TIPTOPSTARS

Usually described as Africa in miniature,  Cameroon has more than enough to show in music, cinema, fashion, craft, cuisine. Examples abound. Yet the media, especially the print pay very little attention to this. Cameroonian newspapers are known to have little room for arts and culture news, especially when it is not institutional. There has been a disturbing absence of regular entertainment columns in frontline newspapers published in English, if we must limit the observation to that. Even when stories on showbiz are reported in the papers, they are only sporadically done with no in-depth approach to it,  contary to what would obtain with politics and perhaps sports.

On radio or television, such stories are lined at the bottom of the news menu, usually coming at the close of the newscast. Whether they find an audience at that time is another story on its own.

For quite some time now, there has been an outcry to reverse this phenomenon which does not reflect a country said to be a cultural Eldorado. Even when arts and culture reporters and stakeholders in the entertainment industry have sought lasting solutions, the habit has refused to die so soon.

However, there is silver lining in the dark cloud of entertainment reporting in Cameroon. There has at least been an active revolution happening online, thanks to some entertainment portals. Amongst them is four-year-old www.nexdimempire.com which undoubtedly is one of the leading Cameroonian online publications. Reputed for capturing the attention of a huge audience worldwide, www.nexdimempire.com has become a big market place for Cameroonian showbiz news and sports. Hardly would any Cameroonian showbiz event or celebrity go unnoticed by the site which  can today boast of countless articles, published over the past four years.

Run under the banner of NexDim Empire, an entertainment outfit, www.nexdimempire.com has won a huge reputation for reporting regularly on the contemporary music landscape and the Cameroon’s young movie industry. “NexDim is my window on the Cameroonian entertainment industry,” Terence, an Ohio USA resident told TIPTOPSTARS Editor. The young lover of art and culture who has been away from Cameroon for over a decade now confessed to us that he feels at home each time he logs on www.nexdimempire.com “The site is so rich in content and a big asset to Cameroon’s entertainment industry,” he went further.

Perhaps what makes the NexDim story more exciting is that the outfit goes beyond reporting events. www.nexdimempire.com also plays an admirable promotional role, helping out artists in the areas of advertizing, online sales, marketing, event and concert organization, mass production of CDs, printing of posters, stickers, banners and T-shirt graphic design.

With the indefatigable Steveslil as CEO, NexDim saw the light of day in 2009. The idea had been nursed a year earlier by Njang Stephen Mbu and Mambe Churchill Nanje. “We have a defined objective of instilling the value of creative imagination and throwing light in the music, arts and film industry in Cameroon,” the outfit’s mission statement reads.

Like Terence, hundreds of thousands of NexDim fans including those living in Cameroon are glad they can at least be feed with soft news, even when the politically-inclined hard copy news publications have fail to offer it to the reading public. If you’ve not been on the site yet, you can henceforth become one of its regular visitors by simply clicking on www.nexdimempire.com. That could just be the beginning of a new life in an empire of entertainment, an experience you probably might not have had before. Kudos Steveslil and co.!

When Solo Mouna, one of Cameroon’s leading makossa artistes in the 80s said in a famous track that the woman is the mother of humanity, little did he know the world was going to open up more space for gender balance sooner. The same singer went ahead to enjoin his fellow male counterparts not to be hard on women. Today, the world has not only reconsidered the need to be soft when approaching women, but has gone beyond to consider recognizing and appreciating what they do. Amazingly, women have been putting up an extra-ordinary performance in virtually all fields they are engaged in. They have even competed stiffly with men in domains hitherto considered reserved for the latter. This new dispensation has not left the world indifferent. Rather, it has attracted immeasurable attention and provoked the irresistible zeal to gratify women.
One of the organizations that have been keen on the progress made by the womenfolk is The Champion Women Dynamites. The one-year-old organization and its dynamic President Fri Ngu are doffing their hats to women and girls who have displayed exceptional qualities in their work. This will happen through an awards ceremony dubbed Golden Women’s Awards, billed for 8 March 2012 in Cameroon’s capital Yaounde.
According to Fri who doubles as Director of CFA Connecta Plan, another Cameroonian NGO, the red carpet event is meant to create awareness of the enviable values women possess and propel. “They are quite inspiring and are mothers who deserve society’s attention and respect,” Fri told TIPTOPSTARS editor on the line to her Yaounde abort. But what inspired the idea of organizing the awards? “I’ll say ever since I met and started working with Kah Walla, my perception of the Cameroonian woman has been greatly illuminated,” the young female promoter of gender balance told us. Fri went on: “However, it is a mail this dynamic politician sent to women, reminding us to get inspired by golden women Cameroon has had that rang a bell in my mind.” “I then vowed to henceforth honour women,” Fri said to explained the reason for her up-coming recognition event.
The president of The Champion Women Dynamites revealed that laureates will be awarded from 20 categories including politics, business, media, philanthropy, fashion, movies, music, Christian Ministry, rural development, public service education, sports and health. “We’ll also use the occasion to launch Eve magazine, our maiden publication,” Fri who is also the Executive Secretary of FC Bamenda announced.
Meantime, the red carpet event will be graced by music supplied throughout the evening from a band playing live. “There will also be stand-up comedy to entertain our guests,” said the organizer.

In recent years, Africans living in the diaspora have been very concerned about recognizing and appreciating the continent’s values, talents and productivity. The creative arts domain has easily been figured out, given that sons and daughters of Africa have amazingly excelled here. As a way to reward excellence and in a bid to promote talents and creative initiatives, individuals and groups living out of Africa have from time to time organized events to pay tribute to those who have kept the engine steaming. This has mostly been the case with Nigerian and Ghanaian communities in the US and the UK.
Sporadically, the Cameroonian diaspora has organized recognition events, but would in most cases limit them to specific areas of creative arts – fashion and beauty contest. Never has there been a Cameroonian recognition event that covers all domains of arts and culture and involving Cameroonian artists and celebrities living around the globe including back home. That is what is about to happen.

Long before Among Youths (for which this writer was Editor-in-Chief for close to five years) went on a break, we had been reviewing happenings in the domain of arts and culture at the end of each year. For each edition, we would recollect best-selling stories within the just-ended year and package them in a tribute-paying piece. Our focus since then has always been on young Cameroonian creative artists in a bid to promote talent in a talent endowed country. Never mind if our stars have not hit a mark internationally – we ferry them from nothing to something. Join us in this edition in recalling some of the things that happened within our entertainment industry in 2011.