Abuja, Nigeria — A high-level Africa counterterrorism summit opened Monday in Nigeria with hundreds of delegates from around the world. Africa has become the world’s epicenter of terrorism. Leaders at the summit hope to change that through regional cooperation and partnerships.

The summit was jointly hosted by Nigeria and the United Nations Office of Counter Terrorism (UNOCT) with the aim of strengthening regional security response and cooperation against acts of terror.

“Terrorism snaps at the very fabric of the prosperous and just society we seek to build for ourselves and our children,” Nigerian President Bola Tinubu said during remarks at the two-day summit in Abuja. “This violent threat seeks to frighten the farmer from his field, children from their schools, women from the marketplace and families from their very homes. We must therefore fight this threat together, combining determined national effort with well-tailored and regional and international collaboration.”

The summit seeks to enhance intelligence sharing among African nations and promote African-led strategies on counterterrorism.

Authorities say it will also serve as a guide to the international community’s collective response to terrorism in Africa.

Terrorism and violent extremism are spreading at an alarming rate in Africa. According to a new study by the African Center for Strategic Studies, acts of terror increased by more than 100,000% in the last two decades despite local and foreign intervention.

The report says more than 23,000 people were killed in Africa last year — a 20% increase compared to 2022.

Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo says fighting terrorism goes beyond a country’s borders.

“The evolving nature of terrorism demands a dynamic and coordinated response that transcends national borders and individual efforts,” Akufo-Addo said. “These groups are exploiting grievances, vulnerabilities and are manipulating ideologies to spread fear, division and chaos. We recognize the urgent need to combat this menace that continues to threaten the peace, security and development of our continent.”

Authorities say the threat of terrorism in Africa is exacerbated by the illicit arms trade, unemployment, poverty, inadequate policing, marginalization and political instability.

For more than a decade, Nigeria has struggled to stem the violence by Boko Haram and its splinter, ISWAP in the northeast.

And more recently, armed gangs known as bandits have been making matters worse.

Nigeria’s security adviser Nuhu Ribadu said these factors need to be addressed.

“Effective strategies require comprehensive approaches that address these drivers, promotes socioeconomic development, enhance governance resolve conflict and strengthen regional and international cooperation,” Ribadu said.

But getting the funding to do this has been a major challenge in Africa.

Authorities hope to change the narrative for the better. Vladimir Voronkov, undersecretary-general of the UNOCT, stressed the important role African regional organizations have in effectively countering terrorism.

“The success of the United Nations in Africa hinges on our commitment to support Africa-led solutions to African challenges,” Voronkov said. “We recognize no single actor can resolve today’s threats to peace and security. Instead we need multiple actors working together with solutions grounded with strong national ownership and support of bi-funding partners.”

Acts of terror in Africa are largely concentrated in the Sahel, Somalia, the lake Chad basin, North Africa and Mozambique.

Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso were absent from the summit due to coup-related sanctions imposed by ECOWAS and the African Union.

Critics say for counterterrorism measures to be truly successful every country must be involved.
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Africa’s entertainment industry is another stage where global competition between China and the U.S. is playing out. African artists see it as an opportunity. Kate Bartlett has the details from Johannesburg. Camera and video editing by Zaheer Cassim.
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Mount Hampden, Zimbabwe — Zimbabwean authorities responded swiftly to the recent decline in the new gold-backed currency by apprehending illicit moneychangers and closing the bank accounts of businesses accused of exclusively dealing in U.S. dollars.

On Monday, Zimbabwe business owners pleaded with parliamentary committees to ask the government to stop arresting moneychangers and re-open the bank accounts of companies accused of only accepting foreign currency.

“This is an inception process of a monetary policy shift,” said Sekai Kuvarika, the chief executive officer of the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries. “So, let’s give ourselves time. Let’s give the market time. Let’s give the policymakers time to iterate how the policy is going to work in our markets. But we definitely do not support that we accompany our policies with the police.”

Last week, police arrested several people it said were fueling the black market where Zimbabwe’s new currency, called ZiG, introduced earlier this month, is trading at around 20 ZiG for one U.S. dollar. 

The government’s official exchange rate is 13 ZiG to a dollar. 

Owen Mavengere, with the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Zimbabwe, said 

arresting moneychangers causes panic.

“The parallel market and those dealers in the streets are a symptom of the problem,”  Mavengere said. “Sending the police doesn’t inspire confidence. So, we would rather have a situation where we handle the root cause. And use a soft approach.”

