On January 19, U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo—on his last full day in the position—announced visa restrictions on “Tanzanian officials responsible for or complicit in undermining” the general elections held in late October last year.

Cameroon is a country in crisis. Longstanding tensions between the center and periphery have morphed into brutal conflicts, with government forces confronting Boko Haram in the north and Anglophone separatists in the west. Over one hundred eighty thousand people have been displaced.

On November 4, two days before Biya’s inauguration, seventy-eight students, the principal, and two staff members were kidnapped from a Presbyterian school near Bamenda, in the Anglophone part of the country. On November 7, officials reported that the seventy-eight students were freed the day before, as was a staff member. As of November 8, the principal, a teacher, and perhaps more children, were still in captivity.