Rural sectors

AGRICULTURE AND RURAL DEVELOPMENT SECTOR

Enhance Cameroon's agricultural potential to make it a driving force for rural development

Often referred to as the "breadbasket" of Central Africa, Cameroon has considerable agricultural potential. In 2005, the Government adopted the Rural Sector Development Strategy Paper, which focused on the rapid increase in production in the sector but which made a serious assessment of the obstacles preventing agriculture and livestock from being drivers of development: insufficient production of export crops and food crops, living conditions of rural populations that are still precarious, difficulties in access to finance and markets and an institutional environment not conducive to the development of the sector

Thus, the first C2D, by making agriculture and rural development a sector of concentration, implemented four programmes forming a coherent and complementary set of interventions. Their objectives were to initiate radical changes in the roles and functioning of the administrations in charge of the sector and in the support provided to producers, to promote dialogue between the State and the agricultural profession, as well as the empowerment of producer organizations, to strengthen the training and professional integration of young farmers and to restore soil fertility in the northern regions of Cameroon.

With the adoption of the Growth and Employment Strategy Paper (GESP) in 2009, the Government of Cameroon has placed agriculture at the top of the political agenda in order to make it a vector of national development focused mainly on the productive sector, including agricultural production and agro-industry. The Second C2D therefore allocated the majority of its resources to agriculture and rural development.

This priority is reflected in the extension of the original programmes across the entire national territory and in new interventions in the production, processing and marketing aspects. Thus a support programme for agricultural and agri-food SMEs has been launched and vocational training has been selected as a sector of concentration, with an emphasis on agri-food and rural non-agricultural occupations (electricity, mechanics, maintenance, etc.). In addition, other programmes indirectly impact Agriculture and rural development:

The National Participatory Development Programme (PNDP), which contributes to community development activities as well as those of local and regional communities, and to the rehabilitation of rural roads to open up agricultural areas;
The Support Programme for Agricultural Research that improves agropastoral productivity and the development of food technology.

To better support this sector, the preservation of natural resources, a global challenge in terms of preserving biodiversity, soil fertility and climate regulation, is also a central concern of the C2D through support for the actions of the Forest Environment Sectoral Programme (FESP) and soil fertilization activities in the regions of northern Cameroon.

Among the beneficiaries of the C2D, the Cameroonian Government has included the Improvement of the Competitiveness of Agricultural Family Farming (ACEFA) programme at the heart of the rural C2D intervention area. The challenge of this programme is to sustainably improve the economic and social performance of agropastoral operations through their organizations. The programme has identified three main areas of intervention:

Support and advice to agro-pastoral family farms; Support to producer organisations and finally agro-pastoral professionalization through institutional strengthening and management of professional groups in the field.

Provide young people with operational training and facilitate their integration into the agriculture, livestock and fisheries sectors.

In bid to ensure the improvement of the productivity of agropastoral farms on the one hand, and to develop employment on the other hand, the ''Programme for the renewal and development of vocational training in the agriculture, livestock and fisheries sectors'' (AFOP), has been deemed eligible for C2D funding. Its aim is to improve the professional qualifications of those involved in agricultural and rural development and to step up the socio-professional integration of young people in the agricultural, livestock and fisheries sectors.

To achieve these objectives, four areas of intervention have been selected.

Improving the training offer of public and private centres in the agriculture, livestock and fisheries sectors; improving the training offer of schools under the supervisory authority of MINADER and MINEPIA, and private schools preparing for agro-pastoral fishing and para-agricultural occupations; supporting young people and adults trained for professional integration in the agriculture, livestock and fisheries sectors and supporting MINADER and MINEPIA structures in the development of agro-pastoral vocational training.

Efficiently implement the Rural Sector Development Strategy by public authorities

The Support programme for the Contracting Authority of Rural Sector Administrations (AMO), which is part of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, aims to contribute to the sustainable improvement of governance and efficiency of the administrative services of MINADER and MINEPIA. The main achievements of this programme is the strengthening of monitoring, evaluation, control and consultation capacities; the renovation and strengthening of the statistical system and the strengthening of the technical capacities of decentralized services.

Restore soil fertility in northern Cameroon and regenerate forest cover

Soil yields in the northern part of Cameroon have been on a downward trend for almost thirty years due to the constant degradation of soil fertility in this part of the country. This determining factor handicaps the competitiveness of Cameroonian cotton and justifies actions to maintain fertility while making in- depth analysis of the factors that account for such evolution. Projects carried out over the past two decades have shown that soil and water resource degradation in the northern part of Cameroon is probably not irreversible.

In this perspective, since 2007, the first generation C2D has supported the North Cameroon Soil Conservation Project (PCS), the second phase of the Water, Soil and Tree Environment Project (ESAII). The purpose of the project is to restore soil fertility in northern Cameroon by ensuring the reduction of soil erosion, the improvement of soil water retention, the sustenance of Plant Cover Seeding (SCV), the regeneration of forest cover and the development of a baseline for rain fed rice in karals.

Supporting Regional and Local Authorities to make them partners and actors in sustainable local development

The National Participatory Development Programme (PNDP) is a national rural poverty reduction initiative set up by the Government in 2005, with the technical and financial support of all development partners. Aware of the risks and uncertainties surrounding the State budget and the difficulties of intervening everywhere at the same time, the Government has designed this multi-donor programme to encourage local authorities to take charge of their own affairs in a spirit of financial empowerment.

Based on three main areas of intervention notably, support for the financing of micro projects resulting from Municipal Development Plans, protection of vulnerable socio-economic groups and support for Municipal Contracting Authority; the programme covers the ten (10) regions of the country.

As the process of empowering municipalities and communities is ongoing, the assessment at the end of the ten years of implementation of the programme with C2D funds shows that:

At the level of research, the option was to support operational research to optimize agricultural production and ensure food security.

This orientation makes it possible to respond to the low agricultural growth due to the adoption and precarious exploitation of research results by stakeholders. However, there is real potential in Cameroon in the fields of processing and marketing of agricultural and pastoral products.

The purpose of the C2D Research component is to improve the productivity, sustainability and competitiveness of Cameroonian agriculture. More specifically, it aims to contribute to increasing producers' incomes, increasing agricultural production and food security in the country.