He said the government, and government-related services, should be the first to move from the dollar.

“There must be deliberate effort to make sure that the government starts to take the ZiG,” Mavengere said.

The government said for now, commodities like fuel and import duties will still be paid with U.S. dollars.  

Parliament had summoned Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube and Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Governor John Mushayavanhu to explain how the ZiG currency rollout would work, but for unspecified reasons neither attended. 

Last week, Mushayavanhu announced a shift in the central bank’s policies — vowing to restore confidence in an institution that has failed to stabilize the nation’s currency.

Ngonidzashe Mudekunye, chairman of Parliament’s Industry and Commerce Committee said he was happy to hear from business owners about the new currency.

“We want to get feedback regarding the new policy, whether it’s working, whether the industry has new suggestions that may be helpful, to ensure that this new monetary policy works,” he said. “We all want a stable currency. Everyone is crying for it. We got so many views; the market wants a stable currency. This is what we are going to suggest to them.”

The next stage for ZiG — introducing physical notes and coins to the public — is set for April 30.
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Experts say one of the health care challenges in Africa is a shortage of training and education for workers. To help, a U.S. charity called Mission to Heal is training local workers who serve patients in remote locations. Juma Majanga reports from Ngurunit village in northern Kenya. Videographer: Jimmy Makhulo
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Maputo, Mozambique — The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, known as OCHA, is seeking $413 million in emergency aid to support over 1 million people in northern Mozambique dealing with climate disasters and an insurgency concentrated in the province of Cabo Delgado.

OCHA Mozambique representative Paola Serrao Emerson told a media conference in Maputo on Friday that her organization’s efforts to deal with the souring humanitarian situation in the southern African nation face financial problems.

According to the U.N, a total of 2.3 million people need humanitarian assistance in the northern provinces of Cabo Delgado and Nampula, but her organization is operating under a tight budget.

“We are looking for $413 million for Cabo Delgado or war in Mozambique, and of that we have received just about $43 million or so, just over 11%, so we are woefully underfunded,” she said. “Normally at this time of the year we would at least 20 or more percent funding.”

According to Emerson, food insecurity compounds the vulnerability of the internally displaced people, host communities and returnees alike.

Mozambique is regularly exposed to cyclones, floods and droughts, damaging private and public infrastructure.

In 2023, Tropical Cyclone Freddy, a storm of record-breaking length, hit Mozambique’s northern region twice with destructive winds, extreme rainfall, and widespread flooding.

Droughts, which have become more frequent, are also a dire concern, as 80 percent of the population of more than 33 million depends on rain-fed agriculture.

“Humanitarian organizations, the U.N., national and international organizations are supporting people every day with food assistance, with health support, with child support assistance, with mental health psychiatric support amongst many others throughout Cabo Delgado,” she said. “However, the funding situation is difficult to provide comprehensive multi-sectoral support to all areas that are affected.”

The news comes at a time when terrorist attacks have increased in northern Mozambique. Last month, missionaries, priests and religious sisters were forced to flee from remote towns and villages to Pemba and other large cities, which are overwhelmed with displaced people as the insurgency in Cabo Delgado intensifies.

At the same time, troops from the Southern African Development Community, or SADC, have begun to draw down due to financial issues.

Defense Minister Cristovao Chume told state-run Radio Mozambique on Friday that the end of the mission cannot be seen as a rupture in cooperation with SADC.

He said the SADC military mission is leaving Mozambique because it fulfilled the objective for which it was created — to stabilize the north of Cabo Delgado and recover areas controlled by terrorists.

Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi says his country’s armed forces should take a more prominent role in counterterrorism operations, despite some challenges.

Since 2017, the insurgency in Cabo Delgado, waged by a group that claims affiliation with Islamic State, has terrorized civilians and caused interruption to several multi-billion-dollar oil and natural gas projects.
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NIAMEY, Niger — Drug seizures soared in the West African Sahel region according to figures released Friday in a new U.N. report, indicating the conflict-ridden region is becoming an influential route for drug trafficking.

In 2022, 1,466 kilograms of cocaine were seized in Mali, Chad, Burkina Faso and Niger compared to an average of 13 kilograms between 2013 and 2020 , said the report from the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime.

Cocaine is the most seized drug in the Sahel after cannabis resin, the report said. The analysis comes as Senegal, which borders on the Sahel, announced Sunday a record-breaking cocaine seizure of 1,137 kilograms – the most ever intercepted on land and valued at $146 million – near an artisanal mine in the east of the country. Incidents like this are becoming more common in the region: In one incident last year in December, the Senegalese navy seized a total of 3 tons of cocaine at sea.

