The
REseau de LUtte contre la FAim (RELUFA) is a non-partisan national
network of Cameroonian ecumenical and secular non-profit organizations
and mainstream churches. The member organizations come from all regions
in Cameroon and have joined forces to develop common strategies against
systemic problems of hunger, poverty, and socio-, economic- and
environmental injustice. Since 2001 RELUFA enjoys legal status under
Cameroonian law.
Food
Sovereignty
Vulnerable communities in the semi-Saharan Far North Province are
thriving through their participation in the network's Food Sovereignty
program. Having been organized to run their own communal grain banks,
farmers in 41 villages now ward off speculators at harvest time.
Instead of selling their yields to merchants who hoard the produce to
maximize profits later in the year, the crops are stored in the village
granary. When families run out of their own reserves, they can take
grains on in-kind credit and pay back this loan from the next sorghum
harvest later in the year. Read
more...
Self-Development
RELUFA's micro-finance initiative Credit Against Poverty, CAP, works to
meet the more tangible needs of target groups affiliated with RELUFA
member organizations. CAP offers a variety of loan products. CAP
Holidays, for example, is geared towards University and High School
students, enabling them to undertake small business ventures during the
long and often idle summer break. RELUFA celebrated the 2008
International Women's Day by launching CAP for Women aimed at the
self-development of society's underprivileged gender. Upon the request
from subsistence farmers in the Far North, CAP Education helps pay
their children's tuition at the beginning of the new school
year.
Read
more...
RELUFA
identified the so-called 'resource curse' as the most poignant
manifestation of global forces impinging upon the Central African
territory. The region's abundant wealth in natural resources does not
trickle down to the majority of its people living off less than $2 a
day. Rather than improving living standards, oil-, gas- and mining
industries often cost poor communities their livelihood, their drinking
water and their natural environment. The vast revenues generated in
this lucrative sector tend to prop up corrupt leaders and support war
fare, at the expense of democratic processes. Read
more...
While
raising awareness about the struggles of Cameroonian fruit farmers
against the world's largest fresh fruit producer, RELUFA is organizing
to offer consumers an alternative: grown and processed
according to Fair Trade standards by producers affiliated with the
network, dried pineapple, mango, papaya and banana is now being
marketed in the US through Partners for Just Trade. Read
more...
Visit the Headlines in the Extractive Industries section of our virtual library to read recent press articles and publications related to Extractive Industries in Cameroon and in Central/West Africa in general.
April 2010 - Oil spill at Kribi
On Thursday morning 22nd April 2010 at 1:45 a.m., another oil leak was declared at the marine terminal of the Chad-Cameroon pipeline, offshore Kribi, in the Atlantic Ocean.
Follow what is in headlines of the international press about the Kribi oil spill and the CSO's press release
Romandie News
April 2010 - Equity and Transparency in the Extractive Industries
From 18-20 March 2010 RELUFA organized with network member organization CED (Center for the Environment and Development) in Douala a regional strategic planning workshop for Civil Society Organizations (CSO) on the issue of Extractive Industries. The event brought together Civil Society Organizations from Central Africa and beyond. To know more about the workshop and the resolutions it brought forth please read the declaration released at the end of the workshop in english or in french. You can also access the presentations made (in french) by the various speakers through the links below.
March 2010 - Headlines in the Extractive Industries
Visit the Headlines in the Extractive Industries section of our virtual library to read recent press articles and publications related to Extractive Industries in Cameroon and in Central/West Africa in general.
March 2010 - RELUFA's documentary on the Pipeline
RELUFA plans to release a documentary film on the Chad-Cameroon Pipeline Project in 2010. The film will tell the stories of Chadian and Cameroonian communities impacted by the project as well as local activists organizing on their behalf. Watch below a trailer of the documentary, which is being produced by independent filmmaker Danya Abt. Depending on your connection speed the download may take a few minutes.
February 2010 - Economic Justice Newsletter
Updates from the program on Equity and Transparency in the Extractive Industries.
The Race for Mining Projects in Cameroon: New Panacea for Development?
