Elvis Nghobo tried to get into four different professional schools in Cameroon, but could not make it. Frustrated, the 34-year-old turned to selling food at a market in Yaounde, the country’s seat of power.
Nghobo blames his woes on what he calls a corrupt education system that favors children of the elite.
As the central African country prepares for Sunday’s presidential election, he said he would not be heading out to vote.
Photo: AP
He called the results a foregone conclusion for 92-year-old Paul Biya, the world’s oldest president, who has ruled for Nghobo’s entire life.
“He is already too old to govern, and it’s boring knowing only him as president,” Nghobo said.
The sentiment is shared by millions of the country’s young population, whose median age is 18, in perhaps the most dramatic example of tension between Africa’s youth and the continent’s many aging leaders.
Biya is seeking an eighth term in office in a single-round presidential election in which 8.2 million Cameroonians are registered to vote.
He first became president in 1982 following the resignation of his predecessor, Ahmadou Ahidjo, and has ruled since then. He was declared the winner of seven subsequent elections. Cameroon has seen just two leaders since independence in 1960.
“In the face of increasingly difficult international environment, the challenges facing us are more and more pressing,” Biya said in announcing another run. “In such a situation, I cannot shirk my mission.”
The country’s youth are hungry for jobs. The unemployment rate stands at 3.5 percent, but 57 percent of the labor force aged 18 to 35 works in informal employment, World Bank data showed.
Despite Cameroon being an oil-producing country that is experiencing modest economic growth, young people say the benefits have not trickled down beyond the elites.
The country also faces escalating security crises. In the western region, a secession fight has long brewed mainly among English-speaking citizens who claim they are marginalized by the French-speaking majority. In the north, the Boko Haram insurgency spills over from neighboring Nigeria, with armed groups routinely attacking border towns.
Biya in this election is challenged by nine opposition candidates, including some former allies and appointees. They include Issa Tchiroma Bakary, who until recently served as the minister of employment, and Bello Bouba Maigari, who was minister for tourism.
Another candidate who ran against Biya in 2018 and came second with 14 percent of votes, Maurice Kamto, was barred from contesting in this election.
The electoral commission said it disqualified Kamto because his party was also sponsoring another candidate, a claim Kamto’s lawyers rejected.
Kamto was arrested after the previous election for demanding fairness.
“The key opposition candidates are former ministers in Paul Biya’s government who just resigned a few weeks to the presidential elections. The youths see double standards in that kind of sudden twist of demeanor, pointing to the grim fact that ‘belly politics’ is the order of the day,” University of Dschang law professor Wilson Tamfuh said.
He referred to a tactic of “opposition” by those who seek to dilute support for real opposition candidates in return for the president’s favor.
Analysts say Cameroon’s elites are unwilling to disrupt the political order after decades of Biya’s rule.
“It is no question that [Biya] is widely unpopular in the country, but he definitely has the support of a lot of the elites and customary rulers through corruption and a money network. That sort of plays a big role in making sure he wins,” Oxford Analytica Africa analyst Nat Powell said.
The government has rejected such allegations in the past.
The ruling Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement controls the legislature with 94 of 100 seats at the senate and 152 of 180 at the national assembly.
Biya’s health has routinely been a topic of speculation as he spends most of his time in Europe, leaving governance to key party officials and family members.
“Part of it is he wants to be president ‘til he dies, but part of it is also entourage and the ruling party,” Powell said. “The party wants to keep him there because he is the stabilizing force, because as long as he lives, that keeps everything together.”
At the University of Yaounde I, Manoung Wilfried, a 27-year-old geoscience student, sat near a staircase, looking pensive.
He said he would vote in the election, but none of the candidates has convinced him, and he decried Biya’s participation.
Wilfried cited patriotism as his only motivation for voting.
“For the good of the country, he should hand over the country’s leadership to someone else who can better understand and solve the problems faced by the youths,” he said of Biya.
Like many young people, Nghobo has lost faith in the electoral system that he believes is designed to keep Biya in power.
“Power change in this country can come through other means, but not through the ballot box,” he said.
Crowds in Bangladesh are flocking to snap photographs with an unlikely social media star — an albino buffalo with flowing blond hair nicknamed “Donald Trump” that is due to be sacrificed within days. Owner Zia Uddin Mridha, 38, said his brother named the 700kg bull over its flowing helmet of hair resembling the signature look of the US president. “My younger brother picked this name because of the buffalo’s extraordinary hair,” he said at his farm in Narayanganj, just outside the capital, Dhaka. Mridha said that a constant stream of curious visitors — social media fans, onlookers and children — have come throughout
It began as a satirical online project. Now millions of young people in India are flocking to it as an outlet for their frustration. A parody political party called the Cockroach Janta Party, with the insect as its symbol, has exploded across India’s social media by turning absurdist humor into protest. Memes and short videos mocking corruption, joblessness and political dysfunction have flooded social media sites, where millions of users are embracing the cockroach — known for its ability to survive harsh conditions — as a tongue-in-cheek symbol of endurance. The online movement’s rise has been unusually rapid. The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP)
BIGGER ROLE: Beijing has said it maintains an impartial stance on the war in Ukraine, but by training Russian troops, China is far more involved than previously known China’s armed forces secretly trained about 200 Russian military personnel in China late last year, and some have since returned to fight in Ukraine, according to three European intelligence agencies and documents seen by Reuters. While China and Russia have held a number of joint military exercises since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Beijing has repeatedly said that it is neutral in the conflict and presents itself as a peace mediator. The covert training sessions, which predominantly focused on the use of drones, were outlined in a dual-language Russian-Chinese agreement signed by senior Russian and Chinese officers in Beijing on
HOTTER: While Indians are accustomed to summer heat, climate change has caused northwestern India to warm faster than other parts of the country, an academic said Roads and markets have emptied during afternoons and some farmers have switched to nighttime work to avoid scorching temperatures as a heat wave grips large parts of India. The India Meteorological Department forecast maximum temperatures for yesterday of about 45°C in the capital, New Delhi, where authorities have opened temporary “cooling zones” to help people cope. The weather department warned that conditions would likely persist across several northern regions in the coming days, with temperatures staying well above seasonal averages. Authorities urged people to stay indoors during the hottest hours and take precautions against heat-related illnesses. India declares a heat wave whenever maximum temperatures
RSS