Evidence of the exploitation: A preamble and five exhibits
Sources, uses, and sectoral distribution of foreign aid: A preamble and four exhibits
Putting it all together: A final balance sheet
Postscript
References
Original Articles on underdevelopment
International Journal of Health Services, Volume 13. Number 1, 1983.
[This paper was prepared during the author’s one-year (1991) stay in Cameroon, where he worked as a resident consultant on food and nutrition for the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Planning].
CLAUDIO SCHUFTAN
schuftan@gmail.com
Today most foreign aid donors are genuinely committed to the idea that development in Third World countries should start with rural development. Therefore, a sizable proportion of their development funds are invested in rural projects. However, donors channel these funds through local governments (most often representing local bourgeois interests) that are not as committed to the principle of rural development. These governments are often also embarked in policies that are actually- directly or indirectly expropriating the surpluses generated by agriculture and investing them in the other sectors of the economy. The peasants are therefore footing most of the bill of overall national development. This paper contends that, because of this state of affairs, foreign aid directed toward rural development is actually filling the investment gap left by an internal system of unequal returns to production in agriculture. In so doing, foreign aid is indirectly financing the development of the other sectors of the economy, even if this result is unintended. This perpetrates maldevelopment without redressing the basic exploitation process of peasants which lies at the core of underdevelopment. Evidence to support this hypothesis is presented using data from a primarily agricultural exporting country: the United Republic of Cameroon.
(Most figures in the original documents cited in this paper are in the local Cameroonian currency (francs CFA). All the figures in this paper have been rounded and converted to U.S. dollars, using the 1980 exchange rate of approximately 1 dollar = 200 francs CFA.)
With or without full knowledge and intentionally or not in the last decades Western donors and financial institutions have been disbursing foreign aid that only serves as a weak palliative to (or actually covers up) the systematic exploitation of the primary sector by the other sectors of the economy in quite a number of Third World countries. This situation is especially true for those countries that are primarily agricultural exporters.
In the best of cases, donors give their aid in a well-intentioned, but nevertheless vain and futile attempt to mitigate or remedy this ongoing internal economic exploitation of the rural sector. They do so out of the conviction that genuine overall development can start only with a deliberate emphasis on rural development. In the worst of cases, donors channel their aid through the ruling national elites, fully aware of how these elites are instrumental in perpetuating this state of affairs: therefore, the donors become accomplices in the process of exploitation (1)
It is the peasants, in the last instance, who continue to foot the bills of development, despite the development aid that pours into many countries supposedly to “develop” these same peasants. Moreover, foreign aid is instrumental in decreasing constructive social, economic, and political tensions and internal contradictions that would tend, sooner or later, to redress or resolve the growing imbalances and injustices of the prevailing internal exploitative system.
Ironically, and in pure economic terms, lending institutions thus jeopardize the financial solvency of their clients. No matter how favorable the terms given, compensatory loans to the primary sector tend to impose heavy burdens on the ultimate growth of that sector which is supposed to produce the hard currency to service acquired debts. At the same time, foreign aid indirectly finances the growth of the other sectors of the economy, even if this result is unintended. Local governments channel their development funds to other, often urban and more prestigious projects, i.e. import substitution industries, resting assured that foreign aid will assume a sizable fraction of rural development costs for them. This arrangement invariably results in more affluence for a few urbanites at the expense of those who really produce the wealth.
This inevitably leads to the perpetuation of the exploitation process which lies at the very core of underdevelopment. To top things off, foreign aid often attempts its support of the agricultural sector by imposing Western models of development, i.e. cash-crop support or large irrigation schemes, which carry not only the seeds of the further exploitation of those supposedly aided, but also the continuing enrichment of the ruling bourgeoisie.
The difficult truth is that, if traditional Western foreign aid does not cease or is not drastically reoriented, it will never achieve its stated aims and objectives – a fact that is already widely recognized, but for which all kinds of excuses are found. If donors do not begin to look at macro-economic parameters, their “good will” will be used facetiously to perpetuate the status quo. The chances are strong that many of the donor countries would not mind being used in such a way, as long as their public image looks good to the rest of the world, especially to the other members of the club of donors.
