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Douala, the next African Vancouver? Kribi, laboratory of the Atlantic Arc to better circulate wealth locally? A laboratory for the integration of Aboriginal peoples (7 linguistic families, 50% of Aboriginal languages in Canada), Vancouver is mainly based on forestry, mining, cinema, and tourism. Can this experience in the Canadian Confederation inspire the contribution of forests to national unity, after the celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the Republic of Cameroon, maritime gateway to the Congo Basin forests?
Can safeguarding forests bring new opportunities for young people and innovative creative industries with high added value in terms of employability?
The subject of city-ports and the relationship with their estuarine hinterland is fundamental to the circulation of wealth locally, like Seattle and Vancouver, which radiate as far as the Great Lakes region and even Chicago thanks to rail links. transcontinental logistics.
Capture wealth abroad is not enough to ensure local prosperity. It is important to better circulate them locally. As territories have lost autonomy (food, manufacturing, etc.), they are increasingly dependent and vulnerable to external resources. The fourth industrial revolution will be local. It will be an opportunity to redistribute wealth in the territories.
The economic challenge is to create local economic exchanges. There is a strong ecological footprint and a dependence on imported raw materials.
What should be done locally? A lot of wealth comes from outside, which must be kept. The solutions will come by creating local businesses, to make local resources work, and from the circular economy. The territory can also be an incubator for start-ups related to agro-forestry, regenerative agriculture and new technologies.
It will also be necessary to develop local supermarkets and micro-factories; make farmers processors to develop the rural environment; recover food and agricultural waste to create biomass; create coworking spaces; support female entrepreneurship, create a crowdfunding platform, to link local savings and local entrepreneurs; provide a local investment fund; encourage local purchase;, etc.
What if Douala, a major port in the Gulf of Guinea, was inspired by the network If all the ports in the world? WHAT IF THE RESIDENTS OF THE PORTS HAD A DIFFERENT VIEW OF THE WORLD?
Georges Serre, who currently chairs this network, was French Ambassador to the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Republic of Cameroon and the Republic of Côte d’Ivoire. Many creative and innovative actors can build bridges with new network dynamics.
Innovation strategies between water peoples and forest peoples will define new links to imagine an innovative and afro-futuristic MADE in AFRICA.
Many examples can illustrate this: the study of the industrialization and storage capacities of high-quality flour in Douala and Kribi or the relations to be envisaged with projects such as “Numita Holdings”, for the manufacture of banana-plantain (Laboratories of the Faculty of Agriculture of the University of Buea), or the technology park of Ouassa-Babouté. The Ouassa-Babouté project consists of setting up a high-tech industrial processing zone covering 405 hectares and a production area of 539,389 hectares for a total budget of 120.175 billion CFA francs. The targeted activities relate to the production and processing of cereals, tubers and plantains, fruits and vegetables, essential and aromatic oils, milk and derivatives and cocoa, among others. Target capacity: 800,000 tonnes in four and two million tonnes after ten years.
These Afro-futurist odysseys will need to reconnect with the past of great explorers of the East and West.
Tsunoda Ichizo is the first Japanese to have stayed in Cameroon in 1906. Who was this explorer? Does his study of streams and rivers have a link with the sustainable management of forests in the Congo Basin? Does pearl farming, which is very popular in Japan, represent a sector to be developed in Cameroon to encourage better management of water resources and thereby the development of “forests of tranquility” (theme chosen by the next universal exhibition in ‘Osaka in Japan devoted to the SDGs)?
Kevin Lognone