamentations of a people desperately seeking relief from underdevelopment, poverty, lack of political accountability, and political oppression.

The story of Cameroon’s past has been painfully documented.  It is a past that most Cameroonians remember with mixed feelings.  From 1960/1961 and 1972, the Cameroonian edifice had collapsed with the abrogation of Article 47 of the country’s constitution —“No proposal for the revision of the constitution which impairs the unity and integrity of the Federation shall be admissible”.

No matter how much the United States continues to emerge as a competitive World Cup nation, there is little doubt that the international perception of American soccer will always be doused with suspicion.
Why? Because Americans don’t even call the sport by its proper name, of course. They don’t call it “football.” They call it “soccer.”

In the USA, football is that game that dominates winter Sundays and features Lycra, helmets and men so large they should come with their own zip code.

Elsewhere, football is football. The round-ball sport, the beautiful game, with its biggest prize to be handed out in South Africa on 11 July 2010.

Cameroon organises dozens of selection tests for entrance into training centres and professional schools every year. Examinations for the 2010 season begun with the Common Entrance into secondary schools, General Certificate of Education (GCE) Ordinary and Advanced levels, and First School Leaving Certificates (FSLC), for English-speaking Cameroonians. A horde of competitive examinations into the public service has been launched for this year.

As always, a multitude of candidates will be queuing in front of different offices to register for these examinations. Usually candidates will have to produce certified copies of all their credentials; birth certificate, school certificates. The more certificates you have, the more stamps you have to buy to obtain government signatures. Even with government officials signing the certified copies of certificates, you will need a trip to the Senior Divisional Officer (SDO) or the Governor to authenticate that you actually presented the originals of the certificates which have been certified.

“In the UK Coalition Government’s first budget, The UK Government has set out a five year plan to rebuild the British economy based on responsibility, freedom and fairness.

It pays for the past.  It plans for the future.  It supports a strong enterprise-led recovery.  It rewards work.  And it protects the most vulnerable in our society.

The Coalition Government announced, conducted and completed a review of this current year’s spending and identified six billion pounds of savings.  The Government has also announced, established and received the report of the independent Office for Budget Responsibility.

As fans of late pop legend, Michael Jackson, remembered him on 25 June 2010, one year after his death, one of his sisters, LaToya Jackson, has said her brother was murdered because he was “worth so much more dead than alive”.

Speaking during a TV interview, the singer demanded what she called “the truth” surrounding the star’s death in June 2009.

A group of persons, comprising mainly of journalists of the national and international media, women leaders and others are gathered in front of the North West Regional Delegation of Women’s Empowerment and the family at about 5pm on Monday 14 June 2010. Most of the male commuters are cursing the day as a very bad one. The commuters were due to travel to Wum, Menchum Division earlier in the day to take part in the mini-campaign on rape.

But the trip had been grounded because nobody showed up to board the buses at the scheduled time-1pm.The drivers had to wait up to the end of the Cameroon-Japan encounter which did not yield results.

Angry that the game had been lost and a night journey to Wum was inevitable, the commuters cursed the innocent drivers, sitting arrangement in the buses, individual players in the Cameroon football squad and even the fatherland.

About 25 minutes after take off, the arguments become more heated. Seemingly fearing that the debate could distract the driver and overturn the bus, a journalist, Killian Ngala, asks the question “can a man rape his wife?”

While the women argue that it is possible, the men say it is not possible for someone to steal what belongs to him. The debate rages, provoking laughter as sex talk soon overshadows football.

The meeting on Tuesday 15 June 2010 at the Wum Community Hall is a crowd puller. Traditional rulers, women, journalists, civil society actors, young girls and boys and several rape victims are all gathered to “denounce rapists” on the ticket of the German Technical Cooperation, GTZ, working in collaboration with the North West Regional Delegation of Women’s Empowerment and the Family.

The seriousness of rape and its damaging consequences are better understood by the commuters only when victims take to the rostrum to tell their awesome stories.

