(Business in Cameroon) - Since its partial damming in September 2015, with a holding of more than two billion cubic metres of water out of the 6 billion cubic meters expected during the definitive impoundment in August 2016, Lom Pangar dam is highly coveted by fishermen in activity in Cameroon.

Since last September, we learn from reliable sources, they come in their hundreds each month to dedicate themselves to their fishing activities in the dam waters. Based principally in Ouami, a town located around 10 kilometres from the dam, there are now more than 6000 people in this village and its surrounding area. These figures are communicated by EDC, the public company in the energy sector, which is managing the development of the Lom Pangar hydro electric project.

A number of these fishermen, we learn, left the Lake Chad region where fishing has become a dangerous activity due to the murderous incursions of the Nigerian Islamic sect Boko Haram, or even the area around the Lagdo dam, in the Northern region of the country, as well as three other dam reservoirs in the country, namely Mbakaou, Bamendjin and Mape, where the waters are no longer as fish populated as they used to be.

Indeed, EDC experts stress, that thanks to an ecosystem full of nutrients highly prized by the fish, Lom Pangar dam waters are particularly filled with an abundance of fish. The dynamism of fishing activity around this infrastructure is such that EDC estimates that the fishermen of Lom Pangar will have revenues of FCfa 30 billion during the year 2016.

However, our sources highlight, instead of helping to narrow the shortage of fish production from which Cameroon suffers, Lom Pangar catches are exported to neighbouring countries and even West African countries (Nigeria, Mali, Ghana, etc), whose fishermen are in the majority in activity around this dam built in the Eastern region of the country.

Brice R. Mbodiam