Cameroon is abundant in various natural re-sources and has the reputation of “small Africa”, attracting many internationalenterprises to invest in its development. However, ethnic and culturaldifferences have hindered the rapid development of the country’s tribes tovarying degrees. SINOPEC relies on its heart and honesty of “win-wincooperation” to help local tribal residents receive education, obtainemployment, develop resources on one side, benefit residents on the other side,and realize cross-cultural integration.
Born inCameroon’s tribal royal family, Evelyne Namaso is the most favored princess ofthe family. She holds a master’s degree in geology from Cameroon’s Universityof Yaounde and is proficient in French, English and local indigenous languages.She is currently employed by SINOPEC Cameroon Company as the Site OperationsManager and Community Relations Coordinator of the Exploration Department. The“Princess Coordinator” with special status not only knows the different needsof the government, enterprises and tribes, but also knows the common interestsof everyone. She relies on honesty and patience to build a bridge ofcommunication in many ways.
During hertenure, the Princess Coordinator visited the tribes 52 times and conductedthousands of interviews and communicated the villagers’ needs and wishes to thecompany. SINOPEC has assisted in setting up orphanages and primary schools tomeet local needs, thus solving the problem of lack of basic education for youngpeople and children. The tribe was very moved and recommended Evelyne to runfor the Senate, which she declined politely. The beloved princess faced somedangerous situations when she began to act as coordinator.
On one occasion,Evelyne and her colleagues invited a tribal chief to hold an exploration forum,but as soon as the boat arrived at the entrance of the village, it was trappedin the swamp by the villagers. At that time, Evelyne sank one foot into themud, but was unable to walk to land or sail away. She kept calling the Chief’sname in the indigenous language until the Chief came to the rescue. TheChieftain explained that the tribe had been forced to allow operations by aforeign oil company that had not fulfilled its promise to build roads andbridges for the local area. Villagers were very disgusted with the oil companyand foreigners and joined forces to carry out violent expulsions. When thechief proved to the villagers that SINOPEC was different from the previous oilcompany, the villagers’ mood eased. Since then, Evelyne has visited the tribemany times and explained to the villagers in detail SINOPEC’s developmentconcept, as well as a series of assistance plans such as a scholarship plan,plans to improve local infrastructure and the provision of jobs. Eventually,all the villagers who had previously resisted were persuaded to sign thesupporting documents.
In every development, Evelyne and hercolleagues would pass on the concept of win-win cooperation to the villagers therein advance, and also help them by teaching new skills, which has played apositive role in promoting SINOPEC’s exploration and development business inCameroon. At the same time, in the seven years of development in Cameroon,SINOPEC has created nearly 1,000 jobs, paid nearly $600 million USD in taxesand fees to the local government, and aided and built more than 20 localhospitals, schools and orphanages. Not only has it developed an oil productionbase with an annual production capacity of one million tons of equity oil inWest Africa, it has also widely spread the concept of win-win cooperation amongtribal people.
