Colonial & Post-independence Struggles : Tracing France’s Role In Cameroon

The year that is ebbing out will go down the annals of history as one in which Cameroon and France traced and documented France’s role and input against independence and opposition movement in Cameroon from 1945 to 1971. And so, anyone craving to know the good, the bad and even the ugly role France played in Cameroon’s colonial and post-independence struggles can now appropriately turn to the document detailing the history that has a mixture of pleasantness and animosity. The idea of the report is to move together stronger and further.
It was presented to the two Heads of State in separate occasions. To Emmanuel Macron at the Elysée Palace in Paris, on January 21, 2025 and to Paul Biya at Unity Palace in Yaounde on January 28. This was done by a joint France-Cameroon Memory Commission set up by the government of France in 2023 to throw light on actions of the French government during the colonial and post-independence era in Cameroon. 
The now available and obviously accessible report is the result of a commitment made by French President Emmanuel Macron during the joint press conference that marked his official visit to Yaounde in July 2022. He solemnly said at Cameroon’s State House that, “What I want is for us to be able to work together and launch a joint project by Cameroonian and French historians, who will then have access to all our archives. I hereby make a solemn commitment to open up our archives in their entirety to this group of joint historians who will enable us to shed light on the past in terms of individual situations and to qualify things very precisely. In other words, the involvement of France and the role of the Cameroonian authorities at the time, before and after independence.”  The report thus fulfilled the pledge.
Understandable therefore why President Paul Biya, while saluting the results of the Commission, said the aim of the work was to bridge and information gap and that the findings constitute a remarkable research work, a mutual therapy that makes the two people to accept each other the way they are and chart a better way forward in their cooperation. This forward move demonstrated by the promise made and kept, has in no small way enabled the two age-old partners to give renewed stimulus to ...