In order to prove these points, two sets of evidence will be presented in the concrete context of a Central African country: the United Republic of Cameroon. First, evidence of the exploitation of the primary sector of the economy will be given, and second, the sources, uses, and sectoral and sub-sectoral distribution of foreign aid will be explored in the form of individual exhibits which, taken together, give the reader a complete overview of the facts that support the hypothesis.
Evidence of the exploitation: A preamble and five exhibits
Preamble
For a country like Cameroon, favorable terms of trade for the agricultural sector should be the basis of development. Ideally, a significant proportion of the surpluses generated by the primary sector should be reinvested in some aspect of rural development, or in ventures servicing the primary sector. This is not what one finds when Cameroon’s official statistics are critically analyzed.
When a country is primarily an agricultural exporting country, it is not unreasonable that the primary sector’s surpluses become the major revenue source for the overall financing of development (2. p. 25). But when in the process of financing the growth of the secondary and tertiary sectors of the economy, a government stigmatizes the growth and growth potential of its primary sector the “goose that lays the golden eggs” -then one can safely assume that one is facing a process of exploitation, of wealth expropriation of that sector. The consequences of such a process-that is, urban migration and sharp decreases in agricultural production and productivity-can be irreversible. Since the peasants’ ability to exert pressure upon the government for the implementation of needed chances is limited. the only means of expressing rural discontent is through migration to urban centers.
In Cameroon, the government evidently tolerates a situation in which the primary sector furnishes the rest of the national economy with a sizable part of its surpluses. mostly export revenues, at the expense of limiting the growth of the real present source of weath. Cocoa and coffee are the main export crops in Cameroon. Since both crops are perennial plants, producers-originally motivated by attractive prices and prospects of high economic returns-became captives of the government, which fixes the prices once either crop has been planted. Today, both crops are no longer as profitable as they were twenty years ago, even discounting inflation and despite the fluctuations in prices observed in the international markets. As a consequence, food crops have increasingly become a potential source of relative higher profits in recent years. Food prices have not only followed overall inflationary trends, hut have surpassed the average consumer price index (3. pp. 30, 31). However, the problem of bringing such products to urban markets in time, at a reasonable cost. and with minimum spoilage still remains.
Exhibit 1.1
In Cameroon, the agricultural sub-sector alone employs 73 percent of the active population and produces 70 percent of the external revenues (4, p. 1). By major sectors of the economy, the distribution of employment is the following primary sector, 79.4 percent; secondary sector, 6.7 percent; and tertiary sector. 13.9 percent (5, p. 14).
In Cameroon’s 1979-1980 national budget, 6.4 percent of all budgeted expenditures were allocated to agriculture (for investments plus administrative expenses) (4, p. 58). In contrast, the contribution of the agricultural sector to the overall value of exports has been between 67 and 75 percent in the last few years (4. p. 5-11). Some 30 to 40 percent of the budgetary resources of the cm eminent derive from the primary sector (4, p. 1). More than 50 percent of the country’s budgetary resources come from customs duties levied on exports and imports (6, p. 4)
The contribution of the primary sector to the country’s Gross Domestic Product was 30 percent in 1979-1980 (5, p. 3). To analyze the returns to agriculture from this contribution, one has to look at several sources. The Ministry of Economic Affairs and Planning updates its estimations of the total cost of financing its five-year development plans yearly and presents those estimations in current dollar values each year. Table 1 compares investments planned in the fourth five-year plan and then actually made in agriculture and the primary sector. The analysis of these data demonstrates that agriculture and the primary sector get back only a small fraction of the cash surpluses they produce in the form of direct government and other public investments. That fraction decreases in the government’s own successive projections of its budget allocations toward the end of the plan. The fraction is also cut in the projections for the total investments planned by all sources (public, foreign, and private funds). Finally, the investments actually made in the first four years of the plan show a further reduction in the percentages of development funds finally allocated to agriculture and the primary sector1 The gap between projected and actual investments is thus shown in Table 1 in terms of the percentages of overall development funds available for the rural economy that were finally invested by the public sector plus all other sources.
