(Business in Cameroon) - Under the IDA financing mechanism, World Bank will provide $130 million (CFA73.5 billion) to Cameroon to help support refugees and displaced persons. This was revealed during a ceremony in Yaoundé on June 19, 2018, the eve of the International refugees day.  

According to Elisabeth Huybens (photo), World Bank Country Director for Cameroon, these funds will be used for four projects aimed at improving the living conditions of refugees whose number is ever increasing since 2014.  

According to the director, despite Cameroon’s authorities’ decision to tend to the displaced people’s immediate needs (with humanitarian organizations’ support) by integrating them to most of the national systems namely, health and education, the public services are limited and natural resources are scarce for those refugees.

Let’s remind that to date, Cameroon has welcomed about 360,000 refugees most of whom are in the vulnerable, marginalized and isolated border areas.  Most of those refugees are Nigerians fleeing Boko Haram’s exactions and Central Africans fleeing the country’s insecurity following the coup that ousted the former president Bozizé in 2013.

BRM