Letter from the President

After a professional career spanning more than three decades, I've concluded that the impact of a person's life is not measured by longevity or wealth, but by the impact of their actions and the number of lives positively influenced during a lifetime. By all accounts, Africa today is faced with a fierce urgency. This urgency manifests itself in the need to develop sustainable energy and transport infrastructures, as well as human capacity building in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math), leading to inclusive, sustainable and strong economic growth.

In our native Cameroon, even if some progress has been made, the average infant mortality rate is recently estimated at 669/100,000 non-living births (NLB), compared with 30/100,000 NLB in developed countries (extract from World Health Organization data). In our country, we are unfortunately still confronted with recurrent cholera epidemics, a steadily deteriorating healthcare system and an economy that, for the most part, has been struggling for two decades with inflation rising faster than real GDP per capita growth. According to the IMF's latest report, after rising by 4% in 2023, real GDP growth is set to accelerate to 4.3% in 2024. Year-on-year headline inflation is expected to ease from 7.2% in 2023 to 5.9% in 2024. In terms of average human development, Cameroon ranks 153rd out of 189 countries. The IMF continues to denounce (IMF report 2024) the poor governance, rampant corruption and embezzlement of public funds that plague society.

Our country will be engaged in a major democratic process in 2025, marked by municipal, legislative and presidential elections. Cameroon's destiny will be at stake. I believe we must all play an active part in transforming our political, economic and social system. The mission of the Rhumsiki Institute of Strategic Studies (RISS), which I have the honor of chairing, is to produce and disseminate innovative and transformative public policy solutions to catalyze our political and socio-economic transformation, focusing on entrepreneurship, participatory democracy, science and technology, innovation, public health and the implementation of progressive policies that enable us to build a future together for all.

"We have committed our personal resources and will continue to harness the financial and technical resources of our friends, colleagues, local institutions, national and international partners, especially development agencies, to ensure that over the next decade thousands of people experience an improvement in their lives, that we see the adoption and implementation of policies based on objective analysis."

We've learned that it's never too early or too late to take control of our destiny. Our main objectives are to work with conviction for the general interest of our people, because there's no point in being rich alone, we must pull everyone up. We are committed to working every day to build a society in which our children's future is not limited by political, tribal, religious or gender affiliation. This is our motivation, and we would be honored to work with all Cameroonians to make this dream a reality. We all want a Cameroon of values, honesty, integrity, well-organized and well-done work, fraternity, sustainable development, industrialization, modern agriculture, good health (quality and affordable hospitals), drinking water for all Cameroonians, affordable education (from primary school to university), well-equipped for the jobs of the future, decent road, rail and airport infrastructures, electrical energy available at all times, suitable and good housing, healthy food for all Cameroonians. We won't get there without industrialization. Through entrepreneurship, we need to do everything we can to transform all our everyday consumer products on the spot, and above all to innovate in the ways we process our agricultural products, ores, wood and other products that come out of our natural resources. This is the only solution that will enable us to reach a level of strength that will force our neighbors and competitors to respect us. To achieve this, we must not be afraid to face up to problems and propose alternative solutions, even if they do not meet with unanimous approval.

As an independent, research-led think tank, RISS leads the way in providing in-depth, insightful and innovative policy recommendations on development issues in Cameroon and Africa.

Together, we'll make it happen!