1 A recent Food and Agriculture Organization study showed that agriculture’s share of government expenditures between 1967 and 1973 was less than one-fourth of its contribution to the gross national product in all but six of the 52 developing countries surveyed. As Harrison notes (8, p. 26), “The agricultural sector has all too often been used as a milk cow to provide resources to develop cities and industry.”
Table 1
Cameroon’s Fourth Five-Year Plan (1976-1981) Investments planned and investments actually made in agriculture and the primary sector as percent of all development investments made by source: AVAILABLE FROM THE AUTHOR
The next step is to show what percentage of the investments planned for the five years of the Fourth Plan (updated to 1980 current dollars) were actually spent by the end of its fourth year. If investments had been evenly distributed throughout the five years of the plan, 80 percent of the funds should have been actually invested at the end of the fourth year. It is in the light of this latter consideration that the data in Table 2 have to be interpreted. The table presents all funding sources and the financial contributions made by them to the major sectors of the economy and for purposes of comparison, each source’s contribution to the total financing of the Fourth Plan.
Table 2
Cameroon’s Fourth Five-Year Development Plan (1976-1981): Percentage of total investments planned already invested at the end of the fourth year by sector: AVAILABLE FROM THE AUTHOR
Table 2 shows that agriculture, and the primary sector in general, lags behind the other sectors in the investments actually received in the first four years of the plan. It also shows that government contributions lag behind all other sources. The high level of investments attained by the private sector in agriculture at the end of the fourth year, as compared with what was projected, may be misleading in two ways. First, private investment actually represented only a small fraction (6 percent) of the overall investments in agriculture and most probably went to the modern sector within agriculture. Second, private investment in agriculture represents an even smaller proportion (1.5 percent) of the overall investments that sector made in the country’s economy, the latter being a good indicator of the decreasing profitability of agriculture in Cameroon (6, p. 53). This statement is true for productive investments in agriculture only, since the marketing of agricultural products (export cash-crops and domestic consumption food crops) has been and continues to be very lucrative.
Exhibit 1.2
A balance sheet of the financial relationships between the state and the agricultural sector in Cameroon in 1978-1979 (Table 3) shows that the government kept 81 percent of what it took from the agricultural sector and reinvested 19 percent; the National Produce Marketing Board kept 52 percent of what it took and reinvested 48 percent. In summary, the state, through direct or indirect means, kept 69 percent of what it took from the agricultural sector and reinvested 31 percent.
Table 3
Balance sheet of financial relationship between the state and the agricultural sector, Cameroon, 1978-1979: AVAILABLE FROM THE AUTHOR
Moreover, the agricultural export sector (modern and traditional) received, in the same year, 60 percent of the above public investments and produced only 30 percent of the Gross Agricultural Product (4, p. 53). (It should be noted that some of these investments are long-term and may not yield results measurable in the Gross Agricultural Product until several years later.) The modern sector alone (public and private), in turn, got 60 percent of the preceding 60 percent and produced only 9 percent of the Gross Agricultural Product (4, p. 93). This left the traditional (non-modern) agricultural export sector with only 40 percent of the public investment and producing 21 percent of the Gross Agricultural Product. On the other hand, the food producing sector-which produces 90 percent of all nationally consumed cereals, 100 percent of all consumed tubers and legumes, and 90 percent of all consumed fruits and vegetables, and is responsible for 70 percent of the Gross Agricultural Product-received only 40 percent of the overall government investments allotted to the sector (9, p. 38).
In summary, then, 69 percent of the revenues from agriculture were used to finance the other sectors of the economy. Thus, the other sectors of the economy have increased their share of the Gross Domestic Product at the expense and to the detriment of the Gross Agricultural Product (4, p. 51). In part as a response to this situation, urban migration toward Douala and Yaounde-the two major cities in Cameroon-has increased at a rate of about 8 percent a year (9. p. 3).
