42 - Putin-like Compatriots, VII: Cameroon's Biya and More Russians in Africa
Cameroon is a former French colony just south of Nigeria, with a port on the Gulf of Guinea and a northern pedicle that is beset by the Boko Haram Islamist insurgency that has killed thousands of civilians in Chad, Niger, Cameroon, and northeastern Nigeria. Cameroon has been ruled for nearly 40 years by 89 year old President Paul Biya, a haughty autocrat who spends most of every year in a villa in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Eighty percent of Cameroon’s inhabitants speak French in addition to their own home languages. Another twenty percent are English-speaking; the southwestern section of Cameroon was a British League of Nations mandate after the Germans, who originally colonized Kamerun before World War I, were defeated. France was the mandatory power in the rest of the territory.
A militant rebellion by English-speakers seeking autonomy from their French-speaking overlords has turned this region, called Ambazonia by the local separatists, into an intermittent war zone. The Ambazonians have assassinated French-speaking Cameroonian officials and fought running battles with the army of Cameroon – so far without gaining the autonomy that they seek. The drive for Ambazonia is popular in the English speaking area and obviously disturbing to Biya’s reign.
Putin’s Russia, taking advantageous of another African zone of instability, last month offered to help Biya buttress his long rule. Russia, which has already placed its Wagner Group mercenaries into the former French colonies of the Central African Republic and Mali, and has been attempting to insert itself into Burkina Faso and Guinea, now wants to add Cameroon to its emerging empire. Russia also has a role in supporting the military junta in Sudan, just as it backs the military coup leaders in Mali (and, it hopes, soon in Guinea and Burkina Faso).
The agreement that Biya and Russia signed last month would deliver small arms and armored trucks to equip Cameroon’s army. Russia also will help gather intelligence against Cameroon’s internal adversaries and train military cadres. The agreement upgrades a 2015 document with similar provisions. Whereas Russia sought to place Wagner mercenaries in places like the Central African Republic in order to enhance its ability to exploit diamonds, gold, and ivory (as it seeks gold in Sudan), Cameroon may be more relevant simply as an outlet for Russian arms sales and influence buying. (Human Rights Watch today reported atrocities in the Central African Republic perpetrated by masked Wagnerites.)
Even amid the carnage in Ukraine – and because it may soon need more backing in the UN and other international forums --- Russia’s diplomats charge ahead to secure its standing in African regimes that are vulnerable internally. Russia, copying Chinese methods, also provides financial incentives to the autocrats with whom it closes deals.
Russia is moving into Africa almost always where established autocrats like Biya or brand-new military leaders like Col. Mamadou Doumbouya in Guinea or Col. Assimi Goita in Mali are anxious to abandon ties to Paris in exchange for less controlling and more personally profitable arrangements with Moscow. Since 2019, when Putin brought a clutch of African heads of state and government to the Kremlin, Moscow has signed arms deals and cooperation protocols with more than thirty African nations. The World Bank estimates that those exchanges have been worth more than $12 billion to Russia in actual and potential sales of weaponry.
In Cameroon’s case, Biya likely is using strengthened ties to the Russians to encourage French and American equally positive support for a despotic enterprise that may be on faltering legs. Biya’s autocratic and repressive rule is under threat by Ambazonians and, possibly, from French-speaking military officers who have watched junior commanders in Guinea, Central Africa, and Mali assume control despite sanctions from the Economic Community of West African States, censure from the African Union, and criticism from Paris.
Cameroon holds several hundred political prisoners, many of whom allege having been tortured. Most of those detained are from the English-speaking south, but others are French-speaking critics of Biya’s rule.
Biya lives in Lausanne most of every year and has homes in France. Reputedly, he is worth more than $200 million, all of it amassed through his enduring presidency. Corruption, naturally, is alive and well in Cameroon. Transparency International’s well-regarded annual Corruption Perceptions Index ranks Cameroon 144th of 180 nations, just below Russia and tied with Kyrgyzstan and Uganda for rampant corruption. Cameroon is also just below Pakistan, that is more corrupt, on that list.
Meanwhile, 71 percent of Cameroonians live on less than $5 per day, with a GDP per capita last year of $1380. Life expectancy is 60, which is low for Africa, and the maternal mortality rate is 529 per 100,000 births, which is high, even for Africa.
Cameroon relies for revenue on oil and gas exports and the sale of cocoa beans and a variety of rough and sawn wood from its abundant forests. Exports go mostly to China, the Netherlands, the United States, and India, in that order.
Putin specializes – with reason – in consorting profitably with those who are turning African countries into centers of naked profit-seeking. Now that Emmanuel Macron has been confirmed as France’s president, he needs to cease withdrawing troops from the jihadist battles in the Sahel and to draw again on the undoubted wells of cultural and economic influence that France could still exert in its ex-colonies. Obviously, and Macron is in the vanguard, France will need to abandon colonial hauteur for meaningful engagement. Then, supported by U. S. and British strategic efforts, Russia can be denied its imperial gains and goals in Africa.