The location of the Sahel, lying south of the Sahara desert and running from the Atlantic to the Arabian Ocean, makes it a natural transit point for the increasing amount of cocaine produced in South America and destined for Europe. The trafficking has detrimental impacts for both peace and health, locally and globally, said Amado Philip de Andrés, UNODC Regional Representative in West and Central Africa.

“The involvement of various armed groups in drug trafficking continues to undermine peace and stability in the region,” said Philip de Andrés. The report said the drug trade provides financial resources to armed groups in the Sahel, where Islamic extremist networks have flourished as the region struggles with a recent spate of coups.

Increased trafficking networks in the region is spilling out onto local markets and leading to higher drug consumption, said Lucia Bird, director of the West Africa observatory of illicit economies at the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime.

“We’ve had reports of rising crack cocaine consumption in Agadez, Niger driven by payment in kind,” said Bird. “Smaller traffickers get paid in drugs and offload it onto local markets because they don’t have the contacts in more lucrative consumption destinations.”

A patrol in southwest Niger on Monday intercepted a shipment of cannabis and Tramadol, an opioid painkiller pill, worth $50,000, according to a national TV announcement.

Another significant trend in the region is the direct exchange of Moroccan hashish for South American cocaine via West Africa, said Bird. This arrangement – which has been developing since 2020 — bypasses the need for cash payments and exploits differences in the prices of drugs across continents, she explained, adding that this increases the amount of drugs trafficked overland which transit from West African ports across some of the most conflict-affected areas of the Sahel.

Corruption and money laundering are major enablers of drug trafficking and recent seizures and arrests revealed that political elite, community leaders and leaders of armed groups facilitate the drug trade in the Sahel, the UN report added.

“States in the Sahel region — along with the international community — must take urgent, coordinated, and comprehensive action to dismantle drug trafficking networks,” said Leonardo Santos Simão, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for West Africa.
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United Nations — Two senior United Nations officials raised the alarm Friday that an attack on the North Darfur capital of El Fasher could be imminent and may trigger a deadly intercommunal conflict across Darfur.

“In Darfur, recent reports indicate a possible imminent RSF attack on El Fasher, raising the specter of a new front in the conflict,” U.N. political and peacebuilding chief Rosemary DiCarlo told the Security Council.

The RSF are the Rapid Support Forces, the rebel militia that has been fighting the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) for the past year. The two generals leading them were once allies in Sudan’s transitional government after a 2021 coup but have become rivals for power.

The war began last April in the capital, Khartoum. It has since spread to other parts of the country, forcing more than 8 million people from their homes in search of safety. Nearly 2 million of them have fled Sudan to neighboring countries. Of those who remain, 25 million need humanitarian assistance.

DiCarlo said clashes between the RSF and SAF-aligned members of the Joint Protection Forces have erupted in Mellit, a strategic town to the north of El Fasher.

“Fighting in El Fasher could unleash bloody intercommunal strife throughout Darfur,” she said. “It would also further impede the delivery of humanitarian assistance in an area already on the brink of famine.”

El Fasher is an established humanitarian hub. Fighting there would make it even more dangerous and complicated to store and deliver aid.

“Beyond Darfur, greater Khartoum continues to be the epicenter of fighting between the SAF and the RSF,” DiCarlo added. “Galvanized by recent gains, the SAF has intensified aerial raids in Khartoum, the Kordofan regions and parts of Darfur.”

The U.N. says the violence threatens 800,000 civilians living in El Fasher and risks setting off more violence in other parts of Darfur – where more than 9 million people need humanitarian assistance.

“On 13 April, following weeks of rising tensions and airstrikes, RSF-affiliated militias attacked and burned villages west of El Fasher,” Edem Wosornu told council members. “Since then, there have been continuing reports of clashes in the eastern and northern parts of the city, resulting in more than 36,000 people displaced,” the director of operations and advocacy in the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said.

She said medical charity Doctors Without Borders, or MSF, has reported that more than a hundred trauma patients have arrived at their El Fasher facility in recent days but said the number of civilian casualties is likely much higher.

Final battle for Darfur

A report released Friday by the Yale University Humanitarian Research Lab says satellite imagery and open-source information indicates that the RSF is either close to El Fasher or already inside its eastern and northeastern neighborhoods.

“At least 11 villages are confirmed burned to the ground on the western access on the approach to El Fasher,” Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the lab, told VOA.

