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It is with great enthusiasm that Mr. Eric Chinje agreed to take time out of his busy schedule at the World Bank in Washington, DC (USA) to answer extensively and candidly our questions... It is through interaction with the man that one can truly understand how committed he is to the projects that he invests himself into. His impressive, but modest Cameroonian should be an inspiration to many of us and hopefully we will take his words, experiences and humility and use them to improve our lives and that of people around us.
Eric Chinje is a Senior Communications Officer at the World Bank and Vice Chair of the World Bank/IMF Africa Club. His main area of focus is Africa. A Harvard University Fellow and graduate of Syracuse University, he obtained a degree in Modern Letters from the University of Yaounde in Cameroon. He was Editor-in-Chief and News Anchor at the national television in Cameroon, a journalism lecturer in the School of Mass Communications (University of Cameroon), a contributing reporter to CNN World Report, and a stringer for Deutschewelle (Voice of Germany Radio), the BBC and Voice of America. He has written, published and lectured on Media and Development in Africa. He is an Officer of the Dutch Order of Orange-Nassau and of the Cameroon Order of Valour, an Honorary Member of the Memphis City Council, a former Patron of the Cameroon Friends of Nature Society, and a Board Member of the Rwanda Foundation, the Women's Economic Empowerment Network(WEEN), and the Zambia Orphans of AIDS (ZOA) committee. (source: www.worldbank.org)
Cameroon-Info.Net: Many Cameroonian know you as the TV “Anchor Man”, would you tell us who is Eric Chinje? What is your family as well as your educational background?
Eric Chinje: I am my father’s son; he is a retired educationist, Michael Chinje, who now lives in Santa, some 10 miles south of the provincial capital of Bamenda. I lost my mother at age 11 and my father somehow took on a dual role in my life: coaxing and inspiring me as fathers want to do; loving and reassuring me about life, as mothers, I believe, tend to do. My father, two brothers and six sisters gave me a world so complete and loving that I never cease to wonder how and why I got so much out of nature’s chest. That is where it all begins for me. I grew up in the English and French-speaking parts of Cameroon and came to appreciate the values of both cultures. I went to Sacred Heart College in Bamenda and then the University of Yaounde. My academic career took me on to Syracuse University and Harvard University, both in the United States. I now live in Washington D.C. with my wife, Diane, and my children Tania, Jon-Collin and Sonya Shira-neh Abiba. My four-year old, Sonya, rounds out the circle for me and, for that purpose, took the names of my sisters and her great-grandmothers.
As for the “Anchor Man” branding, I hope I am remembered for more than simply reading the news. I tried, during my years at CRTV (Cameroon Radio & Television), to set a tone of hard work and excellence; to help build our national television into a world class institution and a national trend-setter that responded to the needs of our developing society while projecting its best face to the world. The bilingual newscast, an attempt to bring all of Cameroon together for a daily rendez-vous, was one such uniquely Cameroonian TV creation. Tam-tam weekend, with its great variety of themes and attempts to shed light on the strengths and weaknesses of our society, was another product I took pride in. Some in Cameroon may remember our efforts to introduce a culture of maintenance at a time of great waste of public resources or attempts to encourage internal tourism when the national elite saw Europe as the vacation destination of choice; our focus on urban propriety or squalor and the need for green spaces in our cities; the emphasis on internal decoration as a social statement and an expression of self, and on bilingualism as a national goal and object of pride. I want to be thought of as the Editor-in-Chief who encouraged specialization in the newsroom, introducing news slots for economic and financial reporting, health and education coverage, public sector news, and so on.
Cameroon-Info.Net: Was your departure from the CRTV a planned career move or a reaction to an unreceptive working environment?
