Recent developments and background of the PRSP
Despite important gains during the second half of the 1990s, nearly 4 out of every 10 Cameroonians in 2001 were living with an annual income that was less than CFAF 232,547 (roughly equivalent to US$1 per person, per day, or FCFA 19,000 per month), the amount needed by an individual in Yaoundé to buy the “minimal basket” of essential food and non-food items, including health, education and housing expenditures. Overall, indicators of human development have considerably deteriorated during the crisis years, particularly in education and health; and recent economic improvements have not yet been sufficient and sustained enough to fully remedy the situation, even if the incidence of poverty has begun to regress. In education, access to primary school rose to 95% in 2001, partly due to government decision to eliminate public school fees. However, primary school completion rate has remained low (56%), indicating that only one out of two children entering primary school manages to successfully complete the cycle because of high rates of repetition (25%) and drop-out. Also, 60% of students who complete primary school make a successful transition to secondary education. These weak completion and retention rates are indicative of underlying structural problems and they have considerable social and economic costs that are rising with rapid population growth. Furthermore, the general health of the Cameroonian population has deteriorated considerably since the early 1990s. Especially, child mortality rate increased by 12 points between 1991 and 1998, chronic malnutrition rate for children 12 to 23 months also rose from 23% to 29%, and the rate of delivery attended by qualified practitioners (doctors or nurses) declined by 5 percent during the same period. Moreover, between 1991 and 2002, the rate of HIV/AIDS infection within the sexually active population (people between the ages of 15 and 49) climbed alarmingly from 2% to 11.8%. At the same time, essential infrastructures have considerably deteriorated with the crisis, implying inadequate supply of roads services, electricity and drinking water, far below the needs of the population and the exigencies of sustained economic growth. Those problems have become more acute with the rapid growth (5%) of urban population in Cameroon. Furthermore, Cameroon’s population is relatively young (42% is less than 14 years and 72% less than 30 years old) and the young population is heavily concentrated in urban areas. While this may constitute an asset for the economy, it adds considerable pressure on social services, infrastructure and the labor market. Without an adequate and sustained attention by the Government, these developments may transform major urban centers into poverty and insecurity-breading grounds, eroding Cameroon’s social capital and undermining the very competitive assets it needs to fully integrate the global economy. The Government of Cameroon (GOC) is well aware of this situation and determined to mobilize the living strength of the country in support of an ambitious but realistic strategy for braod-based human development in Cameroon. To this end, the GOC has prepared a new generation of economic and social reforms, which aim to consolidate the achievements of previous programs and stimulate economic growth while also shoring up the social sector in order to ensure that the enhanced economic growth also translates into real improvements in the living conditions of the population, especially the poor. In August 2000, the GOC took an important step in this direction by preparing an Interim Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (I-PRSP). Implementation of the I-PRSP was accompanied by a series of specific strategy documents focusing on priority sectors such as education, health and the rural sector as well as essential infrastructures (roads, water); and preparation of a social development strategy document is also underway. The full PRSP completed in 2003 represents a culminating point in this process. The characteristics and main functionalities of the PRSP
The GOC has used the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) as a framework for blending a new generation of economic and social policies into a coherent set for accelerating growth and fighting poverty in a sustainable fashion. The PRSP is an evolving document that will be fine-tuned as new sector strategies are being prepared and implemented. The Government intends to strengthen the PRSP’s characteristics and functionality in future versions. Cameroon authorities consider the PRSP to be altogether: - An integrated development framework for Cameroon, articulated around macro-economic and sector strategies aiming at accelerating growth, reducing poverty and helping Cameroon achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDG).
- A consultation mechanism bringing together civil society and development partners, to discuss major directions in economic and social policies as well as in development strategy management;
- A framework for coordinating government programs and donors assistance strategies, including setting priorities, efficiently coordinating Government’s actions and mobilizing internal and external resources towards achieving Cameroon’s sustainable human development objectives.
- A medium-term consistency framework for setting budgetary priorities and allocating resources accordingly, while ensuring consistency between resources derived from economic growth or external assistance and the short and medium-term financing requirements for priority sector programs.
- A framework for defining and organizing important analytical work programs for guiding development management, including statistical works for monitoring the PRS and economic modeling work for preparing medium-term macro-economic and sector frameworks and performing poverty and social impact analyses.