He said it is their assessment that the RSF likely controls the north, east and west roads into El Fasher, and they have credible reports that the Sudanese army had to be re-supplied by air in the past week.

“This suggests that SAF has already assessed that they do not have a ground route for resupply or escape,” Raymond said.

That means civilians are also trapped, including thousands of African Zaghawa, Masalit, Fur, and other non-Arab ethnic groups.

“This is the final battle for Darfur,” Raymond said. “If RSF is victorious, then they will be able to complete the genocide begun at the beginning of the 21st century, and all indications are consistent with the fact that they intend to.”

He said a victory in El Fasher would be pivotal, giving the RSF control over all the regional capitals in the Darfur region and creating a stronghold from which they can fight the remaining elements of the SAF for years to come.

Darfur saw large-scale ethnic violence, crimes against humanity and genocide in the early 2000s when Arab “Janjaweed” militias targeted the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa. 
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nairobi, kenya — Kenya began three days of mourning on Friday after its defense chief and nine other senior officers were killed in a helicopter crash, the latest military accident involving a high-profile figure.

A 19-gun salute will take place Saturday in a military tribute to General Francis Omondi Ogolla, the chief of the Kenya Defense Forces, in the presence of President William Ruto, the defense ministry announced.

Ogolla was killed when his helicopter went down shortly after takeoff in a remote forested area of northwestern Kenya on Thursday.

“A distinguished four-star general has fallen in the course of duty and service of the country,” Ruto said, announcing the deaths that evening.

He said the Air Force had dispatched an investigation team to establish the cause of the accident.

Ruto grieved with Ogolla’s family at a ceremony in Nairobi on Friday as the nation began observing the mourning period, with the Kenyan flag flying at half-mast across the country and at missions abroad.

“Yesterday was truly a very, very tragic day,” the president said. “This is a big loss to the country because General Ogolla made a whole difference in the security of the country.”

The family said in a statement that a funeral would be Sunday at Ogolla’s home in Siaya in the west of the country, followed by a memorial service in a Nairobi suburb on April 26.

The bodies of the victims, draped in Kenyan flags, were returned to a military base in Nairobi on an air force plane late Thursday.

One of the officers, Brigadier Swale Saidi, was buried in the Indian Ocean town of Kilifi on Friday and other funerals are expected in the coming days.

Ogolla, a trained fighter pilot, had been promoted to the defense chief role by Ruto just a year ago and was about to mark 40 years of military service.

He had been visiting troops deployed in a security operation in the North Rift region, which is plagued by violence caused by armed bandits and cattle rustlers.

Ogolla’s daughter Lorna Ogolla said in a post on LinkedIn that her father died “doing what he did best for the better part of the last 40 years — trying to keep Kenya safe.”

Messages of condolence were sent from across the country and the African continent as well as the United Nations, the United States and other Kenyan allies.

“From combating terrorist threats posed by al-Shabab to leading efforts to bolster regional cooperation across a range of domains, he has left an indelible mark,” U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in a statement.

The Standard newspaper said it was the fifth armed forces chopper crash in 12 months, with claims that Kenya’s military aircraft were old and poorly maintained.

In June 2021, at least 10 soldiers were killed when their helicopter crashed during a training exercise south of Nairobi.

Ogolla is among a number of high-profile victims of air accidents in Kenya. In 2012, internal security minister George Saitoti, seen as a possible presidential candidate, was among six people killed in a police helicopter crash.

Kenya has one of the largest military budgets in the East Africa region, at $1.1 billion for the financial year ending in June 2024, according to government statistics.

The International Institute for Strategic Studies estimated in its 2024 report, The Military Balance, the total number of active armed forces at 24,100.

The East African nation is a major contributor to U.N. peacekeeping operations and also deploys troops for missions in the region.

Ogolla, a married father of two, joined the KDF in April 1984, rising through the ranks to command the Kenyan Air Force in 2018, a post he held for three years before becoming vice chief of the defense forces in 2021 and then chief in April 2023.
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abuja, nigeria — Nigeria has been Africa’s largest or second-largest oil exporter for years, but relies heavily on imports to meet local energy needs. The government is trying to change that, saying the country’s four moribund oil refineries will be revived and put back in operation.

This week, authorities also announced a new policy that oil producers must sell a share of their crude oil to local refiners before they are permitted to export crude.

Nigeria’s petroleum regulatory commission announced the new Domestic Crude Oil Supply Obligation (DCSO) during a meeting with industry players. It’s part of an amendment to Nigeria’s Petroleum Industry Act of 2021.

