33years, 33Ans, et ca sort comme ca sort.

#33Ans #33Years … #CaSortCommeCaSort.

For the last 36 or so hours, there’s been a trend within the Cameroonian twittosphere on thoughts and opinions about the 33-years in power of the current president of our beloved nation, Cameroon. The exchanges, feedback, thoughts have been hilarious at times, sad at others, revolting for the most part, but all reflect the sentiments of Cameroonians within the nation and in its Diaspora. Yesterday evening, there were 843 tweets with the hashtag #33Ans, I think today, the number of tweets (with both #33years and #33ans) will double. (Even if you don’t have a twitter account, you can read the thread here: 

#33Years:  https://twitter.com/hashtag/33Years?src=hash
#33Ans : https://twitter.com/hashtag/33ans?src=hash )

This said, I would like to share and condense my thoughts here as Olivia Mukam-Wandji : Cameroonian citizen who for the last 27 years (very soon to be 28) has had her heart torn between (1) the passionate and illogical love I’ve had for my beloved country (Ma chere patrie, et terre Cherie), and (2) with the heartfelt disappointment I’ve had watching this country – under-capitalized, and fighting for the first place in a race-to-the-bottom of mediocrity.  My thoughts are of a citizen who has tried to contribute my tiny pebble to the development of Cameroon in the last 6 years (and a little bit more, while I was in university), by coaching and helping young Cameroonians to “entrepreneur” their way out of our problems. After all, when I coined the slogan “Transforming our problems into opportunity” it was some kind of clarion call to help Cameroonians to switch their mindset and think more like “Problem-Solvers” vs Problem-dwellers. I’m sharing my honest opinion as a super optimist, who most often chooses to see the glass half-full vs half-empty, because when you walk by faith and not by sight, you have an undying believe that the future will be brighter and brighter – that even though you are walking through a dark dark valley, with God by your side, you won’t fear, you will dwell in hope for better things to come. I’m also writing as a citizen who will be a future mother to the next generation of Cameroonians – and as such it is imperative for me to look at our present, our local realities without sugar-coating , shoving things under the rug, or shying away from identifying the problems, because that will be cheating on my future children. I’m writing with a patriotic heart, with an unquenchable thirst to see my beloved country one day reach the level it can very possibly reach in the next 10 years, if we can pinpoint some of our systematic problems, and aim to resolve them.  

Some would say “We already know what’s wrong with Cameroon, let’s focus on what’s right,” Others would stay “suck it up, be the change you want to see, and change what you can,” many would say “Le Cameroun c’est Le Cameroon, on va faire comment?” others would say “hummm… Oli, be careful about what you say online” (because somehow someway, we live in an environment that stifles expression because there is always some sort of “invisible-whiplash-in-a-cloud-of-terror” kind of like the superstitious cloud above people who always think black-magic-is-out-for-them) , to all these commenters, I will say as scripture says:  “there’s a time for everything.” A time to laugh, a time to cry, a time to mourn, a time to rejoice, a time to complain, a time to resolve. If every time someone wants to decry a pain/an injustice/a shortcoming, they are moralized to “be the change you want to see,” or “to shup up and fix it,” or “to cope with it, on va faire comment?” then we will stop ourselves from the exercise of “Problem-Solving.” We cannot solve a problem, if (first) we don’t accept there is a problem, and (second) we don’t identify what the problem is, before (third) aiming to find solutions to palliate to each problem identified (four) testing the limits of our solutions, (five) choosing a solution we can do/adopt. 

There is a time for everything. Now is a time for reasoning, and reflecting on 33 years of presidency:

So here we are, 33 years after. Here I am, 33 years after, & I'm actually having cold feet about sharing my honest thoughts on the last 33 years of our country. What does that say about the last 3 decades?

