By NOELA EBOB BISONG
The dust is yet to settle on the saga which got many an Anglophone furious at what they considered to be BEAC’s move to minimise the English part of the Republic of Cameroon. A communiqué from the Governor of the Bank of Central African States (BEAC), Abbas Mahamat Tolli had circulated recently wherein the governor ordered that a CAMPOST (Cameroon Postal Services) application be done in the French language, specifying that French is the working language of BEAC, and not English. The move which received widespread criticism was on Monday, April 20, 2020 addressed by the bank in a Press Statement which it codified: Clarification from BEAC. The statement, signed by Abbas Mahamat Tolli read as follows:
“On 15 April 2020, the Governor of the Bank of Central African States (BEAC) sent a letter to the Director General of Cameroon Postal Services (CAMPOST) in response to his request for authorisation of a settlement and clearing system. This letter is being the subject of an unfortunate interpretation on the social media.
Therefore, the BEAC specifies that, under CEMAC applicable laws, an authorization issued by the Central Bank is required before the launch of any activity that it regulates. However, on March 31, 2020, through the press, the BEAC was informed of the official launch of the electronic payments’ clearing and settlement system, managed by CAMPOST. This official launch took place 24 hours before the CAMPOST’s request for authorisation reached the BEAC, in the absence of the necessary prior authorisations and clearances.
The purpose of the letter from the Governor of the BEAC to the Director General of CAMPOST was precisely to point out this irregularity and to urge CAMPOST to suspend the implementation of the clearing and settlement system for electronic transactions, pending the prior authorization of the BEAC, in accordance with the Community applicable laws. Moreover, in accordance with the common use of French as a working language in the BEAC and for reasons of efficiency and speed in the examination of the submitted technical file, CAMPOST was requested to provide a French language version of that file.

The Central Bank wishes to strongly reaffirm that this request is by no means a way to reject the application submitted by CAMPOST. Furthermore, while deploring the fact that the above-mentioned letter, which ought to be read taking into account the usual context of the examination of technical files by the BEAC, ended up on the social media, the BEAC notes that a better formulation of the ambiguous passage in that letter could have avoided this unfortunate misunderstanding.
Finally, the BEAC reaffirms its total attachment to the spirit of the provisions of Article 59 of the CEMAC Treaty, ruling on the official languages of the Community. It is by the very application of these provisions that the BEAC undertakes to translate all its normative texts into the official languages of the Community.”
However, the BEAC clarification is yet to water down well with some experts, who opine that, an open apology would have been much welcomed, instead of the Bank trying to play over the Anglophone intelligence on the issue.
A source who confided to The SUN reacted that “BEAC did not state in its original letter that it was CAMPOST’s launching of their settlement system ‘before’ submitting the application, that resulted in the rejection. They were clear that it is because it was submitted in the ‘wrong’ language, a language hey treated as not a ‘working language’ of BEAC”, he holds.
“Cameroon’s Government should have, (given the context), extracted a formal apology from BEAC on the issue (at a minimum), unless the Government is itself conflicted over whether to ask all CEMAC institutions to strive towards working in Cameroon (and CEMAC’s) official languages”, our source furthers.
Experts equally worry over the fact that the government of Cameroon, (an entity of which, CAMPOST, is at the origin of the application in English) ought to have seized the occasion to make itself the ‘interlocutor’ of BEAC on this issue. “Unfortunately, the Cameroonian reflex may instead be to try to investigate who at CAMPOST was trying to ‘embarrass’ either Cameroon or BEAC by tendering the said application in English only”, they regret.
Our source furthers that: “Instead, BEAC’s corrective press release is addressed to the ‘social media’ which it accuses of ‘misinterpretation’ of its initial letter, etc. This relegates the issue into the amorphous space of ‘social media’ or ‘leaks’, whereas what is at stake, is a formal question of official and working language use within the CEMAC Community. An issue that has been a direct contributor to, and part of the root causes of, an expensive conflict (in human and economic terms) in Cameroon.”