Under the policy, Nigerian oil producers are allowed to export crude only after meeting their supply obligations to local refiners.

The measure will take effect in the second half of the year, but it does not specify what quantity of crude must be supplied to local refineries.

Authorities said the objectives of the guideline are to bolster Nigeria’s refining capacity, improve the oil industry and earn foreign exchange.

Public affairs analyst Jaye Gaskiya said it was the right move. “In the current situation globally, this is actually going to turn out much more beneficial to both the producers and refiners in the country,” Gaskiya said. “Essentially this is designed to ease the problem of supply to the local refineries so that they don’t become redundant. The second thing is that it is also designed in such a manner to ease the pressure on the naira,” which is the currency of Nigeria.

According to the regulations, payments for crude to domestic refiners can be made in dollars, naira or a combination of both.

Nigeria relies heavily on imports to meet the population’s energy needs. Analysts say refining crude oil locally could reverse this trend.

But oil and gas analyst Toyin Akinosho said he had concerns.

“In principle, I do not have a problem with it, but we need to be very careful about the foreign exchange implications and also the volumes that are going out,” he said. “My challenge has always been, if you are overzealous about certain regulations, you can burn your fingers. In an era of very low forex [currency trading] and this being the major avenue for inflow into the country, you have to find a way of managing it.”

The new measure includes penalties for oil producers who divert crude oil or refiners who fail to meet payment obligations.

But Gaskiya said there were some loose strings to the rule.

“The regulation says it is on the basis of willing buyer and willing seller, and that’s quite tricky,” Gaskiya said. “A situation where you have the suppliers, for instance, being unwilling, what are you then going to do as the regulator? So those are the things that the regulator needs to be on the lookout for.”

The refineries in Nigeria, including the latest one built by Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, will have a combined processing capacity of 650,000 barrels of crude oil per day when rehabilitated.

While experts have doubts the new guidelines will be effective, authorities are optimistic Nigeria is getting closer to its goal of having a self-sufficient energy sector.
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NAIROBI — A Kenyan military helicopter crashed in the west of the country, killing five soldiers inside on Thursday, a police source said. 

Three other soldiers on the helicopter were injured and taken to hospital, the police source said, asking not to be named. 

The helicopter came down in Elgeyo-Marakwet county, the president’s spokesman said, without going into detail on any casualties.

“President William Ruto convened an urgent meeting of the National Security Council at State House Nairobi this evening following a Kenya Defense Forces’ helicopter crash this afternoon,” Hussein Mohamed wrote on X. 

A statement about the crash would be issued soon, government spokesperson Isaac Mwaura said on social media. 

Defense minister Aden Duale did not respond to Reuters’ calls to his telephone.  

At least 10 soldiers were killed in June 2021 when their helicopter crashed while landing near the capital Nairobi.
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Goma — In the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, specifically in the Beni and Butembo region, parents are finding it hard getting vaccines for their children. Health care providers report that vaccines have been in short supply for several months, leaving thousands of children unvaccinated. Parents worried about their children’s health are calling on authorities to quickly resolve the situation.

In the town of Butembo, vaccination programs have come to a stop. The head nurse of the Makasi health area, Kambale Wangahikya, confirms the absence of vaccines in certain areas of North Kivu province.

He said they’re missing several vaccines, such as the one that fights pneumonia and helps children fight coughs, and also the vaccine that fights meningitis and mumps. He said that all children born and unborn are therefore still at risk.

This situation creates frustrations for breastfeeding women. One mother, Kasoki, is worried because her infant son has not yet received the BCG vaccine against tuberculosis.

She said she has a 4-month-old baby, but he’s having trouble getting BCG and other vaccines. She went to the hospital four times and couldn’t find anything. The doctors gave her several appointments but when she arrived, she could hardly find anything. She’s worried that her baby will catch serious diseases.

Another mother, Stephanie’s, said she made several trips to health facilities to have her child vaccinated. It was only last week, she said, that her son received his first dose of any vaccine. She told us about the fear she felt.

She said she felt very bad because the vaccine she had been looking for a long time was very important for her child, because if he didn’t get it, he would be exposed to disabilities and diseases when he grew up. She said that the health authorities should force themselves to bring in the vaccines, because this shortage could cause problems for the children later on.

Kasoki Defrose, a nurse at Beni’s university clinic, said that not vaccinating children has consequences for the physical health of newborns. She said that local authorities are working hard to respond to this shortage.

