A few years ago, Cameroon was named by Transparency International as the most corrupt country in the world. Things do not seem to have improved much. This article talks to ordinary Cameroonians in all sectors of society about how their lives are blighted by corruption. Most of them wanted to remain anonymous.

Africa’s leading human rights body has been asked to intervene in the case of a Cameroonian radio station closed by the government. The complaint to the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights was filed on behalf of Freedom FM, an independent radio station in Douala, Cameroon. The station has been arbitrarily denied a broadcasting license since its application was submitted in October 2002. In May 2003, police seized the station’s studios and sealed off access to its broadcasting equipment. The owners have been refused entry ever since.

Cameroon has volunteered to be among the first 17 countries programmed to undergo evaluation as part of the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM), which is the enforcement component of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD). However, the country is far from being prepared particularly in the field of governance - a key component of the NEPAD initiative. There is an acute problem of transparency and accountability in this well endowed sub Saharan African country.

The government of Cameroon has ordered an environmental impact study of the planned hydroelectric dam on the Lom and Pangar rivers, including the world environmental organisation IUCN in the expert panel. As electricity needs are booming in Cameroon, IUCN is not explicitly negative to the dam, even though the proposed Pangar-Djerem Wildlife Reserve will be affected. Cameroonian authorities are poised to go ahead with a hydroelectric dam on River Lom, a few kilometres downstream of its confluence with River Pangar. The rivers are tributaries to Cameroon's mighty River Sanaga, a river basin contributing with over 90 percent of the country's hydroelectric energy.

The problems that affect agriculture in Cameroon are dispiritingly familiar: underinvestment in rural areas, limited access to water - and a global trading environment that disadvantages small-scale farmers. Government says it is trying to tackle the situation. But, civil society groups don't necessarily view its efforts with optimism. Although 50 percent of the population depends on agriculture for its livelihood, ”it only receives eight percent of total state investment monies,” says Alain Kounga, president of the Association of Development Promoters.

An appeal by Bali Urban Council (BUC), Cameroon, headed by Chairman Ba Gwangatua Forkusam to Bali Nyonga elites at home and abroad to help alleviate acute water shortage problems led Dr. Richard Fosam (Ba Tutuwan), a senior engineer resident in Luxembourg to respond with a fresh water pump.

Four young gorillas captured illegally and kept in a Malaysian zoo have been sent to South Africa, despite Cameroon's insistence they were caught there and should be returned, a newspaper reported on Friday. Cameroon says it has proof that poachers illegally captured the western lowland gorillas in the country's south-west, transferring them to neighbouring Nigeria and then northern Malaysia's government-run Taiping Zoo about two years ago.

Food shortage has hit Cameroon, prompting agricultural experts to devise a plan to overhaul the country's farming system. This is not the first time that Cameroon, which enjoys abundant rainfall, is facing food shortages. In August 1991, the country received its first donation of 2,600 metric tonnes of food from the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO).

"The situation of women in this country is worrisome. At home, women are beaten, girls are sexually abused, there is violence linked to the dowry and there is marital rape,” says a new report about the challenges facing women in Cameroon. "Surveys seem to indicate that at least a third of women are raped, beaten, forced to have sexual intercourse or mistreated in one way or another during the course of their lives,” it adds.

Two-thirds of teenagers in the central African country of Cameroon have sex by the age of 16 and more than half of them shun condoms, according to a study by German aid agency GTZ. Officials said the figures, which shed new light on sexual behaviour in a nation where HIV/AIDS adult infection rates have leapt more than 20-fold in just over a decade, were alarming.

More than 500 cases of cholera have been reported over the past seven weeks in Douala, the largest city in Cameroon, and at least 13 people have died of the disease, according to government statistics. However, health workers told IRIN that the real cholera infection rate in the heavily polluted port city of 2.5 million people could be much higher than official figures suggest.