Exhibit 1.3
In the last 20 years, the agricultural sector in Cameroon has grown less than the other sectors of the economy (five times vs. seven times) (4, p. 7). Or, put in another way, the real growth of the Gross Agricultural Product (6 percent) is slower than the growth of the overall Gross Domestic Product for the country, which is 8 percent per year. According to another source (10, p. 3), the growth rates of the agricultural sector were evaluated at even lower levels, namely 4.1 percent for 1966-1971, 3.1 percent for 1971-1975, and 5.2 percent for 1976-1978. The latter broke down as 3.5, 4.6, and 7.0 percent, respectively, for food crops and as 6.1, 0.1, and 2.9 percent, respectively, for export crops.
The percentage of the overall Gross Domestic Product represented by the Gross Domestic Product of the primary sector has evolved from 38 percent in 1962-1963, to 30 percent in 1970-1971, to 34 percent in 1975-1976, to 32 percent in 1978-1979, to 30 percent in 1979-1980, and is expected to fall to 27 percent in 1982-1986 (5, p.3; 11, p.8).
Exhibit 1.4
In 1976 the export revenues in Cameroon increased 34 percent over what they were in 1975, with an increase of only 1.6 percent in the total tonnage of agricultural products exported. In 1977-1978 the export revenues increased 19 percent over the previous year, although the total tonnage of exports, especially arabica coffee, actually decreased (7, p. 206). The balance of payments for the country was negative for those two years: $65 million in 1976-1977 and $125 million In 1977-1978 (7, Annexe Statistique, p. 51). The balance of payments is particularly negative with France, the United States, Japan, the People’s Republic of China, and the United Kingdom, In that order. (The European Economic Community receives 78 percent of Cameroon’s exports and is the source of 67 percent of its imports; France receives 31 percent of Cameroon’s exports and is the source of 43 percent of its imports (12)).
In constant dollars (inflation discounted), the price received by the producers of arabica coffee in 1979 was 63 percent of what it was In 1960 (91 percent for robusta coffee); cocoa regained 100 percent of its 1960 price in 1977 and in 1980 this figure was 105 percent (4, p. 149). In 1979, one kilogram of coffee bought at $1.40 to the producer by the National Produce Marketing Board was sold at $4.45 in Europe; therefore, only 32 percent of the sales price reached the producer (4, p. 158). Furthermore, in 1977, one kilogram of cocoa bought at 75 cents to the producer was sold at $6 in the international market. (After that, the price to the producer was increased by 93 percent toward 1980, a time at which the international price dropped significantly (13, p. 95).)
The ratio of the producer price to the world price has evolved as follows in the last 20 years (4, p. 159): arabica coffee-76 percent of FOB price in 1960 and 43 percent in 1979; robusta coffee-69 percent of FOB price in 1964 and 40 percent in 1979;2 cocoa-65 percent of FOB price in 1961 and 43 percent in 1979.
2 In 1978-1979, the same ratio for other countries in the world which export robusta coffee was as follows: Ivory Coast, 38 percent; Madagascar, 33 percent; Indonesia, 64 percent; and the Philippines, 65 percent (14, pp. 39, 43).
Prices of agricultural inputs for farmers have grown faster in Cameroon than the prices of their agricultural export products (4, p. 51). In constant dollars, the real value of agricultural products, when the sector’s inputs costs are considered, lost 40 to 45 percent between 1963 and 1975. If one assigns an index value of 100 to the prices of agricultural export products and fertilizers in 1970, in 1976 the index for the same products was 166 and that of fertilizers was 456 (4, p. 150). Fertilizers are partly subsidized by the government, however. Forty-five percent of all the fertilizers consume. in the country go to coffee production (13, p. 95).
Exhibit 1.5
Between 1960 and 1975, the coffee producer’s real purchasing power fell by between 3 and 10 percent every year at a time when the average national purchasing power (Gross Domestic Product per capita) increased by 37 percent a year (in constant dollars, too), roughly doubling in 20 years to $233 in 1980 (4, p. 149; 5, p. 13).
