On December 16, 2017, Wholesome Health Promotion (WHP) organized its second food safety workshop in Idenau. In this piece, we introduce you to a town that was an exact match to the types of communities that our organization was created to help.

Idenau, the headquarters of the West Coast sub-division in Fako division (Cameroon), is a small predominantly fishing community some 41km northwest of Limbe. It is tucked between Mount Fako to the North and the sandy beaches of the Atlantic Ocean to the South. Idenau is made up of eight settlements consisting of fishing communities, CDC (Cameroon Development Corporation) camps, and indigenous villages. It has a population of about 30,000 inhabitants, about 40% of whom are foreigners from Nigeria, Ghana, Mali and Equatorial Guinea involved in the fishing trade.

Idenau was the ideal setting for a WHP food safety workshop because is it a typical rural and marginalized community with a variety of food safety issues linked to its main commercial activities. The primary activity here is fishing and fish processing, which is done under rudimentary and not very sanitary conditions. The CDC is involved in plantation agriculture in the area, including operating the Idenau oil mill which produces palm oil. The oil mill is confronted with significant waste disposal and waste processing issues that the WHP team discovered during a tour of the meal. A thriving commercial hub, Idenau attracts many petty traders including street vendors who operate with little consideration for general food safety.
WHP intends to fully leverage the lessons from Idenau to better engage similar rural communities across Cameroon. Of course, this cannot happen without your generous contributions to our organization.

In the meantime, here is a video that gives you’re a peak into life in this coastal port village. Enjoy!