CEMAC PASSPORT BRINGS OPPORTUNITIES TO CAMEROONIANS

AN OPPORTUNITY FOR CAMEROONIANS TO CASH IN ON

The idea of the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa (CEMAC) is a commendable one. It has advantages for the six member countries that constitute it. These are Chad, Congo Brazzaville, Gabon, the Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea and Cameroon. Sao Tome and Principe is an observer.

CEMAC, which is the equivalent of ECOWAS in West Africa, is an effort to unite the economies of the Central African sub region. Several of such exist in Africa with the ultimate objective being to come up with something like the European Union.

The idea is for the countries within each block to pool their resources together, stick together and ensure collective takeoff in terms of politics, the economy, social affairs and external relations, to name those. Already, some CEMAC-wide institutions have been set up. An example is the Bank of Central African States (BESC) whose headquarters is in Yaounde. It regulates the national banks of member countries.

Moves have been made to institute other regional instances such as a Common National Assembly. Another is the community-wide passport, or as it is commonly referred to, “the CEMAC passport”. It is a biometric document which officially came into effect from the 1^st of January of this year. That means that from that date, any holder of a valid passport could travel to any member country without requiring a visa.

A couple of months ago, the Secretary General at the Presidency of the Republic of Cameroon, Ngoh Ngoh Ferdinand, launched the official production of the passports on the Cameroonian side, on behalf of the President of the Republic. By so doing, Cameroon became the first member country to take the necessary step towards making the passport became a reality. Right now, production continues.

Nonetheless, it remains to be seen to what extent some member countries will reconcile themselves with the fact of permanently and unconditionally receiving “foreigners” on their soil. So far, some of them such as Equatorial Guinea and Gabon have expressed fears that if intake goes unchecked, they may become “swamped’ by the more populous countries such as Cameroon. The problem now is how to curb intake considering that possession of a passport allows the holder free entry.  The worries of the smaller countries are not unfounded because the population of Cameroon alone, for example, is more than that of the other five member states put together.

On the whole, Cameroon stands to benefit more from the fact that CEMAC national boundaries have been brought down. Our country which has already established itself as the breadbasket of the sub region simply needs to fine-tune its mechanism in order to reap more. Linguistically speaking, of the three official languages in CEMAC, two are used in Cameroon with the third one – Spanish- being taught in schools. Perhaps more importantly for Cameroon is the issue of job openings in the community. 

Comparatively, Cameroon has more professionals in different fields that are bilingual. Considering that most of the other member countries of CEMAC produce oil and badly need English to communicate with their foreign partners, our nationals can sell there like hot cakes. We can also provide teachers of English to the five other member countries and specifically teachers of French to Equatorial Guinea.

In a way, the advent of the community-wide passport has opened unprecedented avenues for Cameroonians. It remains to be seen whether they will be aggressive enough to take up the offer. Usually we Cameroonians are docile and reactive rather than proactive. We are not as daring as our neighbours the Nigerians, when it comes to doing business. Perhaps this is an opportunity for us to change and take the bull by the horns.