Francis Nyamnjoh

Cameroon: Over Twelve Years of Cosmetic Democracy

By: Francis B. Nyamnjoh

It is election day in Cameroon, Sunday, June 23, 2002. Polling stations nationwide have opened. Cameroonians are queuing up to vote for councillors and parliamentarians, when suddenly on national television and radio President Paul Biya postpones the elections for a week. His reason: inadequate preparations and poor distribution of ballot papers due to the incompetence of the Minister of Territorial Administration (MINAT)—Ferdinand Koungou Edima, whom Biya dismisses along with some of his key collaborators. Some see in this a sign that the president has at last yielded to more than a decade of pressure for a level playing field in Cameroon politics. To others, it is all déjà vu, a ploy to give a semblance of legitimacy to an election process fundamentally flawed from the outset.

Chieftaincy and Democracy in Contemporary Africa

By Francis B. Nyamnjoh

Theorizing democracy and accountability in Africa ought to emphasise networking and creative domestication of encounters with others.

Bakweri Chiefs in Cameroon (© Makuna Tande)

This focus should check the application of misleading labels, and draw attention to the various pressures exerted on the state and private corporate entities by various groups in various ways for various reasons of empowerment. As people increasingly distrust states, markets and NGOs to accommodate their needs, they will continue to explore other avenues of fulfilling their expectations.

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Interrogating Barbie Democracy

By Francis B. Nyamnjoh

The world is currently hostage to a very uncreative idea of democracy informed by a very narrow idea of what it is to be beautiful, healthy, successful and free. Nowhere is this narrowness better exemplified than in the colossal investment that consumer capitalism has made in slimness, the greatest icon of which is Barbie.

The Africa of 2015 will be more assertive and critical of certain orthodoxies as Africans seek to harness their distinctive creativity, adaptiveness, sociality and conviviality in relationships and encounters. This essay focuses on democracy, a domain in which, paradoxical as it may seem, Africa would have much to teach the rest of the world by 2015.