The separatist war in the two English-speaking regions – which make up 20 percent of Cameroon’s population – has killed at least 6,000 people and forced over one million from their homes over the past seven years.
It has also crippled businesses, including the English-speaking newspaper sector.
“Prior to the crisis in the North West and South West Regions, English-language newspapers used to have advertising jobs from companies like the Cameroon Development Corporation … and other well established private companies,” said Ngah Kristian Mbipgo, CENPA president and publisher of the country’s only English-language daily newspaper, The Guardian Post.
“English language newspapers have, because of the crisis, lost more than 80 percent of their readership in the North West and South West Regions.”
Readership ‘fizzled out of existence’
Yerima Kini Nsom, Yaoundé bureau chief at The Guardian Post said the bulk of the paper’s readers were in the separatist flashpoints of Kumbo and Nkambe, all in Cameroon’s North West region.
“The vendors are no longer there. The paper doesn’t get [out] there anymore, and you imagine that you cannot be talking about a newspaper without readership. It means that our readership has dwindled to near inexistence.”
The result of all this is that only the very resilient news organisations have been able to stay afloat.
Many, according to Ngah, have simply fizzled out of existence, or have been reduced to periodicals, as the impact of the crisis continues to scuttle sales, readership and advertising income.
Newspaper publishers from the two regions have called on the country’s president to set up a “special fund” to bailout the ailing news organisations.
Source : All Africa