The ratio of the Gross Domestic Product per capita for the agricultural sector to the Gross Domestic Product per capita for the national average has evolved as follows: 41 percent in 1965. 45 percent in 1970, and 48 percent in 1979 (4, p. 143). The per capita agricultural income is at present between one-fourth and one-half that of the national average and therefore much below the per capita income of the other sectors (4, p. 141).
Sources, uses, and sectoral distribution of foreign aid: A preamble and four exhibits
Preamble
For a number of reasons, quite a few Western countries and bilateral or multilateral agencies have been willing to finance a variety of development projects in Cameroon. These reasons range from the government’s consistent pro-Western stands in international affairs to its quite long-lasting overall civilian political stability; from the country’s undoubtedly great development potential to its credibility with lenders due to past performance; from its recent oil finds to its varied and overall benign climatic conditions. Finally, Cameroon is attractive because of its staunch pro-capitalist outlook in viewing its own future internal development. However, the country faces quite a few problems in managing to absorb all the foreign aid efficiently and clearly lags behind in that task (15, pp. 48, 49). I he bottlenecks that explain this are related among other factors, to shortages of trained manpower, serious limitations in infrastructure (especially roads), and a slow-paced bureaucracy that seems to have particular problems in completing the necessary pre-project technical dossiers.
In the last few years, the transnational private sector has also started to move aggressively into the Cameroonian economy, probably in part for the same set of reasons given above, not to mention the good prospects for middle- and long-term profits and the government’s open encouragement and benign treatment of foreign investment. Transnational banks have been the first to make the move, and their presence makes it possible to finance the start-up operations of other corporations.
Exhibit 2.1
Investments in the fourth five-year development plan at the end of its fourth year totalled $3,325 billion. The total amount invested in the primary sector was $342 million; from this latter sum, $197 million was invested in agricultural projects and $145 million in other rural projects (livestock, forestry, integrated rural development) and in fisheries projects.3
3 All figures are in 1980 dollars.
The importance of foreign aid in the financing of the plan is demonstrated in Table 4, which shows the investments actually made at the end of the Fourth Plan’s fourth year (6, p. 53). As can be seen, at the end of its fourth year, foreign sources (loans and grants) finally financed 42 percent of the plan overall. 50 percent of its rural development projects, and 54 percent of its agricultural development projects. (These figures are even greater if one considers the percentage of private funds that came from foreign sources.)
Table 4
Cameroon’s Fourth Five-Year Development Plan (1976-1981): Percentage of investments made at the end of the fourth year, by source: AVAILABLE FROM THE AUTHOR
It is interesting to note the relatively more important role of all external funds in the financing of the primary sector, especially agriculture, compared with their role in financing the plan overall (50 and 54 percent, compared with 42 percent). On the other hand, the majority of external funds ($1.4 billion) still go to the secondary ($694 million) and tertiary ($502 million) sectors of the economy, with the primary sector getting only 12 percent ($ 170 million) of the total amount.
Exhibit 2.2
The total amount of long-term, low-interest foreign loans invested in the Fourth Plan at the end of its fourth year was $1.3 billion. The total amount invested in the primary sector was $153 million; from this latter sum, $102 million was invested in agricultural projects and $51 million in other primary sector projects (6, p. 53).
The total amount of foreign grants invested in the same period was $82 million. The amount going to the primary sector was $16 million; from this latter sum, $3.6 million was invested in agricultural projects (6, p. 53). The breakdown of the investments of foreign loans and grants is presented in Table 5.
The World Bank and the International Development Agency accounted for almost half of the loam going to the primary and to the agricultural sectors, although both institutions contributed only 12 percent to the plan’s overall loans. Ninety-five percent of all International Development Agency loans went to agriculture as opposed to only 19 percent of World Bank loans. Forty-one percent of all European Economic Community loans went to the primary sector, all to agriculture. French aid provided one-fourth of the agricultural loans overall, while only 15 percent of its loans went to the agricultural sector. The majority of other foreign aid sources, representing almost two-thirds of the foreign loans, were invested in sectors outside the primary sector.
