Prime Minister Philemon Yang yesterday granted separate audiences to the President of the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) and the outgoing German Ambassador to Cameroon.

The President of the Islamic Development Bank (IDB), Ahmad Mohamed Ali yesterday , June 8 during a Star Building audience told Prime Minister, Head of Government, Philemon Yang that the bank was mobilising 12 billion US dollars (FCFA 6,600 billion) to finance the Special Programme for the Development of Africa. He said the programme being implemented by the IDB was established by the extra-ordinary summit of the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) held in Makkah al Mukarramah, Saudi Arabia in December 2005.

“The Islamic Development Bank allocated 4 billion US Dollars (over FCFA 2,200 billion) from its own resources for the five-year programme and we are planning to mobilise additional 8 billion US Dollars ( over FCFA 4,401 billion)”, Ahmad Mohamed Ali said in an interview after the audience. The IDB President who was accompanied to the Prime Minister’s Office by Cameroon’s Minister of Economy, Planning and Regional Development, Louis Paul Motaze, is in Yaounde for the Sub-regional Ministerial Forum on the Implementation of the Special Programme for the Development of Africa taking place this June 8 and 9. The meeting, he stated is organised to review the special programme established in response to the needs of the 27 African member countries of the bank. While appreciating the level of the implementation of the programme, Mr Mohamed Ali said they were ahead of the schedule. “We are on tract and we are confident that with the support and guidance of all member countries, we are going to carry out the programme successfully”.

IDB President said Cameroon was a major important member country and disclosed the very first project the bank sponsored was Cameroon’s Songloulou hydro electricity dam project in 1977. “ Since then, cooperation between Cameroon and IDB has been growing in the areas of roads, agriculture and education”, he said, adding that relations between Cameroon and the bank will be enhanced after the Yaounde forum.

German Ambassador

Prime Minister, Philemon Yang prior to the audience with the Islamic Development Bank delegation, granted an audience to the outgoing German Ambassador to the Cameroon, Karin E. Blumberg Saueteig who is going on retirement. She worked in Cameroon for two years. The goodbye audience was an occasion for the Prime Minister and the German diplomat to review cooperation between their two countries. Karin E. Blumberg Saueteig expressed satisfaction at the status of cooperation and revealed to journalists in an interview that, “our global sum for cooperation development in Cameroon since independence is 1.9 billion Euros (over FCFA 1,244.5). The cooperation projects are carried out by the German Development Service (DED), German Technical Cooperation (GTZ) and the KFW Development Bank that since March 22, 2010 have a new joint office in the premises called the German House in Bastos, Yaounde.

Discussions between Yang and Karin E. Blumberg also focused on the Goethe Institute where Cameroonians learn German language and cultural aspects, trade, economic and tourism cooperation. She said there are 6,000 Cameroonian students in German universities, over 30,000 Cameroonians living in Germany, while 500 Germans live in Cameroon.