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PALMS PLANTING BEGINS AT BOA PLAIN

It all began on April 16 when the first seedling was planted by Chief Lenya Joseph Fete of Boa Balondo Village followed by Chef Etina Monono on behalf of the General Manager, the Plan and Development Director, Henry Becke, the Project coordinator, Dou’a Raymond and other top officials of the Corporation.

The Corporation intends to plant some 6,000 hectares of palms in Boa covering a period of five years.

Management intends to plant some 1000 hectares this

year of which 670 percent will be around Boa Balondo Village in the Project area while 100 hectares each will be planted at Dikome, Bonjari and Mbongo.

The first harvest has been envisaged for 2012 while the oil mill is also expected to go operational in December 2009 and will be supplied with Fresh fruit bunches (F.F.B.) from Mondoni Oil Palm Estate.

C.D.C. BANANA “APOCALYSE NOW” AT EU MARKETS

A team of Professional Banana men, led by Eric de Lucy, President of Union Guadaloupeenne des Producteurs de Banane (UGPBAN) interested in the development and commercialisation of Cameroon banana were on a working visit to the Corporation on May 13 – 14, 2009.

On May 13 the team which included Messrs Philippe
Ruelle - Director General of UGPBAN, Richard Giner -UGPBAN Development Director, Pierre Bessede - Director General of Centre de Recherche Marketing (Banana) (C.R.M.) Company Group, Jean-Yves Brethes - Chief Executive Officer of SPM, Jean Simonnet – President of CASTRI, Robert Lacroux – Special Adviser at SPM and Julius Akene – Assistant General Manager of SPM had a working session at the Société des Plantations de Mbanga (SPM) conference hall to review their working programme with the Cameroon Development Corporation
(C.D.C.).

TRADE UNIONISM IN CDC FROM PAST TO PRESENT

CDC WORKERS UNION DAYS AND SPLIT OF ACTIVITIES TODAYIt would be recalled that after the end of the Second World War, the former German plantations were grouped and run jointly by the Government-sponsored Cameroon Development Corporation employing a work force of some 25,000men. A Trade Union idea had been perceived for the large number of workers, who could be heard helplessly crying on the hills and in valleys of the plantations, of the poor conditions of work and begun as far back as 1946, called “ CDC Workers Union”.

With its first president Mr. L.E. Jones Mensah, a Ghanaian and a distinguished staff of the Corporation and Dr. E.L.M Endeley, who came home from his academic in Lagos, soon found himself helping to organize it as their General Secretary.

The workers, however preferred to have all officials of the Union strictly as their paid employees and the thinking therefore was to have them by election, which was conducted on 25th February 1949, at the Holtforth Hall Tiko, where Dr. E.L.M Endeley, elected as president and Hon. Nerius Namaso Mbile, General Secretary, all now of blessed memory. It is interesting here to note that even in the days of old the workers could only employ staff in the Union if need be by election.

CDC BANANA FOR INTERNATIONAL MARKET

Recently CDC signed an agreement with a Commercial and Technical Service Adviser, Messrs “Société des Plantations de Mbanga”. The terms of the agreement show the Corporation’s determination to comply with Government’s directives to raise Cameroon’s banana export to 400,000 tons annually. In an interview granted CDC NEWS staff man, Bob Young, the second and last Managing Director of the defunct Camfruit and now the new Group Banana Manager, Mr. Johnson Teke Ndumbe, explains not only the raison d’être of the venture but also the readiness and the determination of CDC experts in facing the challenge. Read the excerpts.

CDC NEWS: Congratulations for your appointment as the Group Banana Manager. We also thankyou for granting us this interview in the first place.

Group Banana Manager: Thank you. You are welcome.

We heard something like a CDC banana expansion project. Is it a fact or some rumour?

It is a fact. The execution is on already.

Why the Banana Expansion Project in the first place?

The National strategy document on the banana sector envisages among other things to raise Cameroon banana export to 400,000 tons per year. In the light of the above the government of Cameroon in consultation with Banana producers conceived a new national strategy for the development of the Banana sector.

This strategy focuses on:-

a) Defining clear objectives covering production, commercialization and competitiveness, so as to permit Cameroon’s banana compete favorably on the world market especially when compared to bananas from Latin America.