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Cameroon: The Stakes and Challenges of Governance and Development
This book deals with the important subject of governance and development. Even more significantly, the book has the merits of critically evaluating the concept of good governance in an African context, identifying the internal factors that impinge on good governance and development, and proposing solutions. It provides empirical evidence on the extent to which inappropriate governing strategies are the main internal obstacle to development in Cameroon. The authors discuss factors contributing to precarious and problematic governance from multidisciplinary perspectives, and demonstrate the extent to which such inadequacies impede positive social change. To promote effective development, the authors argue for the implementation of a good governance strategy that comprises, inter alia: adopting appropriate development strategies; decentralizing administration to make for popular participation and ensure accountability; taking the necessary steps to fight corruption; and ensuring the enforcement of property and cultural rights.
Prisoner without a Crime. Disciplining Dissent in Ahidjo's Cameroon
Doughty human rights crusader, Albert Mukong was incarcerated for six years in some of Cameroon's worst detention centres under the despotic regime of late President Amadou Ahidjo. This book details his personal account of the discipline and punishment that the Cameroonian state has systematically dished out to dissidents who have dared to stand their ground. Until his death in 2004, Albert Mukong was without doubt, Anglophone Cameroon's most conspicuous political prisoner, spokesperson and champion human rights advocate. The particular detention he recounts in this book is evidence of how nationalists such as Ruben Um Nyobe, Ernest Ouandie, Bishop Ndongmo and others, have in their struggles sacrificed enormously so that freedom and democracy might see the light of day in their reluctant Cameroon.
The Bad Samaritan
The Bad Samaritan is set in a kleptomaniac and highly corrupt imaginary African country called Ewawa. Due to mismanagement, financial institutions collapse. Salaries are slashed and there is unprecedented unemployment leading to country exodus. Professor Esole and his wife are not only aggrieved by the salary slashes, but also by the dubious closure of the Post Office Savings Bank with their savings. Desperate for money, they resort to borrowing from private sources at exorbitant interest rates. Esole toddles into politics with the aim of righting things. Will his naïve approach to politics make or mar?
Salvation Colony
Dennis Nunqam Ndendemajem, the spectral social misfit of No Way To Die, having failed to die by suicide, is pursued by the hatred of friends and family relations. He seeks refuge in The Salvation Colony of the Angels of Limbo Church of Africa - a veritable paradise for all whom society has sidelined and whom chance or choice have led thereto. Refuge Dennis finds at the Salvation Colony, thanks to the kindly founding spiritual and material patron, the highly reputable but extremely devilish Pastor Sixtus Shrapnell, fondly referred to as Our Father. At the Colony, though completely dehumanized, Dennis maintains self-value and something to live for in life - God. In dispensing so completely and successfully with any authorial presence in this extremely rare but deeply psychological novel, Asong pushes the art of African fiction to a great new height. The novel shows his intellectual and perhaps formal vortex. His iridescent flushes of exquisite know-how in art, philosophy and psychology make the work worth a thinker's time.
To the Budding Creative Writer. A Handbook
To the Budding Creative Writer: A Handbook is designed to help young writers come to grips with questions and problems relative to their creative efforts. The authors discuss a range of topics, providing guidelines on such issues as style, technique, point of view, characterization, poetic diction, figurative language, denotation and connotation, etc. They equally offer useful critical comments on some of the works of accomplished African writers whom they cite as models for beginning writers, fusing literary creativity with literary criticism. All along the co-authors stress the centrality, in imaginative writing, of both the 'what' and the 'how' or matter and manner, and how to combine both to good effect.
Facing Adversity with Audacity
This is a very engaging book based on compelling stories of human triumph over adversity coming out of Africa, Asia and America. Gideon's personal journey and his account of his mother and uncle in this book exemplify what it means to be truly resilient. The book is moving, well thought out and masterfully structured, a most riveting Read. Gideon For-mukwai draws on local wisdoms from his native Cameroon to tell a universal story. It is a book written in evidence of a mind in tune with the heart. Its stories, strategies, and metaphors provide incredible wisdom relevant to any society and explicitly remind readers that our circumstances may be different, but the strategies to overcome are the same. If a widow can make a legendary success story in Africa, then almost anybody can. What makes this book special is the fact that it is based on the stories of modest human beings.
The Wages of Corruption
Corruption is endemic in Cameroon. Twice, Transparency International have accorded the country the infamous first place in corruption. As one of many concerned Cameroonians, Sammy Oke Akombi was moved and they realized that something was in fact wrong somewhere and something had to be done somehow. This collection of short stories is his contribution to the collective resolve by concerned Cameroonians to wage a war against this most unusual friend of fairness. The stories seek to elicit awareness about a social ill that is ironically championed by the very politicians, functionaries, educator, leaders and power elite whose duty it is to keep society healthy and on the rails. The stories are on corruption in different segments of society and about the people who perpetrate it. Almost everyone is immersed in it and so must make every effort to resurface from it. It takes only the will to stay alive because the wages of corruption like any other sin can only be death.
Ako-Aya: A Cameroorian Pioneer in Daring Journalism and Social Commentary
Patrick Tataw Obenson, alias Ako-Aya, the rabid critic, social crusader and witty journalist, all rolled up in one, was indeed a popular and widely admired pioneer in daring journalism and social commentary in Cameroon. Little wonder that when he died, he left behind countless painful hearts and many questions on the lips of his admirers. As a man of the people, the fallen hero of Cameroon's Fleet Street shared his experiences, be they good or bad, with his readers. He was a virile critic even of the sordid things in which he himself secretly indulged. Obenson's mind was open, and through his popular newspaper column - Ako-Aya - he exposed society and social action in all their dimensions. H...
Genuine Intellectuals. Academic and Social Responsibilities of Universities in Africa
This book, slim as it looks, took Bernard Nsokika Fonlon the best part of five laborious years to write 1965-9 inclusive. He writes: "I was penning away as students in France were up in arms against the academic Establishment, and their fury almost toppled a powerful, prestigious, political giant like General de Gaulle. In America students, arms in hand, besieged and stormed the buildings of the University Administration, others blew up lecture halls in Canada - the student revolt, a very saeva indignatio, was in paroxysm. But in England (save in the London School of Economics where students rioted for the lame reason that the College gate looked like that of a jail-house) all was calm..." F...
Forest Echoes
Forest Echoes is a literary quilt revealing a mature poet bestriding generations as he patches together a people's culture, their philosophy, history, along with their attendant woes into a subtle, sometimes disillusioning even, yet purposeful and poignant whole. Nol Alembong is not afraid to be himself in this work: a scholar, teacher, parent, traditionalist and, above all, an Anglophone-Cameroonian. Whatever the case, these are magisterial and equally influential individual traits that have merged into a united whole in forging this poet's identity and concerns as evident from the thematic panorama of the poems. In "Forest Echoes", the title poem, for example, one encounters a poet who, though steeped in his people's struggles, has been able to stand back, watch and evaluate the effects of the interactions of time, events, and society. It is this ability of his, as an involved yet detached observer, along with the trend of events that have scarred his people's lives, which have yielded the powerful emotions that he has assembled in this thematically lush, historically nostalgic, and overwhelmingly evocative collection." - Dr. Emmanuel Fru Doh