Eric Chinje: No, it was no planned career move but it turned out to be an important career move. In some ways, it was a testimony to the power of thought: sometime in late 1990, I realized I was increasingly disappointed with the role the state was willing to assign to the public media in the democratization process that had begun in Cameroon a few months earlier. Any interested reader may want to look for the transcript of my last televised tete-a-tete with the President of the country. During that exchange, President Biya effectively destroyed any hope of having the only truly national media in the country accompany the democratization process. I tried, unsuccessfully, to convince him of the need to open up. For my efforts, I was increasingly perceived by friends of the president’s as something of an “enemy in the house”; I was threatened often. My family was under extreme stress. It did not help matters that many in the opposition were determined to portray me as part of a cabal bent on preserving an autocracy in the face of strong demands for popular government and change.
Under intense pressure from both sides –the government wanting clear evidence that I was fully in its camp and the opposition demanding that I identify clearly with it– I was beginning to think, in early 1991, that I needed a break. The pressure had been building for over a year. Talk about “a democratic wind from the east” had become the staple of political discourse in the country following the age of glasnost and perestroika in the USSR, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the virtual end of the Cold War and, closer to home, the successful National Conference in the Republic of Benin. I had been under the gun since a day in February 1990 when I had a Sunday morning argument with a member of the President’s inner circle, Mr. Laurent Esso (a man for whom I have the utmost respect), on whether or not the country was ready for democracy. I held tenaciously to the position that the democratic process was inevitable and Cameroon was better off embracing it. The pressure intensified when I made it clear to the leader of the opposition, Ni John Fru Ndi, that I was a journalist and would try, as hard as I could, to take a non-partisan approach to developments in the country. I have been close to Ni John since I was a child and while he sympathized with my position, his own inner circle could not. 1990 was no time for non-partisans, journalist or not! I was unsure how democracy would be ushered and survive in Cameroon if there were no voices of moderation; if an independent media were not allowed to emerge.
In early 1991, I was, therefore, thinking very seriously about taking a short break from it all to catch up on my reading and to think through my life and options. I had spent nearly eight intense years working to launch television in Cameroon and, in the last year, helping chart a course for the medium in the uncertain waters of democracy. Little did I know that an opportunity for such a break will come to me from an unsuspecting source and that my short break will turn out to be a long absence from my country. An invitation from Atlanta, Georgia, to spend a few months in the headquarters of the Cable News Network (CNN) would be followed by a research fellowship offer, three months later, from Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. As I prepared to leave Harvard for home in 1992, I ran into and was offered a job by a senior official at the World Bank. I asked to be given a chance to go home and look at my options from that perspective before signing a contract with the Bank. Back in Yaounde, my worst fears about the role of the media in the democratization process seemed to have taken hold; I opted to sign the contract with the World Bank.
Cameroon-Info.Net: Mr. Chinje, you currently work for the World Bank organization. What is your current position, what are your responsibilities, and what specific Cameroonian cultural influences (besides your good looks, effortless, charming, and persuasive voice) do you bring to this position ?
Eric Chinje: After a short-term consultancy of about a month, I joined the Bank as a long-term consultant in September 1992 and was initially posted to Abidjan in the Cote d’Ivoire. After a most enjoyable year working in West Africa as Regional Communications Officer, I returned to the Bank’s Washington headquarters on a fixed-term (3-year) contract. I became a regular staff of the Bank at the end of that contract and, in 2000 became a senior communications officer with responsibilities that cover the Africa region.
Since 2000, I have been co-hosting with my colleague and friend, Tim Carrington, a World Bank Institute (WBI) training course in Economics and Business Journalism for reporters in Africa. I consider the EBJ course as one of my best contributions yet to journalism in Africa and a highlight of my time in the World Bank. I brought to it, as to other things I have done in the institution, a keen sense of the needs of the continent and my idea of what it will take to overcome cultural, social, intellectual and political impediments to development in the region. We have integrated into the course current development thinking based on the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) initiative.
In 1998, I led a team of African colleagues in organizing an event that brought nearly 500 business executives from 43 African countries to the World Bank. It was a first for them and for the institution and the significance of the occasion was not lost on the President of the World Bank, Mr. James Wolfensohn, who pointed out that it was the first time in the history of the institution that Africans had come to the Bank, not with outstretched hands, but with the will to talk business and negotiate deals with their American counterparts. A repeat performance two years later brought to Washington another 350 African entrepreneurs.
