Cameroon: Chinese Construction of a New National Assembly. What the Public needs to know

The Newly-designed (by the Chinese gov't) Cameroon National Assembly

By Jackson W. Nanje

The new Cameroon National Assembly building project shall be in Cameroon’s capital city of Yaoundé. The building has been designated in a construction site area of ​​about 44,000 square meters, with a total construction area of ​​37,500 square meters. The main contents of the project include eight (8) major functions: main office building, semicircular conference hall, subsidiary room of the conference hall, celebration hall, fire guard building, guard room, equipment room and underground garage. The diagram above was designed by the 6th Central Committee of the Chinese People's Liberation Army that won the bid to design and build the Legislative House. Rumor even has it that the contemporary design was already being circulated even before the building got burnt. Hmmn! The question that looms in the minds of many Cameroonians is, whether there are no Cameroonian-born architects who could have won the bid, design and supervise the construction of the new House of Parliament?

Even though China has been investing significantly in much of Africa’s economy, for instance, its $166billion in trade in 2011, we urge African leaders to take a cautious-approach and should not be lust in China’s largesse. The American-Soviet Union debacle (described below) should serve as an eye-opener to African leaders who are not sophisticated enough, technologically, to put an eye on the prize as they receive unsolicited donations from China. The African Union headquarters in Addis, Ethiopia, which costs $200million was a free donation from China to Africa. But at what expense? The Chinese company that constructed the House of Parliament in Zimbabwe is the same company that has won the contract to build the recently burnt down Cameroon National Assembly. A Chinese company equally built the Gabonese House of Assembly in 2002. One of the strategic plans for the Chinese government is to win contracts and to build decision-making houses in the African continent. That is why the bid-winning company and the Chinese government celebrated when they won another contract to build the Cameroon House of Assembly right after completing the Zimbabwean House of Assembly. Why is the Chinese government celebrating for winning a bid which adds very little to their Gross National Product? It should be part of their strategy to engulf Africa’s economy and polity in their national strategic plan.

 This is how they reported the news: The “the project supporting Cameroon's National Assembly is an important project for the Chinese government to implement President Xi Jinping's proposal on the ‘Top Ten Cooperation Programs’ with Africa.” Just what is it that the Chinese government is excited about? I am not by this document suggesting that there’s something fishy in the Chinese strategic plan of winning the contracts to construct the legislative houses of some African countries and that of the African continent; however, let us look at the dilemma the United States was confronted with when the let the then Soviet Union (now Russia), construct their embassy in Moscow.

It was in 1969 that the United States government under President Richard Nixon signed an agreement with the Soviet Union to build embassies in both Moscow and Washington D.C. The American project was to be the “most elaborate and expensive United States embassy ever, a testament to American wealth and power.” Today, that embassy which the United States spent a lot of money to build has been abandoned because of the number of spying bugs which the Soviet Union-hired workers buried all over the building undetected by the Americans. These Soviet-planted bugs enabled useful communication emanating from staffs in the newly-constructed United States embassy to be intercepted by Soviet Union and, they acted on it without the knowledge of the United States. It has been widely reported that, over the years, the United States has spent $23 million on the building, but more than twice that amount to figure out how the Soviets used snooping devices to transform it into a giant antenna capable of transmitting written and verbal communications to the outside. But today, the eight-story American chancery in Moscow stands useless, infested with spying systems planted by Soviet construction workers, a stark monument to one of the most embarrassing failures of American diplomacy and intelligence in decades.

In 1884, the European invaded Africa in what was known as the Scramble for Africa. The French, particularly, have been vastly unpopular in all the twenty (20) French colonies throughout Africa. The Chinese have studied the good, the bad and the ugly of European colonization and rule in the African continent and are perfecting their interventionist strategies with modification. Currently, cyber security is a big issue in the world and Africa cannot afford to come from behind again like it has, in the past. This is the reason why they should accept China’s high-mindedness with terms and conditions for their own protection.

It is easy for Cameroon’s not-so-technologically savvy politicians, most of whom are born before the digital age or are consumed with old age, to accept the gift by the Chinese and be lust in the architectural design of the new Cameroon National Assembly and ignore the potential bait of spying bugs being planted by the Chinese construction company during time of construction to help China tap into legislative discussions with the help of “planted bugs.” To avoid such potential hazard, the construction of the building must be supervised by an ever-present team  of knowledgeable Cameroon architects and the construction materials should be thoroughly inspected to free them of bugs. It is only when these things are done that our country can be saved from an intrusive Chinese grip on our economy and polity, which would be more dangerous than the European design to Scramble for Africa.