In a post going viral on social media, lawyer Maître Sikati states that “international justice has just condemned Cameroon to pay the sum of 355 billion FCFA to SUNDANCE Resources.” An announcement that reignites the debate on the Mbalam-Nabeba iron project.
Lawyer Maître Sikati did not mince words. In a post published a few hours ago, he accuses: “Our leaders sign contracts without properly studying them and later discover when it is already too late that they have been duped.”
To support this, he mentions a condemnation of Cameroon to pay 355 billion FCFA to Sundance Resources, the Australian junior mining company, for “abusive breach of the Mbalam-Nabeba iron exploitation contract.”
The dispute is real and has been before the International Court of Arbitration of the ICC in Paris since 2021. At the origin: the 2020 withdrawal of the Mbalam-Nabeba project from Sundance, in favor of Chinese partners. Cameroon and Congo invoked a “prolonged lack of activity” by the company.
Sundance responded in 2022 with a claim memorandum. And here, the figures explode: 3,401.6 billion FCFA claimed, or 5.5 billion dollars. The company demands either the return of the exploitation permit or damages.
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However, the amount of 355 billion cited by Maître Sikati does not appear in any official document. The figure of 3,401 billion, on the other hand, appears in all the memoranda.
The verdict, initially expected at the end of 2025 then in March 2026, has been postponed to the end of 2026. In January 2026, the ICC also dismissed Sundance in its procedure against Congo, a precedent closely followed in Yaoundé.
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In short: at this stage, there is no official document supporting Maître Sikati’s statement. But the financial risk is massive and his warning, even if the figure can be contested, brings back to the center of the debate the issue of securing mining contracts.
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