biya, page-6

If nothing else, this news potentially creates greater uncertainty for mining interests in Cameroon because of the perceived political instability and hence uncertainty for investors.

We don't really know what the political end game will look like because, if the article has any truth to it, we don't know how favourable a 'new' government regime will look upon SDL, any agreements it may have reached to date and whether there are any risks that agreements reached will not be honoured.

Commonsense suggests however that if Cameroon wants to move forward as a prosperous nation it would not want to bite the hand that feeds it, such as significant investors interested in China, Korea and Australia. But then again, how often does commonsense prevail!

Markets are all about the psychological state of investors. We saw that with the MRRT in Australia last year which we assumed was considered a stable investment environment. We saw the domestic and international investment community raise concerns about sovereign risk in Australia, resulting in miners being up in arms against the government, mining projects being placed on hold, mining companys' share prices falling, and ultimately the downfall of a PM.

Investing in a company which has interests in another country which most of us know very little about apart from maybe Roger Milla (the footballer) is a risk factor which hopefully formed part of one's decision making process.

This article may well increase the vulnerabilty of investors' state of mind, such as those invested in SDL, predominantly because we've historically heard and known of the political instability which exists in that part of the world.

So one scenario is that the news may well create unease and cause investors to withdraw their investment and reap the financial benefits gained to date from SDL.

IMO, I believe it will be business as usual as Cameroon needs global investment partners to grow and prosper economically and socially and not to do so would perpertuate the political instability which has held the African region back for too long.

Everyone talks about the Asian region being the economic hub of the world. I believe Africa has the potential to be that next hub and the short term upheavals in Egypt may well be catalyst for other governments in the African region to be more democratic in nature and in the long term lead to increased political stability. When this occurs, watch the investment money increase expotentially in the Afican region...and remember, the Asian region was not too dissimilar to what Africa is today a short few decades ago.

In closing (is anyone still awake?), I tend to look at the end game and filter the short term noise where appropriate. And as Belloh noted and I agree with his/her perspective, "...the character of risk is changing but not increasing...", and may I also add, perhaps for the better.