Reporters Without Borders is having difficulty establishing whether Cameroonian mobile phone operator MTN’s Twitter via SMS service has finally been restored after being blocked for about 10 days at the government’s behest. Contradictory statements are being made. Many Tweets suggested the service had been restored in practice. But an MTN representative said the contrary.

International Women's Day 2011 will be remembered in Cameroon for more technological reasons. Bouba Kaele, a marketing manager at the South African MTN telecom company in Cameroon, announced on social network Twitter that the Cameroonian Government banned access to twitter via SMS for MTN customers. This news caused anger among the Cameroonian online community.

Malaysia's Sime Darby is considering a $2.5 billion plantation expansion deal in Cameroon, the Financial Times reported, signalling the global grab for land is well underway as food prices soar. The Financial Times quoted Sime Darby Chief Executive Mohd Bakke Salleh as saying the project in the West African state will involve 300,000 hectares (741,300 acres) of oil palm estates although discussions have so far led to 'nothing conclusive'.

Opposition groups in Cameroon organised protests on Wednesday, 23 February 2011 to call for President Paul Biya to leave office. President Paul Biya, who is running for re-election later this year, has been in power for 28 years. Paul Biya's Special Intervention Brigade crushed the protest with brute force. Global Voices issues this report on how the police responded.

Kah Walla, the presidential candidate for Cameroon Ô’Bosso, who led yesterday’s peaceful protests which were brutally quelled by the army, produced this diary of events leading up to and during the protest.

Cameroon continues to arrest and prosecute individuals under a law that criminalizes same-sex sexual activity. This law has consequences for LGBT people beyond their unacceptable arrests and imprisonment. It drives inequality within the justice system and promotes violence within families and communities. To combat these violations, in November IGLHRC launched the report, 'Criminalizing Identities: Rights Abuses in Cameroon based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity.' The report was a collaborative effort with Human Rights Watch and the Cameroonian LGBT organisations Alternatives-Cameroun and l’Association pour la Défense des Droits des Homosexuels.

Cameroonian gay rights activist Alice Nkomo has come in for sharp criticism over a European Union grant meant to provide health training for sexual minorities in the conservative country. News of the euro 300,000 grant which was finalised last week has heightened already widespread sentiment against lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders in the west African country. Anti-gay movements in the country have urged the government to take the EU to task for providing the funds to Ms Nkomo’s organisation.

Cameroonian journalists Robert Mintya and Serge Sabouang were released conditionally on 24 November on the order of President Paul Biya, report Journaliste en danger (JED), Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE), PEN International's Writers in Prison Committee (WiPC) and Reporters Without Borders (RSF). They had been in prison since March 2010.

A new study finds a lack of transparency and corruption are reducing the impact of an initiative in Cameroon that channels a portion of national timber levies to rural forest communities. The study highlights the challenges of using a climate change pact to do something similar in forested regions around the world. In an article published in the peer-reviewed journal International Forestry Review, scientists at the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) examined how revenues from a tax paid by logging companies in Cameroon, known as an Area Fee (AF), are distributed to local councils to reduce rural poverty and stimulate local economic growth.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the independence of most of the French-speaking African states and has been so celebrated in France and in the former French Sub-Saharan African states. The independence of North Africa followed a different course, but the 1954-1962 Algerian War heavily influenced French policy in Sub-Saharan Africa - usually referred to as Afrique Noire (Black Africa). Less celebrated are the political assassinations which were carried out in the lead up to the 1960 independences. Thus the November 3, 1960 death of Felix Moumie, the Cameroun independence leader, by poison in Geneva, merits attention to remind us that State-sponsored murders have terrorism of population as an aim.

Cameroonians are attacked by police, politicians, the media, and even their own communities if they are suspected of having sexual relations with a person of the same sex, four human rights organisations said in a joint report. The government should take urgent action to decriminalise such consensual conduct and to ensure the full human rights of all Cameroonians, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity, said Alternatives-Cameroun, l'Association pour la défense des droits des homosexuels, Human Rights Watch, and the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission.

The official death toll from the cholera epidemic that has hit Cameroon since April is now 559 deaths out of 8,528 cases, according to the Minister of Health, Andre Mama Fouda. The region of the Far North has the highest toll of 542 deaths from 8,227 cases.

Cameroon is one of many African countries being targeted by foreign investors for agricultural lands. As of late, a French investor has taken a huge swath of land for sugar cane and the Malaysian company Sime Darby is in the process of negotiating for 300,000 ha in the southern part of the country for palm oil plantations. Chinese investors are also keen on acquiring farmland in Cameroon. In September 2010, GRAIN visited the Upper Sanaga region, in the centre of the country, to take a closer look at the project of one such Chinese company.

The European Union has signed a voluntary partnership agreement with Cameroon, the largest African exporter of timber products to the EU. By July 2012, all shipments of wood products from Cameroon to the EU will be required to carry a license showing that they contain timber and wood products from a legal origin. This agreement expresses a strong joint commitment to eradicate illegal logging.

The death toll from a cholera epidemic in Cameroon's North and Far North provinces stands at 420, according to public health minister André Mama Fouda. The outbreak of the waterborne disease throws an unwelcome spotlight on inadequate access to clean water and sanitation, particularly in the country’s rural north.

Following a joint statement with Human Rights Watch (HRW), calling for the decriminalisation of consensual sexual acts between adults of the same sex, Alternatives Cameroon, a gay rights organisation, says it has now chosen to use revendication rather than a confrontational approach, since attitudes towards homosexuality issues seem to be slowly changing in the country.

The resident representative of the World Health Organisation (WHO) in Cameroon, Charlotte Faty Ndiaye, has called for a 'cross-border intervention' involving Nigeria, Cameroon and Chad to tackle the cholera epidemic that is ravaging the three countries. Cameroon has recorded 417 cases from 6,239 cases, Chad has recorded 65 deaths from 10,040 cases while 614 have died from 11,359 cases in Nigeria, according to Ms Ndiaye.

Cameroon is currently experiencing one of its most severe outbreaks of cholera in decades. The epidemic began in May 2010, following the country’s rainy season, and is most prevalent in the country’s Extreme North province. To date, there are some 5,560 reported cases of cholera and 385 deaths, according to the Government of Cameroon.

Five United Nations humanitarian agencies are rushing medical supplies and other materials to northern Cameroon, where the country’s worst outbreak of cholera in six years has already claimed at least 155 lives. Cholera drugs, oral rehydration salts, hygiene kits, surgical gloves, family water kits and educational materials are among the items that have been dispatched, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reported today from Yaoundé, the capital.

Cholera has killed at least 94 people in northern Cameroon and is spreading, in what health officials say is the most severe outbreak in years. "We are used to seeing cholera here during the rainy season, but we don't understand what's happening this year," Kuété Fotié Yves, health director in the district of Moloko, told IRIN. "We have not seen an outbreak of this magnitude in at least 10 years."