Agri-Business Development in Cameroon: Colonial Legacies and Recent Tensions

Abstract

Although Cameroon was not a prime target in the modern-day scramble for Africa, the Central African country has been a site of intense land-related tensions in the past decade. According to data from the Land Matrix, 2,771,406 hectares were subjected to land deals since the year 2000. By late 2019, 44 deals were registered as ‘concluded,’ covering 2,065,998 hectares of the area under negotiation. The main drivers are timber, biofuel crops, food products, and precious minerals. This chapter focuses on agro-industrial projects and provides a review of recent trends in land acquisitions that is grounded in critical development studies. Based on a mixed-methods approach combining an analysis of Land Matrix data and the study of legal frameworks with field work data, it aligns trends in land acquisitions with domestic politics and regulatory changes in the Republic of Cameroon. The chapter advances three key insights. First, the land rush in Cameroon was not a sudden phenomenon, and it emerged prior to the commodity price hike of the late 2000s. Second, conflictual land relations are the result of ineffective regulatory frameworks. Third, domestic actors, rather than foreign corporations, are of central importance for determining the outcomes of land-related long-term investments in sub-Saharan Africa.