My 48hrs reflection started with the observation of a blatant irony two days ago: On one hand , I was watching on the 7:30pm news, journalists extolling “33 years in power of our president,” and on the other, I was reading on the internet : @KathleenDongmo “Doing #business in #Cameroon just became tougher. From 158th in 2015 to 172nd in the Doing Business 2016 report” (172 out of 189 countries in the world).  I thought, how is anyone making sense of this: We are praising the reign of someone who 33 years later has plunged his country in the bottom of the worst countries on planet earth where to do business.  I know many will jump to his defense and say “But, but…it’s not his fault, you can’t blame everything on him… it’s the ministers’ fault, the directors’ fault, the corrupt civil servants fault, the tax-collector’s fault, the citizens who offer bribes’ fault… he cannot be everywhere, it’s not his fault.” Ok, I’ve heard that. But please, tell me if you are the CEO of a multinational company (say, MTN) and your revenue sinks year after year, your infrastructure crumbles year after year… 5 years after, if the Board Of Directors says “this is the current situation of MTN: bankrupt, infrastructure failure, laissez-faire” who will be blamed? The director of Marketing? The cashier? The salespersons? The accountants? Yes, they can all be blamed, but the person responsible for the ship to function correctly is the head – the CEO. They are responsible for the proper functioning of the company. They are accountable to the BOD – not the Director of Sales, or that of marketing. If the CEO has poor directors, he/she should sack them. If the CEO has corrupt accountant, he/she should place systems for money to stop being embezzled. No matter what he/she does, 5 years down the line, they are the ones accountable to the BOD of the company. So, we – Cameroonian citizens – are the Board of Directors of our country, and there’s one person we must question and hold accountable when we ask for the “bilan” of 33 years. People should stop giving excuses to justify poor governance and leadership.  

How can we develop at a macro level when, for one, it is extremely difficult to do business around here? For us trying to “entrepreneur” our way out of our challenges, in a country where it’s tougher to do business than in 171 countries of the world, it’s not enough to “entrepreneur” yourself out of problems. I have quoted multiple times Ory Okolloh’s interview, where she explains “why Africa can’t entrepreneur itself out of its basic problems.” She makes complete sense:

“You can’t entrepreneur around bad leadership, we can’t entrepreneur around bad policy… I’m concerned about what I see is the fetishization around entrepreneurship in Africa. It’s almost like it’s the next new liberal thing. Like, don’t worry that there’s no power because hey, you’re going to do solar and innovate around that. Your schools suck, but hey there’s this new model of schooling. Your roads are terrible, but hey, Uber works in Nairobi and that’s innovation. We can’t entrepreneur our way around bad leadership. We can’t entrepreneur our way around bad policies. Those of us who have managed to entrepreneur ourselves out of it are living in a very false security in Africa. There is growth in Africa, but Africans are not growing. And we have to questions why is there this big push for us to innovate ourselves around problems that our leaders, our taxes, our policymakers, ourselves, to be quite frankly, should be grappling with.

… I think sometimes we are running away from dealing with the really hard things. And the same people who are pushing this entrepreneurship and innovation thing are coming from places where your roads work, your electricity works, your teachers are well paid. I didn’t see anyone entrepreneur-ing around public schooling in the US. You all went to public schools, you know, and then made it to Harvard or whatever. You turned on your light and it came on. No one is trying to innovate around your electricity power company. So why are we being made to do that? Our systems need to work and we need to figure our shit out.”

(source: http://qz.com/502149/video-ory-okolloh-explains-why-africa-cant-entrepreneur-itself-out-of-its-basic-problems/) 

I know many Cameroonians are contributing their small stone, as they can to the construction of Cameroon, and to its development. But we cannot rely on the civil-society, small business owners, or innovators to fix all the problems of Cameroon. We have to think and start acting beyond our “micro-actions” and think of the macro-level. How do we make our systems work? how do we hold those responsible for our systems to work accountable?

1.  How can we resolve the problem of crater-like, humungous, fatal potholes in the middle of the “highway” on the road from Yaounde-to-Baffoussam, that eworsens from Baffoussam-to-Bamenda? (Yes, for now we are dodging them, but for how long? How many people have lost their lives on that road because of those potholes? At the very least, I find it homicidal!) Who is responsible for fixing those roads?

2. How can we resolve the problem with the high corruption in government contracts? This corruption emanates from the top of the country’s rulers. Why should a civil servant expect to have 20% of someone’s project-revenue when they are given a government contract? Why are people not sanctioned for asking 10-30% of project-recipients’ money when the government attributes it to them to help them execute their projects? Why is Cameroon not digitalizing its contract payment process, when our neighboring giant (and big brother in corruption) have at least digitalize a huge portion of their government operations, e.g. tax payment?

3.  How can we resolve the problem with our dilapidated healthcare system? The poor conditions of public hospitals? Underpaid nurses, ad underpaid doctors - who eventually give up on their Hippocratic oath, in exchange for financial prosperity. How can we improve our public hospitals so that patients don’t bear the weight of bring every single tool necessary for their operation/treatment (as little as hospital gloves and syringes) – and while many of us can continue living our comfortable lives consulting in private clinics, we cannot ignore these problems.

4. How can we resolve the problem of under-paid primary school teachers, who make their students advance to the next grade in exchange of (sometimes) the equivalent of their annual salary? And so, we end up with a demographic of students, youths, who have been bumped to the next level without merit?

