Informal borrowing sources and uses: insights from the North West Region,Cameroon

Abstract

This article seeks to analyse the informal borrowing sources of the poor as well as the purposes for borrowing. The obsession on characterising the poor as financially excluded fails to grasp their active financial lives. This article emphasises how relations of credit/debt are rooted in complex social and cultural forces. It is precisely because of the social embeddedness of credit that family finance, though interest-free, is not a first resort. Similarly, credit in kind from shopkeepers, though critical to consumption smoothing, is detested by some people. Also, it is argued that the involvement of the traditional leader in repayment enforcement in informal financial groups challenges the economistic narrative that attempts to separate credit from cultural norms.     

Double Decades of Existence of the Kilum-Ijim Community Forest in Cameroon: What Conservation Lessons?

Abstract

Abstract

At a time when natural forests remain a substantial framework for solving manifold human-induced environmental problems, forest conservation efforts have often been met with a number of challenges, especially in the midst of growing populations of forest-adjacent communities in the developing countries of the world. However, the initiation of the Kilum-Ijim Forest Project in the Western Highland region of Cameroon (erroneously considered to have been a naturally savannized environment) twenty years ago tells a success conservation story. This study, therefore, examines the fate of the Kilum-Ijim Forest prior to the forest conservation project, the conservation efforts put in place to protect and restore the biodiversity of the area, the conservation challenges, and also proposes other areas of intervention for a continuous successful conservation legacy. Due to the constant population pressure and the resultant overexploitation of the Kilum Mountain forest, the original forest size, estimated at 17,500 hectares in 1963, was reduced to 10,500 hectares by 1983. In recognition of the umbilical link between forest and forest-adjacent communities, the Cameroon Government and BirdLife International liaised with the adjacent tribal communities for a sustainable way of managing the forest. While these communities benefit through the non-consumptive use of the forest and other alternative livelihood means, the ecological viabilities of the forest are equally promoted through biodiversity restoration. Due to this community-based management approach, the Kilum-Ijim forest remains an outstanding example of a richly endowed highland montane forest, with a number of endemic wildlife species. Today, conservation efforts have restored the forest size to over 20,000 hectares. Having understood the need for forest conservation and the ensuing conservation benefits, perhaps it is time to increase the forest conservation sites while more alternatives serving human needs are designed and promoted. This conservation legacy should also serve as an example worth emulating in other highland regions with a history of forest degradation.     

‘The challenges of living here and there’: conflicting narratives of intermarriage between Cameroonian migrants and South Africans in Johannesburg

The influx of Africans into South Africa poses several challenges to the new democratic government. Today, the new government preoccupies itself not only with finding sustainable solutions for pathologies such as poverty, crime, and social violence but also with formulating succinct laws to regularise and curb the increasing population of Africans in major cities like Johannesburg. These laws have complicated the acquisition of legal documents for foreign Africans to reside in the country permanently. This article examines the dynamics of intermarriage between Cameroonian migrants and locals in Johannesburg, as a strategy for permanent residency in South Africa. It seeks to understand these relationships through the viewpoints of the various actors and how they give meaning to Cameroonian experiences of displacement. It concentrates on the actors' discrepant interpretations and their implications for autochthony, belonging, and transnational identities, as well as for issues of social inclusion and exclusion in the new South Africa.     

Do new democracies deliver social welfare? Political regimes and health policy in Ghana and Cameroon

Democratic reform processes often go hand in hand with expectations of social welfare improvements. While the connection between the emergence of democracy and the development of welfare states in the West has been the object of several studies, however, there is a scant empirical literature on the effects of recent democratization processes on welfare policies in developing countries. This is particularly true for Africa. In a dramatically poor environment, Africans often anticipated that the democratic reforms many sub-Saharan states undertook during the early 1990s would deliver welfare dividends. This article investigates whether and how the advent of democracy affected social policies – focusing, in particular, on health policy – by examining one of the continent's most successful cases of recent democratization (Ghana) and comparing it with developments in a country of enduring authoritarian rule (Cameroon). Evidence shows that democracy can indeed be instrumental to the expansion and strengthening of social policies. In Ghana, new participatory and competitive pressures pushed the government towards devising and adopting an ambitious health reform. Despite façade elections, no similar pressures could be detected in undemocratic Cameroon and health policy remained almost entirely dictated by foreign donors.     