Poverty in Cameroon
In preparation for an effective poverty reduction strategy, Cameroon’s Government commissioned analytical work to assess poverty and identify its characteristics and determinants. First, in-depth quantitative analyses have used the results of two major household surveys (ECAM I, 1996, and ECAM II, 2001). The analysis was complemented by a qualitative evaluation of poverty and its determinants, based on participatory consultation with the population across the country. The quantitative analysis shows that: (i) the incidence of income poverty in Cameroon is still high, affecting 40.2% of the population in 2001, which constitutes a 13.1% improvement over the 1996 level of 53%; (ii) poverty in Cameroon varies according to region, roughly increasing two-folds between urban areas (22%) and rural areas (50%); (iii) the poverty rate is higher for farmers (57%) and informal rural sector operators (54%), as well as for informal sector workers or the unemployed in urban areas (40%). The analysis also highlights the importance of education and infrastructure services in explaining poverty. It shows that one out of two poor persons lives in a household where the main income provider does not have a primary education, and that access to basic social services (education, health, water, road) is more difficult for the poor than for the non-poor. An analysis of poverty dynamics indicates that growth has contributed 11.8 points out of the 13 points decline in poverty incidence between 1996 and 2001 and redistribution by less than 2 points. Finally, a quantitative analysis of the determinants of poverty confirms the importance of such factors as the agro-economic region, sector of economic activity, education level, availability and access to infrastructure services in the dynamics of poverty in Cameroon. The main conclusions of the quantitative analysis are supported by findings from the participatory consultation with the population, which was organized by the authorities. In particular, this qualitative approach reveals that Cameroon’s population perceives poverty as primarily a condition of material deprivation characterized by: (i) insufficient resources for meeting essential needs; (ii) difficult or lack of access to basic infrastructure services such as water, roads, electricity, and to social services such as health and education. The population also perceives poverty as the results of social disarticulation including moral deprivations, loss of self-esteem, loosening family ties and weakening sense of family solidarity, as well as widespread ethnic biases and social discrimination. Finally, the population also associates poverty with insecurity, lack of protection against abuses and lack of basic rights and of access to essential legal services. The participatory consultations have also helped the authorities to collect valuable recommendations from the population concerning key strategic areas and priority actions for the poverty reduction strategy. In particular, the Cameroonian populations have stressed the importance of public actions designed to improve their own capacity to generate economic activities and “to take their development in their own hands”, including government support to the rural sector and facilitation of the insertion of the poor and the young into the economy through well-targeted actions. They also emphasize the need to improve access to water, particularly in the Northern region of the country, to develop roads in order to integrate all regions and the poor into mainstream economic activities, including production and trade. They have recommended that Government gives more attention and devote adequate resources towards improving education and combating contagious diseases, particularly the HIV/AIDS pandemics and Malaria, which account for most of Cameroon’s morbidity and mortality. The Key Strategic Areas of the PRS
The main conclusions of the previous analyses have helped the GOC to identify seven medium-term strategic focus-areas for poverty attacking poverty, in line with Cameroon’s key development objectives: Priority 1: promoting a stable macro-economic framework;
Priority 2: strengthening growth by diversifying the economy;
Priority 3: revitalizing the private sector as the main engine of growth and a partner in delivering social services;
Priority 4: developing basic infrastructures, natural resources while protecting the environment;
Priority 5: accelerating regional integration in the framework of CEMAC;
Priority 6: strengthening human resources, the social sector, and facilitating the integration of vulnerable groups into the economy;
Priority 7: improving the institutional framework, administrative management and governance. Cameroon and the Millennium Development Goals 
The red lines show the most recent achievement while the black lines show the linear process in order to achieve the indicated goal. A part from population having access to improved water sources and poverty trend that respectively grows and decreases at a rate greater than the rate that would help the country achieving the corresponding goal, Cameroon is very unlikely to achieve the other Millennium Development Goals. Its gender enrollment gap is still wide; the proportion of married women using contraception is increasing but at a lower rate, outlining the danger of increasing HIV/AIDS prevalence and other diseases; Under-5 mortality rate, is going up, representing a contra-cyclic trend relative to the millennium development goal. Births attended by skilled personnel are very likely to keep the past trend. Downloads |
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