5. How can we better equip our youth to be competitive on the global market after high school, and after university? How can we fix the problem of hundreds of students with Master degrees, who cannot write a “Lettre de motivation,” or cannot write an essay with critical analysis?

6. How can we ensure that merit trumps connections, when it comes to obtaining contracts, employment, promotions? And how can we heal the pain of those who worked hard to be competent and competitive, and encourage them to continue living to their standards, even when those are undervalued?

7. How can we re-instill hope within Cameroonians, love for  our country, and belief in the system, when from morning to evening too many Cameroonians live frustrated : because of bad roads, power-cuts, water-shortage, being-asked-to-bribe, indifference to their problem, even when they try to ignore government their businesses are vulnerable to arbitrary tax-collection, students obtaining sexually-transmittable-notes in university (and even in high schools).  How can we re-instill hope among Cameroonians, and a set of common values to live for: Hard work, merit, perseverance, patriotism, equality, justice?

We have problems that we need to identify, and outline, and then try to find solutions to address them.

Many have expressed that we shouldn’t complain much because “in 33 years, Cameroon is a peaceful and stable country.” Okay. That’s great. That’s actually amazing: Good job to the regime in place, good job for preserving peace and stability in our nation. We are really thankful. I‘ve blogged before about Peace and my appreciation of it : http://oliviamukam.blogspot.com/2014/01/chaos-in-war-peace-in-peace.html?q=peace+CAR

But to the fallacious logic that makes us believe we must choose either between “Peace and under-development” or “Instability and Prosperity,” I say, “com’on, don’t put us in a black-and-white logic of the world, there are so many more alternatives to those two options.”  We can praise our regime for preserving peace in the country, yet still demand better governance, less corruption, more accountability. Peace does not immunize leaders from being accountable to their BOD! In the name of peace, people expect us to silently witness and painfully digest the race-to-the-bottom of our nation? Our society, in the last 33 years, has lost its ethics, ambition, merit and values (what are our values today as Cameroonians?). While in the Ahidjo era, the common slogan was “rien n’est impossible au Camerounais” (nothing is impossible for the Cameroonian), today we justify everything with “Le Cameroun c’est le Cameroun. On va faire comment?” (Cameroon is Cameroon. What can we do?), while one thought challenges to believe, to be ambitious and to never give up, the other thought is complacent, it accepts current conditions, it doesn’t challenge to do better or to be better. How can we be told to accept and live through the deterioration of our physical, moral, and mental state as a nation?

We cannot afford to be indifferent to the wounds that are causing our society to bleed internally, while externally we look peaceful.  We need internal healing.  Jesus Christ left to the world a perennial legacy of love, betterment of self, and improvement of society, after living only 33 years on earth.  33 years is a lifetime. What can we show as advancement and improvement for the last 33 years in this nation?

My Dreams for the next 33 years are:

1.  To live in a Cameroon that has decent infrastructures: A highway, pot-hole free, with 8 lanes that connect each of the 10 cities of Cameroon.  Airline companies that fly to each of the 10 regional airports in Cameroon (like it used to be 33 years ago).

2. Be in a Cameroon that is the #1 food supplier to Nigeria & a Cameroon whose seaport will have the best duty deals of central and West Africa (kind of like the Benin of West/Central Africa of today).

3. To live in a Cameroon that has improved its doing-business capacities, from 172 out of 189, to at least #33.

4. To be in a Cameroon where all government and public payments are digitalized, with robust accounting and control systems.

5.  To live in a country that rewards hard work, merit, courage and excellence to all its citizens, independent of their ethnic group, connections, language, gender, political affiliation, or age.

6. To have Cameroon as one of the Top-10 African destinations for tourists and business persons in the world (like the Kenya of today).

7. To be a Cameroonian and be eligible to go visa-free to at least 50 countries in the world, thanks to diplomatic deals made with other nations.

8. To live in a Cameroon that has modern clinics and equipped public hospitals in all its 360+ geographic divisions.

9. To live in a Cameroon where all its citizens speak both French and English.

10. To see my grandchildren cherish their Cameroonian nationality, master their Cameroonian history, learn about the courageous stories of our Founding Fathers in their primary schools (and not just as anecdotes at home), and live in a Peaceful AND Prosperous Cameroon.

33 years is a lifetime. I hope, pray, and I will work within this time, to help – in my own way - Cameroon achieves these dreams of mine, sooner than later.

--- A toi l'amour et le grand honneur ---