I remember a Seminar on Economic Governance organized in Tangier, Morocco in 2017 where I had been invited to speak as an expert. In my presentation, I made a rather bleak description of Cameroon’s economic policies.
At the end of my speech and while I was expecting congratulations, I received only confused, even disapproving looks.
In their speeches, the Minister of Economy of Sudan and the former Prime Minister of Morocco argued, one after the other, that this description did not correspond at all to their perception of Cameroon, nor to the indicators of economic performance made up by international organizations: IMF, World Bank, European Union, etc.
And the Minister of Sudan concluded his presentation by saying that Cameroon was seen rather as a benchmark for his country.
So this is where I understood how foreigners judge Cameroon.
It is not on the basis of the negative or positive perception of Cameroonians that Biya is judged, but on the basis of objective and universal indicators: growth rate, human development index, poverty index, political stability index, press freedom index, etc.
When these indices have been measured for all the countries of Africa and it is found that Cameroon keeps its rank or even improves it, you cannot convince the International Community which relies on these indices that Biya is a bad President.
And this is precisely the problem of people who want to drive it out on the basis of an allegedly zero balance sheet.
When we take the various rankings on the basis of these multiple indices, we will notice that for some, the situation in Cameroon is deteriorating, and for others, it is improving.
The synthesis of all these indices, in other words, the average, shows that the average ranking of Cameroon has remained stable since 1960, with a slight improvement.
Under these conditions, you cannot make a credible speech by saying that Biya is a bad manager. In any case, if he is, it is clear that he is no more than the other Heads of State, and that is what alone counts!
It is possible to pin Biya’s failures in the eyes of Cameroonians, and to use them to fight it, but you cannot fight Biya before the International Community which is rather indulgent towards him for having maintained indicators in an environment particularly complex, and in a country recognized as very complex.
It is even a fault, since it reveals an ignorant, liar and outrageous character of his opponents. Biya is an average President who has kept Cameroon in its middle rank.
The fundamental question is this: is it because it is average, or is it because the socio-political system is too constrained?
I have always leaned towards the second hypothesis: we inherited a system which, by its nature, could only lead to the results that those we have today. From then on, Biya’s fault became clear: his radical inability to rearrange a blocked system.
Dieudonné ESSOMBA