Although the sums Involved were substantially smaller, one can see that French grants, representing 15 percent of all grants, were almost the only grant source invested in agricultural projects (98 percent), while only 12 percent of French grants overall went to this sector. Conversely, European Economic Community grants (41 percent of all grants) did not go to agricultural projects per se, but financed some integrated rural development projects (19 percent of its grants’ contribution). Both French and European Economic Community grants were below the average for all foreign grants in their overall contribution to the primary sector (15 percent and 19 percent, respectively, as opposed to 20 percent).
As of the end of the fourth year of the Fourth Plan, there was still $536 million in outstanding and unutilized foreign loan funds available for investment. These funds were being carried over to the last year of the current plan and also to the Fifth Plan which was scheduled to begin in November 1981. Of these funds, 36 percent are earmarked for the primary sector, probably reflecting what was already pointed out in Exhibit 1 of the preceding section: namely, that the primary sector has clearly lagged behind the other sectors of the economy in the investments it has actually received compared with what was originally planned (6, p. 55).
Table 5
Cameroon’s Fourth Five-Year Development Plan (1976-1981): Investments of loans and grants in the plan at the end of the fourth year, by source: AVAILABLE FROM THE AUTHOR
Exhibit 2.3
If one looks into some of the foreign assistance data accumulated from the last 20 years, interesting tendencies can be found.
From 1960 to 1975, the overall aid given by the European Economic Community to Cameroon amounted to $204 million (grants and loans); 13 percent of that amount went to the rural economy. In the first four years of the Fourth Plan, the equivalent figures were $69 million and 30 percent (15, p. 79; 6, p. 53). It is noteworthy at this point that over 50 percent of the worldwide agricultural assistance that the European Economic Community gives goes to cash-crop projects as opposed to food-crop projects (16).
The total external assistance to Cameroon from 1960 to 1975 amounted to $1.25 billion, 44 percent of which came from Prance (17). From 1975 to 1980, external assistance increased to $1.4 billion and only 23 percent came from France (6, p. 53),
Exhibit 2.4
The public debt in Cameroon as of 1980-1981 was $1.5 billion, up from $585 million in 1976-1977 (27 percent average increase per year). The cost of servicing that debt was $77 million in 1978-1979. The ratio of debt service to export revenues was 5 percent in 1976-1977 and around 7 percent in 1980-1981 (29 percent average increase per year) (6, pp. 5; 6). It is important to note that agricultural exports determine this ratio.
Putting it all together: A final balance sheet
If the data on the balance of financial relationships between the state and the agricultural sector (Exhibit 1.2) are combined with the data on foreign investment (Table 5), the conclusion is inescapable that foreign aid ultimately helps to perpetuate the economic exploitation of the primary sector.
As noted in Table 3, state participation in financing the agricultural sector totalled $115.5 million in 1978-1979. If one takes this figure as an average contribution fur each of the five years in the Fourth Plan and adds to it one-fourth of the overall foreign aid Invested in the rural economy during the first four years of the plan (assuming that foreign aid was evenly disbursed and invested during the plan), one can get an idea of at least the order of magnitude of the net economic exploitation of the primary sector. Stated otherwise, this analysis highlights the “balancing effect” that foreign aid exerts upon the financial relationship between the state and the agricultural sector.
Grants to the primary sector amounted to about $4 million per year during the Fourth Plan and loans invested in the rural economy amounted to about $38 million per year. Therefore, loans plus grants amounted to $42 million per year, indicating that the total investment the primary sector received every year (in this average-year example taken here) was $157.5 million ($115.5 million invested by the government and parastatals plus the $42 million of foreign aid). Therefore, if Table 3 is revised to include foreign aid (Table 6), it shows that without foreign aid, the rural economy would have had only 31 percent of what it contributed to the state in re-investments; with foreign aid, it got around 43 percent, thus making the exploitation process less apparent to the farmers. As Table 6 shows, with foreign aid, the primary sector still contributed about 57 percent of its net revenue to the treasury in 1978-1979.
