Since 2017, the Anglophone areas of Cameroon also known as the North-West and South-West Regions1 have been the theatre of a separatist conflict that is varyingly referred to as the Anglophone Crisis, Civil War, Socio-Political Crisis etc. The conflict is also depicted in some quarters as an ‘identity conflict’ that ignited following demands by lawyers and teachers that sought to reverse decades of assimilationist policies.   This conflict is a direct consequence of the country’s historical trajectory, and the form of state that was adopted following reunification of the French and English sections of Cameroon in 1961. Of particular interest is the deliberate and systematic policies designed to assimilate the Anglophone minority that was pursued by Cameroon’s former and current heads of state Ahmadou Ahidjo and Paul Biya and the successive Francophone dominated governments they have led over the past several decades.  
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I am a researcher and lecturer of government and politics in the Department of Political Science at the University of Bamenda in the North-West Region of Cameroon. My academic activities involve teaching courses at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels. My research and publication activities spans the broader social sciences with particular emphasis on Africa in general and Cameroon in particular. I hold a PhD in Humanities (Political Science and Social Anthropology) from the University of Pretoria.  ​

Join us on Earth Day to learn about a beautiful country in the middle of our planet. Located where the international dateline crosses the Equator, this country is the first to see the light of day, year, and Millennium. Standing on the frontlines of climate change, it boasts the 12th largest Exclusive Economic Zone in the world, yet its land mass is less than 800 Sq. Km. Learn how a youthful 21-year-old Peace Corps Volunteer fell in love with a country most have never heard of and how his last day of service to the country turned into a lifetime of commitment to the nation.     ​

​What does it mean to be a digital native? TikTok, Boom. dissects the platform along myriad cross-sections—algorithmic, socio-political, economic, and cultural—to explore the impact of the history-making app. Balancing a genuine interest in the community and its innovative mechanics with a healthy skepticism, delve into the security issues, global political challenges, and racial biases behind the platform. Featuring Gen Z influencers like Feroza Aziz, Spencer X, Deja Foxx, and Merrick Hanna.

Filmmaker Shalini Kantayya’s feature documentary Coded Bias premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. She directed the season finale episode for the National Geographic television series Breakthrough, a series profiling trailblazing scientists transforming the future. Executive Produced by Ron Howard, it was broadcast globally in June 2017. Her debut feature film Catching the Sun, about the race for a clean energy future, premiered at the Los Angeles Film Festival and was named a New York Times Critics’ Pick. Catching the Sun released globally on Netflix on Earth Day 2016 with Executive Producer Leonardo DiCaprio, and was nominated for the Environmental Media Association Award for Best Documentary. Kantayya is a TED Fellow, a William J. Fulbright Scholar, and a finalist for the ABC Disney DGA Directing Program. She is an Associate of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Kantayya finished in the top 10 out of 12,000 filmmakers on Fox’s On the Lot, a show by Steven Spielberg in search of Hollywood’s next great director. ​

Narratives play a central role in how nations imagine themselves and the ‘other.’ A central part of narrative making involves comparison, comparisons with other places and other people. These comparisons can, often, enable one nation to appear or perceive itself better relative to the other. Drawing on personal experiences and the oral histories she has documented in South Asia and Canada, Anam Zakaria will discuss the limits of popular and mainstream narratives and highlight what gets lost in simplistic comparisons – be it between India and Pakistan or the US and Canada. ​

​Anam Zakaria is the author of 1971: A People's History from Bangladesh, Pakistan and India (Penguin Random House 2019), Between the Great Divide: A Journey into Pakistan-administered Kashmir (HarperCollins Publishers 2018) and The Footprints of Partition: Narratives of Four Generations of Pakistanis and Indians (HarperCollins Publishers 2015) which won the 2017 KLF-German Peace Prize. Anam is also the co-founder of Qissa - the home of storytelling and writes frequently on issues of violence, memory, narrative making and the construction of the 'other'. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, CBC, The Hill Times and Al Jazeera among other media outlets. She is currently based in Toronto.