Processing the key to developing local agriculture
IMPROVING BOTH THE QUALITY OF LOCAL PRODUCE AND THE QUANTITY OF PROCESSED PRODUCTS FOR THE EXPORT MARKET ARE THE TWIN PRIORITIES OF CAMEROON'S GOVERNMENT AND AGRICULTURAL COMPANIES

Zacherie Perevet Minister of Agriculture

Cameroon is extremely rich in natural resources: cocoa, bananas, oil palms, rubber trees, tea, cotton and timber. But this bountiful tropical harvest has traditionally been exported in its raw state with minimal local processing.
Cameroon’s Minister of Agriculture, Zacherie Perevet, is responsible for opening up the sector to private investment and increasing the quality and the amount of processed products for export.
The minister has already attracted investment from U.S. giant Del Monte in the form of a banana management, packaging and transportation program. “Del Monte has improved the banana sector in that before their arrival, bananas were no longer exported. With their new technology, the sector righted itself and this has been a motivation for other partners to come and look at Cameroon,” says Mr. Perevet.

The fat of the land The bountiful local harvest includes cocoa, bananas and coffee.

In a good year, Cameroon exports about 120,000 tons of cacao, 7,000 tons of coffee, 230,000 tons of cotton, and the same of bananas. “There are favorable conditions for investment in Cameroon and there are some strategic sectors which would benefit,” says Mr. Perevet. “If only we could process locally part of what we export, it would be very good.”
The Cameroon Development Corporation (CDC), now slated for privatization, was founded in 1947 to acquire and operate plantations of tropical crops. Today it has 52,000 acres of rubber trees, 42,000 acres of oil palms, 3,700 acres of tea and 5,000 acres of banana plantations. Previous CDC development programs have been financed from self-generated funds and by the Cameroon government, as well as by the World Bank, the European Investment Bank, and other agencies.
The Inter-communal Equipment Fund, known by its French initials, Feicom, is a government agency entrusted with developing rural areas through locally funded infrastructure initiatives. “If you don’t have good roads, enterprises cannot settle and the communication system doesn’t work very well,” says Mr. Perevet. The Feicom support fund was set up as a series of local councils with the power to pool resources raised in the form of local taxes for the development of projects to benefit the wider rural community.

Ondo Ndong Director of Feicom

Ondo Ndong, Feicom’s director, is proud of the fund. “Feicom is unique in Africa,” he says. “We are charged with the management of decentralized structures and Feicom’s resources receive nothing from outside.”
Since it became operational in 1977, Feicom has funded the building of schools, health centers, administrative buildings, sports facilities, markets, refrigerated storage facilities, and other commercial infrastructure. The fund has also maintained rural roads, water supply networks, wells and taps, street lighting and waste treatment plants, along with the vehicles and equipment to carry out these tasks. “Feicom intervenes in the social domain by providing health, education and infrastructure to enable the social, economic and cultural development of each locality,” says Mr. Ndong. One of its biggest projects is to link thousands of small Cameroonian villages to a rural electicity grid.

Both Mr. Ndong and Mr. Perevet understand the need for change in Cameroon’s agricultural sector.
“Feicom looks after the social sector and consequently we can ask the international community to step in to support our efforts and our councils,” says Mr. Ndong. “We also help in the promotion of international cooperation between councils in Cameroon and councils abroad. We sent in April a delegation of mayors to the Rio de Janeiro international conference on urban development.”
Mr. Perevet sees the future from the investor’s viewpoint, “We need to strengthen the ties between Cameroon and the U.S. and we would like to see more U.S. investors. We are open to new kinds of cooperation. The Cameroon government gives every company an opportunity to compete,” he says.