BY Dr Michael Njume Ebong
Dr Michael Njume Ebong
- Managerial System
Sector performance: Cocoa and coffee production in Cameroon exhibits somewhat contrasting trends for the two crops. Cocoa production has just about held the line for the past seven decades, increasing from 75’000 metric tonnes (MT) (or 6.5 % of global output) in 1961 to 275’000 MT (6.8%) in 2017. Coffee production on the other hand increased initially from 45’000 MT (2% of global output) in 1961 to 110’000 MT (1.8%) in 1990 and then slumped to 30’000 MT in 2017, less than in 1961. Overall, these figures fall significantly below what could have been possible in a galvanizing policy and managerial context. Although Cameroon was the 5th largest cocoa producer in 2017, it nonetheless ranked 24th in terms of cocoa farm productivity, barely exceeding 400kg per hectare, as illustrated in figure 1. The implication is that cocoa production increases achieved over the years came from lateral crop extensions rather than from yield and other quality improvements. Furthermore, compared with other producer countries, Cameroon increased its cocoa production by 3.5 times between 1961 and 2017 while Côte d’Ivoire for example increased its output by 18 times; yet at independence in 1960 both countries were basically at the same starting block in terms of production volumes. A similar comparison regarding coffee production could be made with Vietnam, which produced less coffee in the 1960s than Cameroon, but has impressively raised its output over the years to attain upwards of 2 million MT in 2017 at a time Cameroon’s coffee economy is all but disappearing. Here too coffee farm productivity and other quality challenges can be identified, as shown in figure 2 on average Robusta coffee production costs. Crop yield or productivity rate is a crucial indicator of agricultural performance since higher yields translate into higher incomes for producers and their improved living standards. As such Cameroon’s very low cocoa and coffee crop yields for several decades provide ample evidence of the fact that all is not well with the sector. Among the several possible causes for this situation we single out the complex, fragmentary and unproductive institutional arrangements governing the sector.
Institutional machinery between the state and the cocoa-coffee farmer: Although the cocoa-coffee sector is also a casualty of the broader challenges facing Cameroon’s agriculture and rural development in general, it does have its specific caseload of problems, such as its institutional complexity and overlaps, which in 2016 were the subject of reform proposals instigated by the Prime Minister at the level of Government; but the PM’s decree to streamline the sector’s current institutional architecture and managerial system is still awaited. Root-and-branch reform is indeed urgent because in 2016 this author identified close to 30 bodies, programmes and projects concerned directly or indirectly with the development of the cocoa-coffee sector and operating under MINADER; MINCOMMERCE; MINEPAT; MINRESI; IRAD, and including the better known entities such as ONCC; CICC; SODECAO; FODECC; PA3C; PACICC; PALAF2C; PAUEF2C; PRSSE; PPDR; PPDMVCC; PAGQ2C; PRSC; SIF; PRDFCC/Pppp; etc.
Figure 2: Average production costs for Robusta coffee: 1996-2001 (US cents/1b)
As can be seen, this institutional machinery between the state and the cocoa-coffee farmer lacks a coherent programmatic direction. Its institutional cost overload is obviously wasteful of the resources that could make a life-and-death difference in the villages for the cocoa-coffee farmers and their households since a good part of the resources the system is supposed to transfer to the cocoa-coffee farmer is absorbed in staff and support costs, overheads, and other undocumented costs. Significant cost savings could be achieved if MINADER’s Divisional Delegations in cocoa-coffee production basins, which are in more direct contact with cocoa-coffee farmers and their groups, could be remodeled and entrusted with the core tasks performed by the projects concerned with the sector and whose operations are currently highly centralized in far-away Yaoundé and Douala or if, at the very least, the many projects shared the same premises and facilities; a single permanent national coordination unit (that does not have to be re-established at the onset of each new project); the same support secretariat and translation service; a common management and operations manual; a common vehicle fleet; the same support personnel, etc. Of course, such squandering of project resources is not limited to the cocoa-coffee sector. Sadly enough, some multilateral and bilateral donors do not set a good example by preferring to establish and finance separate projects (e.g. PARI, PADFA, PADMIR, PNDRT, PACA, ACEFA, PIDMA, etc) instead of working together as a consortium with a shared strategic development goal and a single operational structure to implement that goal within an agreed timeline. The cocoa-coffee sector’s disappointing record to date suggests that its managerial system is mostly to blame for failure to serve the cocoa-coffee farmer as it should under ideal conditions of clinical efficiency and effectiveness. Further still, this system is financed essentially from levies on downstream cocoa and coffee value-chain participants, who transfer those charges upstream to the farmer in the farm-gate price ultimately paid to him. Without the cocoa and coffee produced by the farmer the system would not exist. It therefore costs a lot of money for the farmer to maintain, at least while the sector remains stuck in the doldrums, as has been the case for decades. So if it could be pruned and streamlined through re-engineered cost-efficiency reforms, the resources thus released could be used to raise the farm-gate prices paid to cocoa and coffee farmers, thereby motivating them to higher levels of productivity and production. Yet another issue is that the system lacks accountability to the farmer for the use of his resources and for demonstrable field accomplishments (e.g. constantly expanding cocoa and coffee production volumes), which ought to justify the system’s continued existence and costs. It is not the results-based rewards and sanctions system it ought to be. For example, the fact that the Cameroon coffee sector development strategy adopted in 2010 widely missed all its coffee production targets by 2015 would have justified a shakeup of the government services in charge of strategy implementation; but that did not happen, and business continued as usual. Also worthy of note is the fact that the identification and design of projects purporting to support the cocoa-coffee sector are almost always top-down bureaucratic initiatives hardly ever involving the vigorous participation of farmers and farmer organizations expected to benefit. Bottom-up, fully participatory initiatives are rare and far between.
Limited flow of science and technology to the farm level: Cocoa-coffee farm yields have remained low because very limited science and technology packages (especially improved seedlings and modern agronomic practices) are reaching the farmers. The main reason for this anomaly is that the managerial system under review is not, in fact, an agricultural extension system. Rather, it is almost entirely a vast and top-heavy administrative apparatus that is not tooled and structured to function like a conveyor belt continually transmitting resources and improved agronomic technologies to cocoa-coffee farmers. For example, very few public or private permanent farmer training centres as well as community farm radio stations exist to disseminate new knowledge and skills in local languages. The system’s interactions with the farmers are mostly sporadic, limited to project opportunities and horizons and to the performance of numerous and highly formalistic administrative tasks which are cumbersome if not intimidating to barely literate farmers bred in a village environment of oral and informal traditions. Worthy of special mention in this rather stagnant sector landscape is CICC’s “New Generation” initiative which aims to create new orchards and to attract the youth to the cocoa-coffee farming profession; it has developed technology transfer schemes to that end. But the jury is still out on the programme’s long-term impact within the sector. In the meantime, what the sector sorely and urgently needs are bold cost-efficiency reforms that justify the system’s continued existence and enormous cost to the farmer and to the state.