Cover_Rebuilding West Africas Food Potential

Chapter 4. The case of Cameroon 131

D. Agricultural Policy and the Rural Sector Development Strategy since 1999

The new challenges are:
Consolidating the agricultural sector as an engine of economic and social development of the country;
Promoting professional and inter-professional organizations for the various economic operators, as
they should be the main actors in agricultural development;
Improving the population’s food security through increased production and total income.

On a practical level, the strategic options are:

• Modernizing farms to improve access to inputs, land, more efficient techniques and financing;


• Increasing farm income by improving productivity and developing business opportunities to ensure
  that domestic agricultural products competitive to keep inflation of consumer food products prices
  down;


• Strengthening food security in areas of high population density and fragile ecology through
  integrated development programs;


• Promoting the rational and sustainable use of natural resources, while ensuring compatibility
  between the various social, economic, technical and environmental constraints;


• Defining and implementing an incentive framework specifically for small and medium agricultural
  production and processing enterprises to increase the mobilization of domestic private investment
  in a competitive modern production sector, that creates jobs;

Box 3. Promotion of the cassava sector

The new Agricultural Policy provides specific guidance for the roots and tubers sector in the general

framework of the starches development policy. This policy is to strengthen the position of carbohydrates

in the population’s diet as part of fresh and processed products in order to reduce the share of food

imports and improve food security. The intervention strategy on the sector focuses on:

Providing support for production and field quality improvement (outreach of improved planting

material and crop management sequences);

Promoting small-scale processing (food hygiene and productivity), as well as Micro, Small and

Medium Enterprises (SMEs) for processing or export;

Providing support to marketing to ensure cities have a steady food supply and stabilize prices.

In this context, government decided to set up a specific program on the sector because of its social

and economic importance and the fact that the many initiatives already underway were struggling to

provide meaningful results as they failed to take into account the sector’s functions (Pouma cassava

processing plant in the Central Region, Cassava chips production in Obala and Cassava Transformation

Experimentation Centre in Yoke to the southwest). Thus the National Program for the Development of

Roots and Tubers (PNDRT) was established and mobilized financing from IFAD in 2004.

Since its inception in 2005 to date, this program has brought about a significant overall increase in roots and

tubers production with 214 percent for cassava (from 15 tonnes / hectare to 25 tonnes), 187 percent for yam

and 325 percent for potato (PNDRT Report, 2010). However, issues related to organizing stakeholders and

markets and the low level of processing still need to be addressed to enable an impact at household level

through better sharing of the added value generated and reducing transaction costs.