« THE NEBULA » BOLLORE, ONE OF THE PILLARS OF « FRANÇAFRIQUE » AND THE HISTORICAL DISPUTE CAMEROON – FRANCE, (Part 2). CAMRAIL: PURE SHAME!

Dr Daniel YAGNYE TOM –  décembre 16, 2022  

With the company « Caoutchouc de Dizangue » and the overview of the Bolloré group, we began to present the part of the historical Cameroon-France dispute relative to the spoliation of our country by French companies. When we see the spectrum of its activities, what could explain the fact that the Cameroonian State completely leaves the strategic parts of its economy in the hands of French companies and in particular Bolloré? What this group does is concealed from almost all the Cameroonian people is the fact that Bolloré is a sovereign state within a Cameroonian state whose nature, relative to the historical dispute, has to be rebuilt. Let’s see!

Bolloré Transport & Logistics Cameroon was created in 1947…. Well established in Cameroon, it was able to obtain a railway concession in 1999, for a period of 30 years. Formerly dubbed La REGIFERCAM, a mastodon, then later renamed CAMRAIL for the occasion, it has been crumbling under a huge debt due to a calamitous management, year in year out!

What has become of Camrail today, 23 years later? A company that privileges, above all, the interests of the Bolloré group, to the detriment of the Cameroonian people who, without adequate rail transport, find themselves trapped on deadly roads. Because, we must not lose sight of the fact that thanks to the multiple companies of the Bolloré group in Cameroon, it has, for decades, held and continues to hold a frightening monopoly over a huge part of the country’s economic activity:

• The concession of the container terminal of the port of Douala from 2005 to 2020
• The management of all production flows of aluminum produced at the Edéa plant, formerly managed by the Canadian giant Rio Tinto-Alcan
• The logistics of the construction of the Chad-Cameroon pipeline, operated by Exxon-Mobil
• Its various agencies, grouped under the brand « Corporate Bolloré Africa Logistics » ever since September 2008, present in Douala, Yaoundé, Garoua
• « Door to Door » logistics on behalf of Total
• Forestry sites
• A wood park, thanks to its Cameroon Wood Park Exploitation Company (SEPBC)
• The huge oil palm and rubber plantations
• The Kribi Logistics Hub.
• Etc.

An incredible hegemony in a so-called sovereign country!

Most of these activities have taken advantage of the largesse of the Camrail rail sector. Thanks to the opacity of the management of this group. It must be said, few can tell us exactly how many hundreds of billions of CFA francs have left Cameroonian territory, with impunity, through the Camrail company under the cover of occult, illicit activities, the unimaginable of which the general public cannot even dare to start to imagine.

A simple click on the « Bolloré Railways – Concessions Ferroviaires » website takes us to the CAMRAIL company website, where it is clearly written:

“it was born from the ashes of the Régie des Chemins de Fer (REGIFERCAM) registered on the list of state companies to be privatized (…) The concession process, which began in January 1996, ended with the signing of the concession agreement on 19 January 1999 and the effective start of CAMRAIL’s activities on 1 April 1999.

The concession agreement grants CAMRAIL:

–the technical and commercial operation of rail transport services.

– the maintenance, renewal, development and operation of railway infrastructure.

The establishment of the railway concession, planned for 30 years, led to a reorganization of the capital.

The main shareholders are:

• SCCF (Bolloré Group): 77.4%
• Cameroonian State: 13.5%
• TOTAL Cameroon: 5.3%
• ESCB (Thanry Group): 3.8%

Fixed installations:

• 1000 km of main tracks
• 35 metal bridges
• 3 viaducts
• 4 tunnels
• 658 art works
• 2194 hydraulic structures
• A digital transmission artery by microwave
• A general telephony system
• A VHF ground train radio network
• A data transmission network.

The railway network in Cameroon:

West line: Douala – Kumba

• Classic cars, adapted to the movement of populations between the South-West and the Littoral,
• But also, the transportation for the shipment of packages and luggage.