Table 6
Balance sheet of financial relationship between the state and the agricultural sector with foreign aid included. Cameroon. 1978-1979: AVAILABLE FROM THE AUTHOR
One can assume that potential conflict between the peasantry and the state was avoided, prevented, or postponed in part through the above-mentioned “balancing” effect of foreign aid. Since farmers seldom know where investment moneys come from, and inasmuch as most moneys (including foreign aid) are usually administered and disbursed through government outlets, rural discontent has been kept down.
For a primarily agricultural exporting country like Cameroon which has depended on foreign earnings from agriculture for many years, the question is: At what percentage of contribution by the agricultural sector to the; development of the other sectors does one stop (or begin) considering the process described in this paper as exploitative. The answer seems to be related to what was said in the preamble to the evidence of exploitation: namely, that exploitation is evident when, as a result of unequal returns to production, the agricultural sector’s growth and growth potential are stifled and when, as a consequence, the standard of living of the peasants objectively deteriorates.
Exhibit 1.1 convincingly proves that agriculture and the primary sector get only a small proportion of the overall development investments, lagging behind the tertiary and secondary sectors of the economy. Agriculture and the primary sector also get proportionately less of the investment amounts originally planned for them. The final result (as shown in Exhibits 1.3, 1.4, and 1.5) is not only a neglect of agriculture and a foreseeable fall in its productive output parameters, but also a serious deterioration of the standard of living of the peasants, to the limit of not even providing them with the by now internationally accepted basic human needs. Urban migration should come as no surprise under these circumstances.
Much can and has been said in Cameroon about these problems, be it in official speeches at the highest levels or even in official documents. Just to quote one source, the following statement appeared in a recent Ministry of Agriculture document (4):
The cost to the nation of a price policy favorable to the peasants’ incomes and of a policy of intensive grass-roots rural development that would contribute more efficiently to real agricultural growth is indeed very high; such policies would indeed reduce the capacity of financing urban development, but they will definitively avoid being confronted later with an intersectoral growth imbalance so acute that it would slow down the global growth of the economy…. If peasants continue to have significantly lower incomes than workers of other sectors of the economy, they will be either too old to leave their native villages where they will expect to live the rest of their lives or they will be waiting to seize the first opportunity to get a job in another sector. In the latter case, agricultural growth will continue to falter and foods available to urban dwellers will increasingly be produced industrially at very high costs. Society will become more contrasted and in tension. Unfortunately, the tendency one observes at present leads quite surely to the latter scenario…. What is needed is a definition of an optimum equilibrium in the utilization of development investments that allows the agricultural sector to continue 10 contribute Its share to the growth of the other sectors of the economy, but at levels that will not stigmatize the agricultural productive apparatus upon which the global growth of the national economy rests.
Nevertheless, despite all that has been said or written, the naked figures presented in this paper bear undeniable evidence of a process that cannot he considered accidental. Rather, it can be considered a deliberate policy and one that can genuinely be labelled as exploitative, at least during the period under consideration which extends well into the present.
Another element leading to and perpetuating the exploitation is the lack of real possibilities for peasants to participate in. much less influence, the decision-making process which decides the fate and uses of the wealth they generate.
The next question that arises is: What explains this state of affairs? From all evidence, the situation seems to reflect two elements: (a) a lack of political commitment on the part of the government (or governing elites) to grant preferential attention to the growth of the primary sector, perhaps in emulation of past Western development priorities and trends that have led to maldevelopment: and (b) the lower and/or slower absorptive capacity of the rural economy when compared with industrial, mining, or energy enterprises or the activities of the tertiary sector. To evaluate the relative importance of these two elements hampering the growth of agriculture in Cameroon in the past is difficult, but surely both are among the most important determinants. The attitudes and performance of foreign, multilateral, and bilateral aid donors can also be evaluated using the same criterion. The analysis of facts seems to show an apparently greater commitment to rural development by foreign donors than by the local government. Interestingly, as noted in the introduction, many donors are aware of this fact and seem to feel comfortable filling the gap or the “holes” left by the internal exploitation process of the rural economy systematically carried out by the state.
