Relations between Cameroon and the Peoples Republic of China, do not only have a long standing history, but have also always been described as extremely friendly. No doubt therefore, that the current visit of President Biya to China is founded on this precept and the importance attached to the visit can best be appraised from the size of the team of ministers and government officials that accompanied the head of state on this trip. From the look of things, it certainly did sound from the very onset that it will require some hard talk for the trip to reap its fruit. The hard talk would be centred on how to convince the Chinese to accept our plea for the cancellation of the country’s debts with China.
However, if the Chinese will grant our plea, which we think they will, we can only hope that it will enable us to revisit our policy on the issue of foreign aid. We in this Newspaper strongly believe that there are some loopholes in agreements that bind us in our acceptanceof foreign aid, particularly in the case with China. We know we are not the only ones in this indifference. In as much as we appreciate China’s aid packages, with their low interest rates and other flexibilities in the repayment, such aid or loans certainly hardly benefit the ordinary Cameroonian in the same way that the aid, or better call them loans, benefit nationals of the donor country.
Secondly, it becomes another issue altogether how these loans are managed. What is obvious is the fact that a good share of the loan money ends up in private bank accounts anywhere out of the country. And that one item on the agenda of the president’s visit to China is to ask China to cancel our debts further compounds cynicism on our debts management.
However, Chinese funded projects in Cameroon, to be fair to that country, are many. It is therefore necessary to appreciate this aspect of our relations with China in good faith. In most cases the projects are well handled to the finish and it portrays how much China is contributing to the development of Cameroon. It would be ungrateful to play down this aspect of our relations with China. Our concern however is the issue of job creation for the thousands of our jobless youth.
It is obvious that the issue of the towering rate of unemployment in this country is disturbing, for a country such as ours that is targeting an emergence. It is equally unfortunate that government does not seem to put much weight behind the private sector of our economy through which jobs could be created. For this reason much hope has always been placed on the few foreign companies such as the Chinese, to salvage the unemployment situation. But unfortunately, a careful survey of the employment policy of the numerous Chinese companies handling projects in the country shows that, a very insignificant percentage of Cameroonians gain employment with these Chinese companies. The tendency is for cheap labour to be imported from China.
The same study has revealed that, instead of using materials available in the country, these Chinese companies import building tools all the way from China, thereby depriving our few local industries that manufacture such building materials as cement or even nails, of the opportunity for the local producers to participate in the process of economic enhancement along with Chinese companies. This is obviously an unfair deal. This is why we think government should review such aid agreements that do not respect a fair deal procedure. We sincerely hope that with a number of new agreements already signed between China and Cameroon, concerning a number of new development projects, these loopholes will be closed once and for all. We cannot afford to see our young school leavers roaming the streets, while China continues to ship cheap labour from China to do what Cameroonians can do.
There can be no better opportunity for government to point out this weakness to the Chinese authorities than now that a high powered delegation had been talking face to face with Chinese. That China has this time around promised financial assistance to finance three economic projects in Cameroon is good news any way. But if this promise excludes the possibility of our youth being fully involved, it makes it bad news indeed.