The Trans Cameroonian is the Cameroonian railway line connecting Douala to Ngaoundéré via Yaoundé and Belabo.

Since 1999 CAMRAIL has been part of a logic of significant investments.

For example, over the period 2007-2014, the priority investment plan defined by the State and implemented by Camrail enabled the renewal of the track on the following sections:

• DIBAMBA – MAKONDO (66 km)
• BATCHENGA – KAA (126 km)

For equipment: For traction, CAMRAIL has 6 General Motors locomotives (GT26M2C type, 2600 horsepower) and 32 Bombardier locomotives (MLW MX 620 type, 2200 horsepower) … www.camrail.net

As usual, well-crafted texts that do not mean much, as the obvious reality is scandalous. Camrail is this hideous company in the image of this « FrançAfrique » now vomited by the greatest number. As a matter of fact, how can we conceive that more than 22 years after the effective start of CAMRAIL’s activities on April 1, 1999, Camrail presents a « sickly and pitiful face » to the world. This company, logically created for the Cameroonian people, has been serving for more than two decades, the monstrous interests of Mr. Vincent Bolloré and as a result of this gargantuan and predatory France.

Here is a railway company that instead of making sure that its passenger traffic evolves is reduced to a moribund and declining flow, while Cameroonian roads are open-air tombs! The railway sector, which could have been an alternative to passenger safety in Cameroon, has no other choice but to continue to suffer the dictates of a predatory group. More shockingly, the concession has rather led to the elimination of non-« productive » stations,

In the book« The railway concession in Cameroon: the paradoxes of an unpopular success«  (PDF), Working Paper 44, August 2007, by Aymeric Blanc and Olivier Gouirand, it is stated that « Offering much better returns on investment, it is above all the « useful network », that is to say, the transport of goods, that has benefited primarily from the concession ».

Already, in Le Monde Diplomatique of April 2009 « Port, rail, plantations: the sad record of Bolloré in Cameroon », we can read: « Since the privatization of Cameroonian railways and the concession granted to the Bolloré group in 1999, the latter is suspected of having been preoccupied only by making profit, while neglecting all binding commitments made, particularly on the maintenance and upkeep of infrastructure.

It is difficult to disentangle the multiple connections that exist between the group, worthy and entrusted heir to colonial trusts and Franco-African networks, and French political leaders. Like other conglomerates, it enjoys the support of the public authorities in its conquest of the continent’s markets, with the President of the Republic or ministers willingly moving to Africa to lobby their counterparts.

Even if one exaggerates Bolloré’s political influence, it is undeniable that his establishment in Cameroon is felt as a mutilation by part of the local population. This has been the case, for example, since the group obtained (…) the contract to operate Regifercam (now Camrail). Built in blood during the colonial era, nationalized at independence in 1960, (…) this railway network had become one of the symbols of the country’s economic sovereignty and national integration. The sale of its management to a French group therefore appears to be a sad return to the past.

« Because of the participation of our ancestors in the forced labor that allowed the laying of the railway, we appropriated it as a heritage, » observes researcher Claude Abé while studying the situation around the Yaoundé-Douala section. The abolition of stops and stations is considered as a factor of forgetfulness and as an eradication of scenery that robs and takes away the notion of self-identity; that is, as a blurring of the cultural and historical bond that unites the living to the dead. » Claude Abé, « Privatisation du chemin de fer, cohésion sociale et territoriale dans les pays en développement. Le cas du Cameroun », in Jean-Louis Chaléard, Chantal Chanson-Jabeur, Chantal Béranger (dir.), Le chemin de fer en Afrique, Karthala, Paris, 2006, p. 224.