Postscript
By the time this manuscript was completed (July 1981), the final draft of Cameroon’s fifth five-year development plan (1981-1986) was being readied for promulgation as a law. An analysis of the newly proposed sectoral allotments of the overall investment budget fixed for this plan reveals several elements that provide grounds for some optimism.
In a quite dramatic reshuffling of investment priorities, the primary sector is earmarked to receive 23.7 percent of all development funds (up from 12.8 percent proposed in the Fourth Plan), the secondary sector is to receive 16.4 percent of all investments (down from 47.2 percent proposed in the Fourth Plan), and the tertiary sector is to gel 28.8 percent of the total envelope (unchanged from what it was to get in the Fourth Plan). On the other hand, education Increases its share in the overall pie from 2.6 to 8.8 percent and health/social affairs passes from a 1 to a 4 percent participation in the use of development funds.
In constant 1980-1981 dollars, the above roughly means a fourfold increase In development funds for the primary sector, a 25 percent decrease in funding for the development of the secondary sector, a doubling for the tertiary sector, a sevenfold increase for the development of educational projects, and an eightfold increase in the health/social affairs development budget (18).
What is proposed for the Fifth Plan at least implies a new commitment. What remains to be proven is whether the sectors benefitting from the above substantial increases will be able to absorb the new investments in principle allotted to them. Moreover, it has to be kept in mind that this shift in emphasis, favoring the primary sector, is by no means an assurance per se of an end to the sector’s and the peasants’ exploitation. Only the future will tell. It can be said, however, that development strategies that do not work toward improving the peasants’ standard of living will not work for anyone in Cameroon.
References
1. Moore-Lappe, F., Collins, J., and Kinley, D. Aid as Obstacle: 20 Questions about Our Foreign Aid and The Hungry. Institute for Food and Development Policy, San Francisco, 1980.
2. Perspectives de développement pour l’an 2000 (esquices): Sous secteur agriculture. Ministry of Agriculture. Yaounde, January 1980.
3. Preétude de la commercialisation des produits vivriers au Cameroun. Cegos-Makrotest, World Bank, April 1980.
4. Bilan diagnostic du secteur agricole de 1960 a 1980. Ministry of Agriculture, Yaounde, March 1980.
5. Note sur la croissance de l’économie Camerounaise. Ministry of Economic Affairs and Planning. Yaounde, April 1981.
6. Financement et croissance. Version 1, Commission Nationale de Planification No. 12. Ministry of Economic Affairs and Planning/Ministry of Finance, Yaounde, April 1981.
7. Rapport d’exécution des trois premières années du IVe Plan. Planning Direction, Ministry of Economic Affairs and Planning, Yaounde, March 1980.
8. Harrison, P. The inequities that curb potential. Ceres, May-June 1981.
9. Plan alimentaire a long terme. Ministry of Economic Affairs and Planning/Societe des Etudes de Développement en Afrique, Yaounde, February 1981.
10. Perspectives de croissance. Ve Plan. Ministry of Economic Affairs and Planning, Yaounde, April 1981.
11. United Republic of Cameroon economic memorandum report no. 2877-CM. World Bank, April 1980.
12. Country development strategy statement FY82. United States Agency for International Development. Washington, D.C., 1980.
13. Mounier, F. Economie Camerounaise: Produire pour vendre et pour manger. Jeune Afrique 1062, May 13, 1981.
14. Etude de la production et de la consommation mondiale du café robusta, Vol. 1. SEDES, Paris, July, 1980.
15. Birara, A. Bilateral/Multilateral Assistance and Recurrent Cost Absorptive Capacity in Cameroon 1980/81-1984/85, United States Agency for International Development/Yaounde, August 1979 (mimeo).
16. Calestous, J. The State of World Food. Environmental Liaison Center, Nairobi, 1980 (mimeo).
17. Technical Advisor, Ministry of Finance, Yaounde. Personal communication, 1981.
18. Financement du Ve. Plan par Secteurs (Internal Memo. No. 469, amended version). Planning Direction. Ministry of Economic Affairs and Planning, Yaounde, June 1981.
Dr. Claudio Schuftan
Saigon, Vietnam