Crisis and neoliberal reforms in Africa : civil society and agro-industry in anglophone Cameroon's plantation economy

This book discusses the consequences of the economic and financial crisis that befell the Cameroonian agro-industrial sector in the 1980s, using as a case study the plantation economy of the anglophone region of Cameroon. Two agro-industrial enterprises have dominated the plantation sector: a huge parastatal enterprise, the Cameroon Development Corporation (CDC), and a private company, Plantations Pamol du Cameroun Ltd, a subsidiary of Unilever. The crisis of the 1980s brought both companies to the verge of collapse and led to a number of neoliberal economic reforms, including the withdrawal of State intervention and the restructuring, liquidation and privatization of the agro-industrial enterprises. These reforms in turn had severe consequences for several civil society groups that had a direct stake in the plantation economy, notably the regional elite, chiefs, plantation workers and their unions, and contract farmers. The study shows that these groups have never resigned themselves to their fate but have been actively involved in a variety of formal and informal methods of resistance. [ASC Leiden abstract]