Africa’s development hinges, I am convinced, on its ability to create and equitably distribute wealth; wealth creation and the attendant attributes of job creation, technology transfer and service provision, is primarily a task for the private sector; ensuring equitable distribution of such wealth is the role of government. A structured public-private partnership is sorely needed to ensure sustainable economic growth in Africa. Make no mistake about this: the real drive and the incentives needed for change and macroeconomic reform in our societies will come from the private sector; right now, it is the international development community that is trying to provide those incentives to the African public sector –with minimal success, as you can see. Efforts to build that coalition for change between the World Bank and the African private sector have not met with great success so far but we are still at it.
Cameroon-Info.Net: As a well educated Cameroonian, not an employee of the World Bank, how would you rate the role of international financial organizations such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the economy of developing countries such as Cameroon?
Eric Chinje: The international financial institutions (IFIs) mean well in Africa, generally pursue meaningful objectives and, in many ways, promote the right policies. In over forty years of involvement in independent Africa, however, they have very little to show for all their efforts. You know why? Quite simply this: It takes two to tango, as the saying goes. The pretensions of some IFIs “to develop Africa” is nothing but that: pretensions! If Africans are not engaged in that battle for development, leading the charge and fully playing their part in the endeavor, there will be no development. That simple! All we will have is a charade of historic proportions. Development has to begin with the primary beneficiary of such development- in this case, the African! The region’s leaders should lead, stay at the helm! One reason we are not winning the war on poverty is because our generals are out to lunch, having a party.
True, the IFIs have often acted as if their money and policies, concocted with a handful of government officials and implemented within internationally-accepted norms, will bring about development. There is little patience within their bureaucracies for the slow learning and adaptation process that change and development demand; there is a project cycle to respect and the need to show “results on the ground”! The Africans at the table know this and often negotiate simply to obtain the money; there is little buy-in from them and even less effort to build local consensus on development programs. Goodwill and no-will dissolve themselves into outcomes that are anything but developmental. African intellectuals, who have generally found themselves on the sidelines of the process, have spoken of “arrogance” on the part of those who aspire to “bring development” to Africa and “conspiracy” involving those who speak in the name of Africa at the development table. These intellectuals, unfortunately, propose nothing new in terms of applicable development theories. There is clearly a need to do things differently. There are ongoing efforts in the World Bank to bring this about -especially since the current President, Mr. James D. Wolfensohn took over leadership of the institution- but even here the adage holds true: it takes two to tango. If the Africans do not change and demand change, it is not likely going to happen. In this regard, the NEPAD is a welcome attempt by some enlightened leaders to re-define development roles and responsibilities and bring Africa’s own ideas to the development debate.
Cameroon-Info.Net: There are critics of the World Bank and IMF who believe that these organizations are contributing to the dependence of struggling nations such as Cameroon. In an article by Charles Radin of the Boston Globe published on www.globalpolicy.org, he sites Noam Chomsky of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (American University in Boston) who believes: “the bank and IMF are not trying to alleviate poverty and stabilize international currencies -the tasks assigned by their charters- but are helping rich nations and individuals get richer, and making it impossible for poor nations ever to pay off their debts”.
What do you see as alternative sources of capital necessary for the development of countries like Cameroon, knowing that so far, these two institutions have been the key to credit for those countries that can’t get money elsewhere?
Eric Chinje: I was listening not too long ago to a discussion on Radio France International involving a leading French politician who said, almost abjectly, that for every 100 dollars that the West puts in Africa, it gets 130 dollars in return. You go figure! I am of the view that aid is necessary and the form of assistance that the Bank and the Fund provide to Africa is critical. But I am also convinced that such aid is meaningless in an environment that is ill-prepared to receive it. The search of alternative sources of capital should be an ongoing exercise but that is not necessarily what governments in Africa should be doing at this time. They should be looking at how to make better use of the resources they currently have access to. They should be examining their respective policy environments and asking some hard questions: can foreign aid make a real difference here? Are there any homegrown policies that, with external support, can meaningfully address the problem of rising poverty ?