RELUFA Publications:
Letter to the World Bank’s International Advisory Group (IAG)
Chad-Cameroon Pipeline Documentary and Photo-booklet
Article on Alternet.org
Initiative for Quarterly Mining Bulletin
RELUFA suspends its participation in the Pipeline "Tripartite Platform"
Cameroon Civil Society meets with Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) Validation Team
World Bank Independent Evaluation Report on the Chad-Cameroon Pipeline Project
RELUFA participated with other Civil Society groups from Niger, the Central African Republic, Cameroon, and Chad along with their international partners in a training workshop and reflection on the exploitation of uranium in these four countries. The event took place from 14-18 September 2009 in Bakara/ N’Djaména, Chad.
As Civil Society delegate for the Cameroonian Publish What You Pay Coalition, RELUFA network coordinator, Valery Nodem, traveled to Doha, Qatar for the fourth annual global EITI conference of 16-18 February 2009. His participation was particularly important in light of the upcoming completion of Cameroon's validitation process, anticipated for September 2009. Read his observations on the EITI Validitation process for Cameroon.
January 2009 - Food Sovereignty Newsletter
With its initiative being applauded by the membership, RELUFA continues the production of its monthly Newsletter with an edition on Food Sovereignty.
An introduction to the origin and philosophy of the term Food Sovereignty, and to RELUFA's communal grain bank program
RELUFA has decided to post monthly Newsletters to keep its members, partners, friends as well as the general public tuned into its programs. Each month the Newsletter will be dedicated to a specific program.
The first edition of the CAP Newsletter, with an overview of the Credit Against Poverty program (CAP), two beneficiary success stories and a snapshot of CAP Holidays, is available for download here
"We
thought that, with the project, we were going to be well off until our
death. But it is death that you have brought to us."
-Villager on the project during a multi-party visit
with representatives from COTCO, the government and NGO's
Aug. 2008A field mission along the pipeline
Four years after it first undertook a mission along the pipeline to monitor the impact of the pipeline construction works on the population and environment, and the status of the compensations, RELUFA worked with its member organization CED to send another team along the entire stretch of the pipeline. Despite three years of negotiations with the oilcompanies and the Cameroonian government, little has changed on the ground. Read the mission report
Aug. 2008RELUFA coordinator follows up on Communal Grain banks
Two years after the launch of its Food Sovereignty program in eighteen participating communities, RELUFA has increased the number of village grain banks to 34. Network coordinator, Valery Nodem, made a visit this August to follow up on the developments. Read his status report
June 2008 RELUFA establishes a Fair Trade partnership in the U.S.
After the network's General Assembly embraced Trade Justice as a new program theme, RELUFA has successfully accomplished a first exploratory export of Fair Fruit to its US distributor Partners for Just Trade.
Various producers affiliated with different network member organizations have participated in the preparations to see the shipment off in June 2008. The 100% natural oven-dried pineapple, mango, papaya and banana are now available for online order.
June 2008 Two years into the program CAP continues to grow
After a second round of its CAP Holidays initiative, RELUFA has exceeded 200 loan disbursements.. An overview of this program....
May 2008An Expert Assessment on Pipeline Water Points
Two experts visited a total of 73 water points constructed by COTCO
in 32 different villages. In a closed meeting, CED and RELUFA
jointly presented the expert report to COTCO's leadership, who are now preparing
their response.
Samuel Nguiffo of network member organization the Center for the Environment and Development (CED) spearheaded in 2007 an independent review of Cameroonian EITI reports made by PWYP Cameroon. Read the report in french..
On the same topic of Resource Transparency, the Revenue Watch Institute has published for Civil Society "Drilling Down"
"Drilling Down: The Civil Society Guide to Extractive Industry Revenues and the EITI. This milestone guide released in May 2008 provides step-by-step explanations of each phase of EITI implementation and a comprehensive review of extractive industries accounting for civil society readers. Using real-world examples and data from multiple countries, it illustrates the fundamental issues behind the EITI, including government accounting systems, types of extractive industry contracts, and the different fiscal regimes that control the flow of funds to and from governments. Drilling Down was produced by Revenue Watch and authored by transparency and extractives industry expert David Goldwyn. It was written specifically for readers new to the challenges of extractive revenue management."
