The Forum is the flagship programme of the African Media Initiative (AMI) and is the only annual gathering of African media owners and operators from around the continent.

“The main objective of the Forum is to facilitate the emergence of an African media sector that is professional, financially sustainable, technologically adaptable and socially responsible,” according to Amadou Mahtar Ba, AMI CEO.

The Forum, which will take place on the 18th and 19th November, is being hosted by the Spectrum Media Group, one of the largest broadcasters on the continent, which operates out of West and Central Africa. Over 250 participants including CEOs, managing directors, publishers and media leaders from Africa and beyond are expected to attend. The organizers have reported an over five_fold increase in number of participants attending when compared to the first AMLF which was held in Dakar, Senegal in 2008

This year’s Forum will be organized around both plenary sessions and working groups that will run simultaneously. The topics will be Financing; Technology and New Business Models; and Ethics, Leadership and Social Responsibility.

According to vonews.fr, a French news site, the centre’s assistant director Philippe Demaret said: “We are happy to host the three best teams from Africa, and I can confirm that Ivory Coast, Ghana and Cameroon will train at our Michel Hidalgo Stadium, which is already set to welcome these African stars.”

The players will be residing at the Hotel du Lac d’Enghien-les-Bains during their sojourn at the sports complex,

About some 500 youths who have been undergone a four-month free training at the Douala III multimedia and technology centre. The end of the course was marked by the award of attestations to the trainees. The youths came from the 14th, 15th and 16th batches of Graphics Design, Maintenance and Network and Bureaucratic disciplines taught in the centre. In his remarks, the Mayor of Douala III, Oumarou Fadil, who presided at the ceremony said in the world today, communication and technology is of utmost importance. Reason why the council set up such a centre for the good of the youths, he said adding that the centre started in 2003. He also said though the centre existed since it became effective for five years now.

The centre, he continued, is for the youths because the council holds them at heart. Oumarou Fadil said the centre has already graduated some 7000 youths since its inception. He mentioned the three disciplines, which operate in the centre such as Graphic designs, Maintenance and Network as well as Secretariat Duties. He stated his wish to see the graduates get jobs quickly.

The Head of the centre introduced other disciplines, which will go operational free of charge as well. They are graphic and design 2D and the competitive graphic and design 3D. He said those who have done 2D could move directly to 3D. He cited some requirements of the centre like the need for an air-conditioned hall, a video projector and more teachers.

I never bought the nuts. I ran the eight-foot gantlet from the restaurant to my Toyota SUV with my 2-year-old daughter, Elle, on my hip. Sometimes I gave the kids taffy or leftover shawarma but usually, like many expatriate wives in this poor West African nation, I tried to avoid the swirl of desperate children.

One afternoon, however, I saw something impossible to ignore. Unaware that one side of her tank top had slid off her tiny shoulder, a young girl in the crowd clutched a bottle of nuts under one arm and waved to me with the other, revealing a long, wide scar where a small nipple or budding breast should have been.

My eyes darted from the girl’s missing breast to her big brown eyes and back to her chest. She disappeared in the distance as I drove away. The encounter revealed that a Cameroonian tradition I had heard vague whispers about might actually exist: breast ironing, in which women flatten adolescent girls’ developing breasts, intending to protect the girls from the dangers of sex, consensual or otherwise.

The phenomenon gained some international attention in 2006, thanks to a campaign by a nonprofit organization, and the State Department has since included breast ironing in its annual reports on human rights abroad. But the practice persists nevertheless, affecting as many as one in four girls, according to local health activists. Some mothers massage hot grinding stones into their daughters’ chests; others pound the tissue with heated plantain peels. Sometimes, women rub kerosene or medicinal herbs on adolescent breasts.

To understand what would drive a mother to press a hot stone into her daughter’s chest, I talked to local women, girls, physicians and community organizers. Many of the women and girls involved in breast ironing considered it normal treatment for early breast development. Mothers told me they forcibly try to eliminate signs of puberty to protect their preteen girls from HIV and pregnancy. One mother explained that she did it out of love.

"We are working together with the Cameroon authorities on ways and means of seeking their release," the official said. The ship was hijacked "in international waters off Bakassi", a peninsula in southwestern Cameroon.

The Chinese news agency Xinhua quoted the Chinese embassy as saying that the kidnapped fishermen were being fed, and their lives were not in danger.

The Agence France-Presse news agency quotes a source close to the investigation of the incident as saying that authorities from both Cameroon and China "are working jointly to secure their release," and that the fishermen were on a trawler when they were kidnapped.

The Minister of Energy and Water Resources, Michael Ngako Tomdio, held a press briefing in Yaounde last Friday.
Amidst controversial petrol circulating in the country with a pungent smell, raising public outcry of threats on health as well as fears of vehicle malfunctioning and the potable water scarcity that hit Yaounde and Douala, the government, through the Ministry of Energy and Water Resources has said nothing will be left to chance to restore life in the sectors. In a press briefing in Yaounde last Friday February 19, 2010, the Minister of Energy and Water Resources, Michael Ngako Tomdio, said government measures are ongoing to meet the needs of the population.
Controversial Petrol The Minister said in January, the government ordered the importation of 41,000 cubic metres of petrol to meet up with national demands given that the country's refinery outfit, SONARA, was undergoing rehabilitation. He said a company, whose name was not disclosed, charged with importing the petrol brought in the product whose smell attracted complaints from all and sundry. Mr Ngako Tomdio reiterated that the pungent smell notwithstanding, the petrol was free of any danger. He said laboratory studies carried out by an internationally-recognised Laboratory of SONARA proved the product suitable for consumption. After concertation meetings with other stakeholders, the Minister said, an agreement was reached that the product be suspended from the market and that henceforth such products would no longer be imported into the country as "the consumer is usually the king", he said.

Scarcity of Potable WaterThe Minister blamed the recurrent scarcity of potable water in Yaounde and Douala on outmoded infrastructure which he said have been functioning for decades without major rehabilitation or investments in the sector. He said the problem is further compounded by the ever-growing population in these towns, the continual expansion of the town as well as the effects of climate change, characterised of recent by excessive heat and dry land. River Nyong in Akomnyada which in the recent past had a height of four metres, he said, is today 2.2 metres. However, the Minister said, government has undertaken giant projects, which upon completion, would boost water supply in the two cities.
He said negotiations are ongoing for a project on River Sanaga in the Centre Region which upon completion will bring additional supply of 100,000 cubic metres of water daily to Yaounde. There is also a FCFA 65.6 billion Cameroon/ French Development Agency project to supply potable water to Yaounde, Ngaoundere, Edea and Bertoua. Other projects undertaken by the country's water outfit, CAMWATER, seek to rehabilitate existing infrastructure, augment production to meet demand as well as extend existing networks to new layouts. All these, Mr Ngako Tomdio said, will cost over FCFA 400 billion.