In my view, there are no more than a dozen governments today in Africa that really deserve support from the international financial community. Do not ask me to name them but look around you and find out which countries are working seriously to create an environment for investment and growth: basic social services, good governance structures, transparent systems of financial management, a reliable judiciary, honest attempts at fighting corruption, free speech, fair electoral processes, and so on. Look at those factors, make your own count and let’s see where you come out! Assistance to non-performing governments is, I believe, a misuse of taxpayer resources, with negative outcomes on both sides of the development divide: rising debt as poverty persists in the developing country; growing aid-fatigue among taxpayers in the donor countries.
Cameroon-Info.Net: Speaking of development, what do you think of the changes that are taking place in Cameroon’s political landscape? Especially the secessionist movement observed in the western part of the country, the appointment of the National Elections Observatory chaired by Mr. Enoch Kwayeb ?
Eric Chinje: What is needed today in Cameroon, as in the rest of Central Africa, is sustained economic growth of the order of 10 percent GDP. I know that good politics are a necessary condition for this. I fear, as I look at the conditions for growth and prosperity in today’s world, that all of Central Africa runs the serious risk of staying behind long after the development train has left the station. One of the region’s leaders was recently appealing for more aid, claiming that his government had done everything necessary to attract foreign investment to no avail. Anybody will be hard pressed to find one country in the sub-region that is anywhere near having an enabling environment for investment and growth. Everywhere you look, efforts to attract foreign capital and encourage local investors are weak, at best. Our commodity-based economies are simply not competitive, not sufficiently diversified and certainly not integrated enough to create a sizable, sub-regional market that provide investors needed economies of scale. Infrastructure in the entire sub-region is deplorably poor, educational systems are anything but labor-friendly, and social services leave a lot to be desired. We need to be concerned about all of the above; political developments that do not create conditions for investment and growth are truly meaningless.
Cameroon-Info.Net: How do you see the political future of our country? What role can you expect older and younger generations to play in this world without frontiers?
Eric Chinje: I want to see an economic future: systems for creating wealth, technology transfer, exports, jobs and more jobs, and a celebration of entrepreneurship! We need to quickly have our political house in order and get on with it. Pressure needs to build for a modernization of development thinking and a re-actualization of economic policies. There should be no room for old, failed dogmas; we need to wake and smell the coffee! We need to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS; we need to send all of our girls to school and bring more women, at higher levels, into the workforce; we need to improve our delivery of social services; we need to re-build the country’s agricultural base and introduce technologies that allow us to conserve and transform our farm produce; we need to strengthen the country’s manufacturing base; we need to build and maintain basic infrastructure; we need to adopt financial systems that are adapted to the development needs of the country. We need to do all these things and more, demand them from those who lead us. That is what matters today. That is what makes good politics. If a national leadership is not doing that, it does not deserve to lead. Those who aspire to lead should be made to explain how they will deliver on such an agenda. The world without frontiers can also be a cruel world. Without enlightened and determined leadership, we risk finding ourselves standing out in the rain, hoping for leftovers, when the party is all indoors.
Cameroon-Info.Net: With your background in communication, it is fair to say that you are in the forefront of the information technology. What do you see as challenges facing journalists and the profession of journalism in general? What solution do you suggest ?
Eric Chinje: The good journalist in Africa today may belong to a dying breed. Communications professionals have to adapt to the demands of a new age or face the danger of irrelevance and obsolescence. It is a present danger in most countries and my travels across the region have left me in grave doubt as to the future of the profession. I find in country after country journalists who have decidedly slumped into a state of apathy and despair; they no longer believe in the noble ethics of their profession, have no goals or direction, and do not read or seek to inform themselves about the world around them. I run into those who have been completely left out of the information technology revolution and are not bothered by the fact. Many have no mastery of the language they communicate in and make no effort to correct that. I regularly meet reporters who live a lie, deluding themselves in the belief that they are part of a powerful corps that once was known as “the fourth estate”. Only in a handful of countries in the region is the media content a reflection of the challenges and concerns of the country. The picture is not gloomy all around but journalism in Africa is clearly in dire straits.