Within the context of this heavy historical perspective, the « social management » in the African subsidiaries of the Bolloré group ought to have been therefore irreproachable. It is far from it. « Its management of human resources is leather of which whips are made, » notes the newspaper of social investigations Plan B, which notes that in less than ten years of concession, a third of the three thousand six hundred employees of Camrail have been laid off. As a result, these ten years were not easy for the union leaders of Camrail who had to suffer employer infiltrations, forced transfers, punitive dismissals and even, for some, months of imprisonment » « Les heures sup’ africaines de Bolloré« , Le Plan B, June-July 2007.

How can we understand that since 1999, despite well-defined specifications, we are still at just one shuttle a day between Yaoundé and Douala? And the road-map between Yaounde and Ngaoundere has been the same for ages? How can we understand what is happening in Camrail, when our leaders are great travelers who see what is being done in other countries? With « fiddled » and « made-up » wagons, whose sole purpose is to hide sordid misery and criminal association? We have chosen, here, not to dwell on the terrifying ESEKA rail accident of October 21, 2016 where more than a hundred travelers perish with more than 600 injured. Expertise shows that this disaster was due to a faulty braking system and overload. At the end of the 2018 trial, Camrail, despite its shameful findings, was found « criminally responsible ».

Even more edifying, in an interview with the French newspaper « L’Humanité » of October 23, 2016, « In Cameroon, the railways remain at colonial standards », the President of the Trade Union Centre of the public sector, Jean-Marc Bikoko affirms that: « The results of the privatization of Cameroon’s railways are generally negative. With Bolloré Africa Logistics as a reference shareholder, Camrail has been operating Cameroon’s rail network since April 1, 1999 under a concession contract signed with the State of Cameroon. Seventeen years later, none of the missions assigned to the Trans-Cameroon Railway Office, in terms of construction work and infrastructure renewal, have been carried out.

Cameroonians would like to know:

• How many new buildings have been constructed,
• How many extensions have been implemented by Camrail,
• Why the gauge of Cameroonian rail has remained that of the colonial era.

The Bolloré Africa Logistics Group has merely:

• Reorganized the transport of goods and people,
• Rationalized the financial governance of the former Regifercam,
• imported old locomotives from North America that match the gauge of the railway in Cameroon
• Repainted existing old cars.

In full and plain view of everyone, and with the complicity of the current rulers of Cameroon. A REALISTIC AND DARK PICTURE!

It is a well-known fact that Camrail has deliberately boycotted the passenger transport sector, which is less beneficial than the transport of goods, in this case sawn wood, which is a much more beneficial enterprise through its forestry companies in Cameroon: the HFC-Forestière de Campo and the Société Industrielle des Bois Africains (Sibaf).

Meanwhile on Cameroon’s main roads, hundreds of people die as a result of accidents, whereas regular rail traffic could have relieved congestion on the roads. This would have avoided the so many human tragedies we endure constantly and whose economic losses are incalculable. It is both inconceivable and intolerable for just one rail shuttle a day to be designated between the two political and economic capitals of the country

The Douala and Yaoundé axis, which is part of the Cameroon-Chad-Central African Republic corridor, was classified by the UN in 2014 as one of the most dangerous routes in the world. Each arrival at destination for the traveler on this heavy axis, is synonymous to intense relief, given this stretch of road is none other than an open-air tomb. A Highway on which every week, human lives are sacrificed by a kleptomaniac and an anthropophagus government. How can one understand such a negligent practice on rails and roads that plunges hundreds of families into mourning every year under the imperturbable gaze of Cameroonian leaders?

We are entitled to ask ourselves what the point is of these multiple road safety campaigns when we know that the problem lies elsewhere!

As per 2021 statistics of the Ministry of Transport, from 2011 to 2019 our country recorded:

• 24,480 road accidents,
  • resulting in the death of 8,612 people.
  • The year 2016 was the deadliest with 1,096 victims in 2,895 recorded accidents.

A real tragedy that could have been alleviated.

Dr. Daniel Yagnye Tom

President of the Patriotic Alliance and Special Representative of the UPC

In Southern and Central Africa.