‘‘What can we do about it? Cameroon is Cameroon.’’
If you are from the ‘‘Africa in miniature’’ and you grew up there, this sentence should sound familiar to you. It’s more a cultural reflex than a simple sentence. It is also the answer (nearly) automatic for aberrations, injustices and other failures that can sometimes be observed on Cameroonian soil.
But what the sentence mostly reflects is a certain state of mind: Citizens who let themselves drown in the daily routine, and forgot that they have the right – and above all – the duty to demand the best from themselves and from society. Let’s admit that in Cameroon, we tend to settle for (too) little.
But I have the conviction that what is happening behind the scenes is far more interesting: Cameroon has an extraordinary potential, just waiting to be exploited. Among its assets, a gifted agricultural sector (agriculture accounted for 20% of global GDP in 2014) and an educated population (a literacy rate of 71% among adults in 2012); and the list goes on…
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