Colonial Existence,Home and Nationalism in the Narratives of British Cameroons’ Exiles in the United States

This article explores the personal meanings and public expressions of colonial existence, home and nationalism among exiles of British Cameroons from the standpoints of 11 biographies of British Southern Cameroons’ first-generation exiles living in the United States. Examining their narratives reveals why the exiles actively resist a public categorisation as being Cameroonians. This article provides a new type of research regarding British Cameroons’ exiles and their vision of the restoration of the statehood of British Cameroons, a former United Nations trust territory deserving its separate sovereignty and independence in accordance with the UN Trusteeship Agreement (1946) and UN Resolution 1514 of 1960 on the independence of colonial people. Significant about this study of the narratives of British Cameroons’ exiles is its focus on biography for portraying particular facets of nationalist resistance, including questions relating to the processes that surround the right to define the community one calls home.     

An Ethical Governance Perspective on Anti-Corruption Policies and Procedures: Agencies and Trust in Cameroon,Ghana, and Nigeria Evaluation

The purpose of this research is to state that ethical governance is important, because it concerns the right thoughts (values) and elements (mechanisms) needed for a successful anti-corruption crusade. Trust is strongly linked to performance; ethical governance can help in actualizing anti-corruption agencies’ expected or desired performance. The subjects of the comparative research are the anti-corruption agencies of Cameroon, Ghana, and Nigeria. A qualitative analysis of documents and interviews and a triangulation approach are used in arriving at research results, because policies and procedures are studied through anti-corruption agencies documents and public trust is investigated through expert interview. Ghana represents the strong case and best practices, because it has anti-corruption policies and procedures that agree more with ethical governance, followed by Nigeria, which is the moderate case, before Cameroon, which is the weak case. “Independence” as an ethical mechanism occupies the strongest position to achieving result in anti-corruption related crusade.     

Undermining cooperation: donor-patrons and the failure of political conditionality

This study extends the debate concerning the feasibility of using foreign assistance to leverage political reforms in developing countries. This research combines both quantitative and qualitative methodologies in an effort to expand on the work done by previous scholars. Conclusions of the empirical analysis point to the finding that political conditionality is most effective when close cooperation exists between donors. This coordination, however, is frequently sabotaged by self-interested donor-patrons, illustrated by the case of Cameroon and France. This pattern is generalizable and significantly undermines the overall success rate of a political conditionality approach.     

L’exil et la négociation du manque dans trois romans de Calixthe Beyala

This article takes as its theme the literature of sub-Saharan Africa, and in particular the prolific work of the Cameroonian author Calixthe Beyala, who, since 1987, has published numerous novels in exile. Calixthe Beyala is among those expatriate writers for whom exile, far from being synonymous with banishment, on the contrary represents true salvation. The article examines how Calixthe Beyala speaks of expatriation in three of her novels: Tu t’appelleras Tanga (Your name shall be Tanga) (1988), Les honneurs perdus (1996) and Comment cuisiner son mari à l’africaine (2000). Belonging to three successive decades, these works relate specifically to the theme of exile and plunge to the heart of Cameroon and to the Cameroonian diaspora in Paris, shedding light on the grieving process linked to the loss of one’s own geographic space, and to the loss of self.     

Cultural associations,clothing and food as markers of cultural identity in testimonies of Cameroonian forced migrants in Johannesburg

Abstract

The article examines the construction of cultural identity and the expression of cultural exclusivity in the testimonies of Cameroonian forced migrants in the metropolitan city of Johannesburg. It also explores the way the social conditions of Cameroonians have forged a process of culture integration as a survival mechanism, subverting their impassioned attachment to cultural roots and claims of cultural exclusivity. Here, the article addresses three mediums for the formation of cultural identity, namely cultural associations, clothing and traditional cuisine and one main signifier of integration – intermarriage. It draws on the premise that because of the discrepant political ideologies of Cameroonians in Johannesburg, the construction of identity within this community of migrants has tended to fracture along cultural lines. It also draws on the theoretical underpinning that the upsurge in global migration has increased the chances of culture hybridization.