She said that if children aren’t vaccinated against polio, for example, they risk becoming weak and their muscles won’t be strengthened. She said the authorities intend to respond to the shortage soon.

According to officials from the Beni health zone, which oversees dozens of hospitals in the region, over 1,000 children are waiting to be vaccinated in several towns in the Beni and Butembo region.
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YAOUNDE, CAMEROON — The state of health care in Cameroon is a source of growing concern, with thousands of doctors fleeing the central African country for lucrative jobs elsewhere, especially in Europe and North America, according to officials. 

The number of people, including doctors, acquiring passports and applying for visas has increased by 70 percent, officials say. In addition, 75 percent of the 1,000 doctors that Cameroon’s government trains each year are leaving.  

Cameroon’s Ministry of Public Health reports that several hundred doctors are enrolled in what members of the profession see as lucrative schemes to emigrate to Canada. Also, the number of health workers, including doctors, applying for the U.S. government’s Diversity Immigrant Visa Program, also known as the Green Card Lottery, is rising. 

The Cameroon Medical Council, an association of doctors, says the doctor-patient ratio in Cameroon has sunk to one doctor per 50,000 people, instead of the World Health Organization’s recommended ratio of one doctor per 10,000 patients. The group reports that the doctors are fleeing to escape hardship, poor pay, difficult working conditions and unemployment. 

Doctor Peter Louis Ndifor, the council’s vice president, said it is unfortunate that Cameroon trains but does not recruit thousands of its doctors. He spoke to VOA via telephone from Buea, an English-speaking town in southwestern Cameroon. 

“The number of registered doctors on the roll[s] of the Cameroon Medical Council is about 13,000, but we have 5,000 to 6,000 doctors in Cameroon presently,” he said. “Doctors quitting Cameroon is an eloquent testimony that doctors are in discomfort, doctors are in distress.” 

Cameroon says it currently needs at least 30,000 health workers, including doctors. The country is facing attacks from Boko Haram that have left more than 36,000 people dead, a separatist crisis that has killed more than 6,000 people and displaced about 750,000 others, and the spillover of sectarian violence from neighboring Central African Republic.  

The Cameroon Medical Council says the central African country in 2013 launched a program to train about 1,000 doctors in order to improve the doctor-patient ratio, which was then one doctor per 17,000 patients. 

However, the government recruits less than 100 doctors each year due to financial constraints, officials say. Cameroon’s Ministry of Public Health says it expected privately owned hospitals to recruit a majority of the doctors upon graduation from medical school, but hospitals owned by individuals, communities and churches also recruit less than 100 doctors each year.  

Even when recruited, the doctors say they are paid about $100 per month in private hospitals and about $220 per month in government hospitals.

Jathor Godlove, 29, is an unemployed doctor. After seven years of study at the faculty of medicine of Cameroon’s University of Bamenda, he says hardship is forcing him to consider leaving the country. 

“I find myself being very restrained and restricted in my capacity to help my family,” he said. “I even have some peers who venture out of medicine because they see that as a medic, when you get somewhere to offer your services, they will tell you they want to pay you 50,000 [Central African CFA] francs a month [around $80 U.S.], which is very funny. Some of them have families, when they find themselves in such situations, they see better opportunities abroad. I think you can’t blame them.”  

He says poor working conditions — including the lack of hospital equipment and poor pay — are pushing nurses, midwives and laboratory technicians to join doctors in leaving Cameroon for Europe and North America. 

However, some medical staff members who have not been able to travel out of Cameroon offer voluntary services in hospitals like in Bamenda, capital of Cameroon’s English-speaking Northwest Region.  

Doctor Denis Nsame, director of the Regional Hospital in Bamenda, says unemployed health care workers outnumber health workers hired by the government. 

“At the Regional Hospital in Bamenda, out of 600 staff, only 146 are state-employed staff, and we consult on average 45,000 patients per year, carry out about 1,900 surgeries per year, we have deliveries [of babies] close to 250 to 300 every month,” Nsame said. 

The Cameroon Medical Council says that some health workers, including doctors, at times go several months without pay. Many of the health workers count on donations and consultation fees from well-wishers and patients to make a living.  

In a message to Cameroonian youths last February 11, Cameroonian President Paul Biya said young people’s growing desire to emigrate is increasingly a cause for concern. He said Cameroonians should be patriotic and serve their homeland because the country is facing difficulties and leaving is not a solution.  

Doctors and other health workers say the president, if he wants to curb emigration, should improve their living conditions and hospital equipment.
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