LIMBE, CAMEROON – Cameroon’s second-largest employer, the Cameroon Development Corporation, says it has been paralyzed by the separatist conflict in the country’s English-speaking regions. The agricultural giant has not been able to pay its staff for a year because of falling production and revenue.

The village of Meanja used to be a banana production center in Cameroon’s English-speaking southwest.

Two years ago, 2,000 people lived here, and many worked for the Cameroon Development Corporation’s banana production unit.

But these days, a visiting reporter sees only abandoned houses, empty schools, and silent factories.

Oliver Kogue worked at the Meanja banana factory but says security threats forced them to shut down. Armed separatists attacked the factory in 2017, he says, killing four workers and wounding scores of others.

“This production unit produces averagely 60 tons of banana daily and after this attack, work has ceased. Workers escaped for their dear lives,” Kogue said. “Five-hundred-and-60 workers were working in this particular section. In the course of stopping work we have deprived 560 workers from employment.”

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