Part of the solution I see is training and in access to capital. The first explains why I do what I do in the World Bank. But the kind of training provided by donors is far from enough. Curriculum reform should be encouraged in the region’s many schools of journalism and mass communication. Many of these institutions -and I have visited quite a few recently- are in dire need of financial aid and new equipment. Donor assistance in this regard has fallen far short of what is required. That needs to change. There is also need for creative thinking, especially on the part of media managers. Journalism in the region is sinking into an abyss of corruption, poor writing and marginal understanding of issues.
Cameroon-Info.Net: Are you working on any projects that you'd like to tell people about ? Can we expect to see you in front or behind the CRTV cameras soon ?
Eric Chinje: No, to your second question. I visit friends in CRTV whenever I am in Cameroon but that is about as far as it goes. I have no intention of re-tracing my steps to the past. Journalists from CRTV are involved in the Economics Journalism course I run from Washington. I am happy about that.
Back to the present, I am working on projects I am really excited about. They have to do with helping to improve Africa’s image internationally, with improving the quality of communications in the region, with engaging Africans everywhere in a healthy and informed development discourse, and with improving the way the World Bank communicates in Africa. I am involved with efforts to build regional consensus on the NEPAD initiative; I am also involved in some rather creative efforts to fight HIV/AIDS and to help victims of the disease in Africa. A quick example here: I am on the board of the Zambia Orphans of AIDS organization. We raise funds in the US and make them available to micro-businesses that directly support children in Zambia orphaned by the disease.
Cameroon-Info.Net: If you were given the opportunity to address the members of the United Nations, what would the topic of your speech be ?
Eric Chinje: I have been scratching my head quite a bit to find an answer to this one. I suppose I will like to address the issue of international public goods and the role of the UN in providing a voice to the voiceless of the world. Or maybe I will simply talk about the strengths and weaknesses of the UN as an advocate for global peace and development. Actually I think I will talk on the subject of Communications as the Missing Link in Development and see if there are any takers in the UN system.
Cameroon-Info.Net: Where do you see yourself ten years from now ?
Eric Chinje: I am eager to try out some development concepts that have inspired me in recent years. They will require my leaving the World Bank and returning home. So I see myself back in Cameroon, bringing to some rural communities in the country my knowledge of development, my contacts around the world and my knowledge of where to find appropriate technologies and how to access cheap capital. I see myself working with these communities to put in place systems that will allow them to generate wealth from local resources, access markets within and beyond national frontiers, and measure increases or reductions in poverty levels. I dream of that everyday now. For my family’s sake and because I consider my work largely unfinished, I must wait for the right time to leave the World Bank. Hopefully, that will not be too long from now.
Cameroon-Info.Net: The Indomitable Lions of Cameroon, incontestably the best soccer team in African history is attracting new interest from the international community. How can individual Cameroonians take advantage (business wise) of this global exposure at the Japan-Korea World Cup games in June ?
Eric Chinje: There has to be an individual and a collective approach to this. Intrigue and infighting among the country’s representatives to earlier international events have prevented Cameroon from fully benefiting from the spotlight that settled on it. We have to decide whether we want to win together or seek individual gratification from whatever crumbs we pick up from the victory table. There is need for leadership here. The June 2002 World Cup competitions provide yet another opportunity to brand and promote Cameroon; to open our doors to tourist from Asia and other parts of the world; to proclaim loudly that football is only one of the things we can effectively compete in. Let us put forth those things in which we have a competitive edge: light industry manufactures, tourism, agriculture, etc.
Cameroon-Info.Net: How did Eric Chinje spend Valentine’s Day? Any tips to men and women out there ?
Eric Chinje: It was mostly a day of quiet reflection about the people and things I love and care for and why it is so gratifying to give love and maybe get some in return. I reminded myself how lucky I have been and what responsibilities come with that!
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