Chede Cameroon
context?
raise food and agricultural productivity, process, and market their
production, originates from “the agric project” which was founded in
1986 by local stakeholders to serve as an institutional and
technological pilot for agricultural and community development in
Muambong, an agrarian village community in Kupe Muanenguba division of
Anglophone South West region of Cameroon (map attached). The project
aimed to mitigate the financial losses and hardships suffered by village
farmers as a result of the African and Cameroonian commodity and
economic crises of the 1980s and 1990s and the attendant structural
adjustment programmes administered by the world bank, international
monetary fund, and major bilateral development partners – especially USA
and EU countries.
which group over 10’000 individual smallholders, consist of:
2.1 – technical capacity building, including agronomic principles of
soil conservation, plant protection against pests and epidemics, seed
science and technology, crop production, application of farm inputs,
mechanized solutions where appropriate, etc.; and
2.2 – institutional capacity building, including, for our primary coops,
issues of cooperative governance and management consistent with the
national cooperative law and the requirement for regular general
assembly and board meetings and proper documentation, share capital
issues, cost and financial accounting guidelines; and for individual
farmers, issues of transition from subsistence farming to commercial,
contract-based production, managing a farm as a business enterprise with
strategic and operating plans and budgets, accounting and audit systems
to reduce risks of failure and enhance transparency and predictability
of farm operations, etc.
Cameroon?
the challenges are many – as summarized in attached articles – “is the
African farmer an endangered species?” and ” Cameroon coffee sector:
value chain or broken chain”. for chide in particular we need strategic
business partners willing to invest with us at production and food
manufacturing/industry levels, and also facilitate profitable market
openings for our products. we need expertise and partnerships at these
three levels – agronomic, food processing and packaging, and
distribution, as well as exports to the regional and global levels
What are the benefits of establishing a network among farmers?
this exists already through Chede Cooperative Union which is a federal
or umbrella farmer organization at the service of over 10 village-based
farmer cooperatives with an aggregate membership of over 10’000
smallholders and more still signing up.
Do you cooperate with local authorities and institutions? if yes,
how?
of course we do since we serve as the field operating arm of the
Cameroon ministry of agriculture and rural development (minader), but
our cooperation is hobbled by institutional bottlenecks caused mostly by
the excessive centralization of government programmes and extension
services targeted to village farmers, whereas Chede’s strategic focus is
on village-oriented or village-sensitive development approaches that
place the village farmer at the front and centre of national
agricultural development strategies, which may be the case on paper but
not in the actual implementation of such strategies. that’s the problem
in Cameroon and many other African countries because of limited
institutional space for local self-governments and community
empowerment.
(initially 500 tonnes per annum rising to 1000 tonnes over the next five
years) and cocoa beans (1000 tonnes initially rising to 2000 tonnes over
five years) with the option of local processing or value addition prior
to exports.
We have other major projects in the pipeline with some European
partners, especially the production and dissemination of improved seeds
of food crops; and cassava value chain development from production to
processing, packaging and marketing. other partners would be most
welcome.
The benefits of networking village smallholders within a federal
cooperative farmer organization like Chede are multiple, including the
following:
1. aggregating and multiplying individual farmer capacities in several
critical areas such as bargaining with government for provision of
normative public goods and services – especially rural infrastructure
including transport and communication systems – now mostly concentrated
in urban and industrial economic centres, negotiating for government
subsidies, or for improved quality and efficiency of national
agricultural extension services and research outputs;
2. bargaining with banks for farm credits at affordable and reasonable
interest rates and payment conditions for village smallholders;
3. bargaining with insurance companies for special policies tailored to
village smallholders and their farming environment increasingly stressed
by climate-change events, risks and other uncertainties;
4. negotiating with supplier companies for bulk acquisition of farm
inputs, especially fertilizer;
5. undertaking systematic and large-scale pro-farmer advocacy
activities, including publications and conferences, use of the mass
media to advertise the crucial role of the village farmer in our
nation-building process, or farmer produce promotional activities such
as trade fairs and product exhibitions, which are all activities beyond
the institutional and financial capacities of individual village
farmers;
6. identifying and formulating comprehensive and integrated projects,
especially infrastructure, production, marketing, or quality
certification projects, which target the needs of all or most
smallholders of a given community, and where individual farmers very
often lack state-of-the-art expertise needed to develop such projects on
their own;
7. uniting village farmers under a single brand name such as Chede
provides the additional advantage of easy brand marketing and
recognition locally and globally, which helps with marketing, sales, and
revenues for all farmers concerned.