“Africa is not underdeveloped. Africa is over-exploited.”

As the world focuses on presidential elections and trade wars, several African nations have been struggling through revolutions with varying motives and methods. From environmental causes to rape awareness, in regions like the Ivory Coast down to South Africa, these are the main revolutions that have been re-shaping the continent in 2020.

Part 1: Cameroon’s Anglophone Crisis. #AnglophoneCrisis

The Anglophone crisis in Cameroon also referred to as the Cameroonian Civil War, has been defined as the movement in which Anglophones have increased awareness regarding their feelings of being marginalized, exploited, and homogenized, manifesting these feelings in separatist efforts. They experience this discrimination in political, economic, and social sectors of life, all originating in the systemic oppression in the nation that is dominated and ran by Francophones. Since 2017, failure to promote law and democracy have led to an environment that fosters conflict and endangers millions of lives.

Although inequality has been going on for years, the crisis truly began in September of 2017, when separatists in “Anglophone territories” declared Ambazonia an independent state and began revolting against the government of Cameroon. What started as a relatively small insurgency quickly morphed into a civil war within the year, spreading to the majority of Anglophone regions in the country. By mid-2019, the government had control of major cities and some areas of the countryside, while separatists held the majority of the countryside and made frequent appearances in large cities.

This year, frontlines have begun to emerge, with mutual understandings between both parties. Cameroon raids towns and villages that are under Anglophone control and is focused on securing major urban areas rather than catching the separatists. In the three years the conflict has persisted, approximately 3,000 people have lost their lives, including 8 children in a recent shooting.

Up until the end of last month, the majority of activists and separatists had insisted that schools remain closed, ensuring these suggestions with acts of violence. On October 24, 2020, armed men attacked a school in Kumba, a city in the Southwest region of Cameroon. 8 children lost their lives and several others were injured. The Cameroonian government swiftly blamed separatists fighters, claims that have been rejected; the secessionist groups are saying that the attack was carried out by agents of the national military as a way to damage the separatists’ image.

On top of thousands of innocent lives lost, more than 500,000 people have been displaced by the conflict. There have been several attempts of dialogue between both parties, but none of them have been successful. In 2019, the first known instance of dialogue and national dialogue between the separatists and Cameroon occurred, as well as the granting of a special status to Anglophone regions, efforts that proved ineffective after the war intensified later that same year.

In February of this year, Cameroon held parliamentary elections, further escalating the situation. Separatists became increasingly assertive yet threatened by the deployment of Cameroon’s additional forces. Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, one armed group declared a unilateral ceasefire, prompting calls to the Cameroonian government and other separatist groups to do the same. Both parties didn’t comply and continued fighting.

War crimes have repeatedly been perpetuated by all groups involved in the crisis. Starting with Cameroonian authorities, there is a lot of photographic evidence that shows a pattern of burning down villages for strategic gain. The military has responded to these claims by saying that the soldiers who appear in the video were separatists wearing stolen Cameroonian Army uniforms. Thanks to satellite images, significant damage to villages has been noted, however, journalists are not allowed to enter conflict zones, and soldiers are prohibited from carrying their mobile phones.

Those defending Ambazonia aren’t innocent either. The groups declared a school boycott in 2017, attacking and burning down schools that didn’t shut down. At least 42 schools were targeted in a span of 15 months. Extreme separatists groups consider schools a legitimate target due to the fact that French is a mandatory subject, and because of this targeting, around 6,000 schools in Anglophone regions shut down by July 2019, leaving around 600,000 children without an education.

Aside from boycotting schools, separatists have gone out of their way to make Anglophone regions “ungovernable” by maiming employees at state-owned corporations, kidnapping for ransom, blackmailing civilians, and more. These acts have received condemnation from the Interim Government of Ambazonia and have numerous deaths attributed to them.

The conflict has brought further harm to an already dire economic situation. A state-owned company with 22,000 employees, Cameroon Development Corporation, said that the war could potentially lead to the loss of 5,000 jobs — on the short term. Human Is Right, a Cameroonian-based NGO, recently reported that the war provoked a 70% spike in unemployment rates in the agricultural sector.

Palm oil and cocoa sectors in the Southwest region of Cameroon have also taken hard blows from the separatists. These groups are aiming to stem any flow of income that might go to the Cameroonian state from Anglophone regions in hopes of making the cost of controlling the area outweigh the benefits coming from it.

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