The Irony of Southern Cameroons’ “Poverty”

Photo by Dimitry Anikin on Unsplash

On March 3, 2020, in reference to the aspirations of Cameroon’s English-speaking “Anglophone” regions to become independent, US Assistant Secretary of State for Africa, Ambassador Tibor Nagy, declared:

The last thing that Africa needs is another state that will be full of suffering and poverty…

Listening to Ambassador Nagy speak, it sounded like the English-speaking “Anglophone” regions of Cameroon (formerly known as Southern Cameroons) have been stuck in a rut for the last sixty-one years.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Tibor Nagy speaks on the Trump Administration’s Africa Policy at the Wilson Center in Washington D.C. March 3, 2020.

Ambassador Nagy might as well have been reading from Sir Sydney Philipson’s UK-sponsored, deeply flawed and intentionally misleading 1959 report on Southern Cameroons. The report had concluded that Southern Cameroons was too poor to be allowed to become a sovereign nation.

Sir Philipson’s Report on the ‘Economic Viability of Southern Cameroons’, a hastily conducted report ironically paid for by the Government of Southern Cameroons

The report’s conclusion was immediately used by the UK to persuade the members of the UN in October 1959 to disallow a third option on the 1961…