One of the victims from Wum, aged 30 tells how two of her brother-in-laws had brutally raped her. According to her, after the death of her husband, she refused to be handed over to her brother-in-law as a wife as custom demands.

On that fateful day, she had just lowered her pant to urinate when two of her brother-in-laws dived on her from behind, put soil into her mouth and brutally sexed her.

The second victim told of how she was selling boiled corn at the age of 11 when she was raped. According to her, she had heard the masqueraders in the village singing and dancing towards her direction. As tradition demands, she had to hide in the bush to enable them pass. But one of the “jujus” met her in the bush and had her well sexed. Upon hearing the awesome incident, her mother was only interested in what had happened to her corn which was the only source of livelihood for the family.

Neilles’ story was that of incest perpetrated on her by her father in Nkongsamba. In, tears, on a projector, she told how her father had repeatedly raped her in the house, in abandoned buildings, in the bathroom and even on the farm. She was just 11 when it all started. The beans spilled only when she became pregnant at 16. Before that, she had sought refuge in a local Pentecostal church hoping to find a way to reveal the ordeal. But the ‘men of God’ began asking for their own share and she ran away.

Anna from Kumba told of how at 8, her mother used to leave her with her 25-year-old cousin to go for business. One day, the cousin brought in pornographic films and asked that they practice what they were seeing. It happened then and several other times.

Testimonies were made of a man who decided to divorce his wife after she was raped by bandits. The man claimed that the bandits tied him up on a chair with a gun on his head while his wife was raped before his own very eyes. The reason for him divorcing the wife is not that she was raped, but rather because she was screaming and enjoying the sexual act from the bandits instead of crying and shouting, a thing he claimed he could not tolerate.

Several other testimonies of forced sex in different circumstances were presented to the participants.
Dr Flavien Ndonko of GTZ explained that rape is already a public health problem in Cameroon with 432,000 cases already recorded in the not too distant past while only 5 percent of raxe victims are punished. He held that most of the victims are below 15 years and the act is usually committed by persons from all backgrounds, fathers, ‘men of God’, friends, relatives,   bandits, rich and poor in rural and urban settings alike. He noted that between 1970 and 2010 rape has risen from 0 percent to affect 5 percent of women in Cameroon. Dr Ndonko revealed that the nationwide campaign is being carried out with the support of the National Aunties Association known by its French acronym as RENATA.

Nelson Ndi, Secretary of the North West Branch of the National Commission On Human Rights and Freedoms, expounding on the legal aspects of rape, held that section 292 of the penal code defines rape as “the use of force to obtain sex from a woman either below or above the age of puberty without consensual and informed opinion”.

He continued that persons guilty of rape can be imprisoned for up to 10 years, warning that if one gets sex from a woman with her consent but without her reasoned and informed opinion of the consequences, it constitutes rape or with her informed opinion without consent it is also rape. Thus, a man can rape his wife if he uses force to get sex when the woman does not want it. Ndi continued that rape can attract more severe punishment when it is perpetrated by a ‘man of God’ or someone under whose care the victim is kept.

The North West Regional Delegate of Women’s Empowerment and the Family, Judy Ngwe Abong, said Wum was chosen to host the campaign because in the recent past, several cases of rape have been recorded from the area. She held that the cases are on the increase and there is mobilisation to bring perpetrators of the act to justice. The delegate concluded that rape is one of the worst forms of violence against women.

The ride from Wum to Bamenda in the evening of Tuesday 15 June 2010 is characterised by more pornographic arguments on sex and rape culminating on the problematic “where rape ends and where consensual sex begins”.

Charles Keboah, a journalist, expressed worries that the law does not provide for a woman raping a man. The male folk lamented that with more women increasingly using force to get sex from men, the law-maker needs to make the law fairer for the men who are placed at a weaker position insofar as negotiating for sex is concerned.

“If the laws cannot be improved from what I heard” remarks another, “then every man is a potential rapist”.

The sex talk ceases with a stop over at the Menchum Falls, a veritable yet unexploited electricity potential in the valleys of Menchum. Of course that was a different argument altogether.