Nanche Billa Robert

By Nanche Billa Robert

The question we asked in this work was how young people who are predominantly poor survive in the metropolitan city of Douala, considering their reduced purchasing power. Our main objective was to identify the various coping mechanisms that the poor in the metropolitan city of Douala use to survive. We use the explanatory sequential mixed method to carry out this research: in the first phase, we randomly administered 610 questionnaires constructed using the desired values for living a comfortable life in Douala, and in the second phase, we purposefully selected and interviewed 50 poor youth to understand their survival strategies. We discovered that about 91% of youths are poor and 68.7% of them are the working poor. We discovered that they succeed by being calculative, flexible, and creative, accepting precarious jobs, practicing “long-linked borrowing” and modelling. In the course of struggling for survival, they form various identities of themselves: those of strugglers, helplessness, uncertainty, underachievers, alienated people, etc. We noticed that poverty is situational and not cultural, because they also wish to integrate the main stream values of their society but they are constrained.

Part of the book: Terrorism and Developing Countries

By Nanche Billa Robert

In 2016, lawyers, teachers and students in the two Anglophone regions initially led demonstrations and strikes, which eventually involved a wider section of the population. This mobilization was against their marginalization by the Francophone-dominated government in which they were chronically under-represented in all aspects of national life: political appointments and professional training and had been treated as second-class citizens since their reunification. They argued that their vibrant economic and political institutions had been completely erased, and their education and judicial systems had been undermined and degraded. Activists spread videos that show security forces abusing human rights (by suppressing peaceful gatherings, beating, harassing, arresting and killing protesters, burning their houses, schools and hospitals) in order to produce a counter-narrative to the ‘official story’ that main-stream media had been producing. We collected and analyzed 30 videos to better appreciate the human rights abuses. The videos provide information that cannot be provided by other types of data. They are used as ‘proofs of facts’ and they contain much more visual information on bodily movement and acoustic data. The videos show appalling images not just of how French-speaking soldiers tortured Anglophones but also their inability to communicate with them adequately although they share the same country.

Part of the book: Education, Human Rights and Peace in Sustainable Development

By Nanche Billa Robert

The post-truth politics has been ascendant in Cameroon since the beginning of the Anglophone crisis. Consequently, the country’s political culture has been influenced by appeals to emotion, usually ignoring factual rebuttals. We collected original data using Facebook accounts which are a preserved archive of the way hundreds of millions of Southern Cameroonians and other relate to one another and share genocidal information. The data indicate that the government’s stance on bearing genocidal responsibility changes continuously when internal and external actors pressurize it to investigate crimes committed against humanity as it was the case in the 2020 Ngarbuh massacre and it either remains stagnant or the blames are shifted to the separatists when no serious pressure is exerted on it. The more the truth about crimes against humanity is hidden, the more tension increases, the more trust is destroyed and the more the war will prolong and widen the divide between Ambazonians and La Republique du Cameroon. Martial and cosmetic solutions only help to radicalize the population and instigate them to defy state institutions. Ambazonians’ responses indicate that they did not have to rely on an international community but themselves and it prompted them to take arms and fight the more.

Part of the book: Fake News Is Bad News

By Nanche Billa Robert

The population of the Far North Region of Cameroon suffers the most from poverty and huge environmental challenges. As a result, they have the highest concentration of environmental organizations in Cameroon. Data was collected by interviewing key informants who work in environmental and agricultural companies. It was discovered that conflicts in such organizations are caused by the differences people have in terms of opinions, interests and needs as they work together with each other. Their strictness with one another also causes conflict especially when doing dirty or difficult work tasks. Conflict also comes about when the religious values of each other is not respected especially that of the Muslims in Christians dominated companies. There is also generational conflict which is characterized by the confrontation between the older and less educated generation who have some experience and young graduates who would like to implement new practices. Other causes are discrimination where workers are not promoted basing on merit but on their ethnic relation to one another. There is equally an economic cause which is due to the non-distribution of part of the substantial profits that some companies make to their employees as well as too low salary and poor work tasks distribution.

Part of the book: Organizational Conflict

By Nanche Billa Robert

Southern Cameroonians stage protest marches because of their low or negative social status identity comparative to their French-speaking compatriot. This produces a negative perception of themselves: that of a marginalized people which is a negative or a low social identity. Accordingly, they try to change this situation by mobilizing their members for a protest march as it was on the 22nd September and 1st October, 2017 and their clamor for absolute independence is much clearer today than before. They have therefore constructed a collective identity with a common goal and an emotional bond of organizing protest marches, lockdowns and executing the weekly ghost towns among other. The shared goal of the Anglophone is different from that of the Francophone while one is protesting against the form of state and the protection of their English culture, the other is protesting against a change of government or better governance. In each protest, law enforcement officers brutalized, injured, harassed, seized and destroyed their phones, barred some from joining the demonstrations and dispersed them ruthlessly by violently repressing them, using teargas as well as shooting live bullets on the crowds. While southern Cameroonians share a collective identity and massively organize protest marches, their French-speaking compatriots have conflicting interests and low protest march participation.

Part of the book: Human Rights in the Contemporary World

By Nanche Billa Robert

We set out to find out how the sex-age structure of religion of internal migrants influences their integration in the socio-economic activities of Maroua. We used the exponential non-discriminative snowball sampling method to collect data in which each new referral provided us with more data for referral until we got enough number of subjects for the sample. We concluded that: if one is a Muslim, one will have a stable and progressing business because Muslims maintain a good relationship with their neighbors and they also practice a relationship of solidarity. However, the socio-economic activities of Catholics, Pentecostals and Protestants suffer because they lack the cultural capital that Muslims enjoy. However, age plays a major role: when they are 45–54 years old, the income of the internally migrated Muslims and Catholics drastically decline while that of Pentecostals and Protestants increases. Older Muslims and Catholics earn basically very low income unlike Protestants who earn very high salary. The income inequality among men is much higher than that among women. Generally, men have a more conflictual relationship with their neighbors than women and women diversify their relationship with the natives more than men.

Part of the book: Demographic Analysis