Health Minister Urbain Olanguena Awono has opened an administrative and judicial inquiry into a news story that appeared in the private newspaper "Le Messager". The minister was angered by the paper's publication of an article in its 18 February edition (issue 1624), which reported on the administration of a vaccine of poor quality to individuals affected by the cholera epidemic that has struck Douala, Cameroon's second largest city (240 kilometres south of Yaounde), in the last seven weeks.

Authorities in Cameroon are engaged in a battle to stem corruption in the education system where, as mathematics teacher Victor Pene describes it, graft "is in the process of institutionalizing itself". "The future of education in Cameroon is looking bleak," adds Father Jean-Claude Ekobena, Secretary for Education in the Catholic Archdiocese of Yaoundé. "In schools, there is a blatant sale of places for matriculating students, the purchase of diplomas, ‘modification' of report cards, the solicitation of favours by teachers - and misappropriation of school fees by teachers."

With a bumper crop of elections due in Africa this year, the extent to which women have a voice in government will be coming under renewed scrutiny. This is especially true of Cameroon, where the campaign to elect a female president during polls in October is gaining momentum. “It's time that women mobilized around this goal and catapulted one of us to channel our frustrations. She's the one we'll be looking to in the next elections,” says Eugenie Zambo, Vice President of the Campaign for Political Emergence of the Cameroonian Woman (CEPFC), a non-governmental organisation (NGO).

A member of the national anti-corruption observatory at the prime minister's office has recommended the creation of a ministry of governance as the only way to arrest corruption which has eaten deep into the fabric of Cameron's society. Ngalah Edward who made the recommendation in a memo dated 23 January to the head of state, Paul Biya, a copy of which The Herald procured, noted that his observation was based on the fact that "the fight against corruption had failed as anti-corruption structures seem to be beating around the bush."

Frustrated Cameroonians have been out on the streets protesting at a massive fraud scandal affecting the national post office. Frustrated account holders stopped traffic and paralysed activities in the capital, Yaounde, after they were unable to withdraw savings and salaries. The post office's director general Guilaume Ejange says about $580,000 has been lost in the scandal, but savers fear the figure is much higher.

An anti-corruption committee was last week installed to check corrupt practices in the Ministry of Employment, Labour and Social Insurance. The installation ceremony was chaired by Minister Robert Nkili at the Yaounde conference centre. Minister Nkili told members of the anti-corruption committee that the ultimate wish of the Cameroonian people of all classes and shades of opinion was to check and possibly eradicate corrupt practices in the public service. According to him, the country has enough resources but lacks honest managers.

Ebana Dieudonne, a national of Cameroon, is currently detained in Tinsley House Removal/Detention Centre in the United Kingdom, where he has been since 10th December. Prior to Tinsley House, he was held in Harmondsworth detention centre since 7th November. Ebana is in a state of extreme distress and fears that if he is returned to Cameroon, he will be arrested upon arrival and imprisoned or killed. He has good grounds for these fears. Ebana has had a gay relationship with his employer, a high level politician, for over two years. In Cameroon, homosexuality is illegal. Section 347 of the Penal Code criminalises sexual contacts with members of the same sex with a penalty of up to 5 years' imprisonment.

Benin and Cameroon, previously certified free of polio virus, have been re-infected by strains from neighbouring Nigeria, prompting the World Health Organisation (WHO) to call an urgent meeting in Geneva on 15 January of health ministers of polio-affected countries. WHO said in a statement on Friday that ministers of health from Nigeria, Cameroon, Benin, Pakistan, India and Egypt would meet with international partners from WHO, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Rotary International and the U.S. Centres for Disease Control. The objective would be “to immediately intensify efforts to stop poliovirus transmission globally by the end of 2004.”

Couples in Cameroon are in a frisky mood following the end of a two-month strike during which women refused to have sex with their husbands. The 6,000 women in the north-west of the country were protesting against the destruction of crops by cattle.