The Mettaboy Report

At the just ended Mining Indaba, the African Union Commission celebrated the Africa Mining Vision day, with a high level ministerial symposium bringing together key stakeholders.   This year’s commemoration was set against a particularly challenging background. Unlike 2015, when signs of grim were just emerging, the outlook for the commodity sector has changed markedly. A simple google search, tags mining and gloom together in an upwardly trend.   It is hard to say how low mineral prices may go, before they can get better.   Every day seems to come with renewed uncertainties. The continuous sharp fall, certainly marks an end of more-than-a-decade long upward movement of prices. A period, whose fading phase, with hindsight, now seems to coincide with the adoption of the Africa Mining Vision, in 2009.   The slowdown in China, an economy which consumes almost half of world’s commodities, and the continued glut in the market, call for profound and ...

En Afrique, les pays riches en ressources minières font   actuellement face à un challenge majeur jamais enregistré depuis l'adoption de la Vision minier de l'Afrique, en 2009. En effet, la baisse prolongée du prix des matières premières représente un défi capital   pour la mise en œuvre de la stratégie continentale du secteur minier qui met l’accent sur une liaison accrue entre le secteur minier et les autres secteurs de l’économie, dans un but de diversification. Des facteurs axés sur la demande, caractérisés par le ralentissement de la croissance Chinoise- qui consomme plus de 50% de tous les métaux- ainsi que les forces spécifiques à l'industrie, ont ensemble, considérablement affaibli   les prix des minerais depuis leur récent pic de 2011. Cependant, cette tendance à la volatilité n’est pas un phénomène nouveau. Les prix des matières premières   augmentent et déclinent   de façon cyclique,   dans une logique emprunte de vulnérabilité, risques e...

Mineral rich Africa confronts its strongest ever headwind since adopting the Africa Mining Vision, in 2009. Prolonged fall in commodity prices, presents a challenging environment for implementing the forward-looking continental framework to promote broad-based linkages from the minerals sector into the wider economy in ways that will diversify economies. Demand-driven factors underpinned by slowdown of growth in China— which consumes over 50% of all metals— as well as industry-specific forces together have   significantly weaken mineral prices since their recent high of 2011.   The depressing volatility is hardly new phenomenon. Commodity price peaks and troughs repeat themselves often in painful patterns of vulnerability, risk and crisis. The targeting of revenue while important is not decisive for transforming the sector. The slump in prices therefore reveals fundamental cracks in the revenue-first model, whose unrealistic assumption of sustained high commodity prices ...

 La relation armée-peuple  vit des mutations radicales jamais enregistrée dans l’histoire du Cameroun et susceptible d’avoir des conséquences politiques inattendues. L’armée camerounaise a été mise sur pied en toile de fond de la rébellion du maquis contre la colonisation avec une approche doctrinale ancrée autour de la sécurité des régimes politiques successifs. Ainsi, l’armée perçoit dans le régime sa raison d’être en tant qu’institution clé, garant de ses privilèges  et de son prestige.  Pour elle, la protection de la société est perçue comme secondaire et tributaire de la sécurité du régime.  La thèse est la suivante: tout changement de régime met en péril les privilèges spéciaux de l'armée et sèmera chaos et instabilité sociale. Un immense gap a toujours existé entre l'armée et la majorité de la population dans les domaines de la politique et de la démocratie. Les régimes successifs ont préservé et entretenu cette fracture afin d'assurer leur propre ...

The relationship between citizens and their army is changing fast like never before in Cameroon, with unintended implications for peace and stability. Created on the back of fighting a bloody domestic insurgency against colonialization, the over fifty year old army anchors firmly its doctrine around ensuring the security of the regime. The military establishment also perceives protection of the ruling government as the core component of its mandate. Arguably, this is based on the assumption that regime instability would not be conducive to the military’s privileged position and would leave the country vulnerable to chaos, instability and ultimate failure of society. Thus, for the army, providing security services against threats to society is only part of its raison d'être.  Considering the military’s interest in regime stability as well as in providing security against threats to society, a perennial and wide gulf has therefore existed between the army and majority of the po...

On October 20, the World Health Organization officially declared Africa's most populous country ‘’Ebola free’’, 42 days since the last case was confirmed in Nigeria. The ‘’world class’’ swiftness and forceful response to quash the scary epidemic which killed seven of its citizens, pales greatly when compare to the dysfunctional response of the Government, so far in the face of Boko Haram, a terrorist group which has killed more than 1500 civilians, in just the first three months of 2014. Boko Haram, in fact, still holds more than 250 girls in captivity— even against the international outcry, and the Nigerian government’s recent announcement of having reached a deal with the Islamic militants for their release. Much ink continues to spill on how the Government accomplished such an epidemiological feat which so far, seems to elude even the US, the most resource endowed healthcare system. But without understanding why Nigeria got everything right on ebola, little applicable les...