Best 2 Strategies to Eradicate the poverty situation in Cameroon? What is poverty? Cameroon is one of the West African countries that make part of the region. In this article I bring you an article that is written by a famous project on poverty in the continent and written by Joseph Dover
Poverty situation in the country
As poverty rates across the globe continue to fall, urban centers continue to grow and people increasingly have access to education, Cameroon seems to be slipping in the wrong direction. Rural poverty, inadequate infrastructure and a struggling school system continue to hinder the lives of people across Cameroon, contributing to a rising poverty rate in the last 10 years.
Cameroon is a country of more than 23 million people. Out of the entire population, 24 percent of people live in poverty, and 55 percent of those in poverty live in rural communities.
The poverty situation in Cameroon
Two causes of poverty in Cameroon and reasons for the gap between rural and urban poverty are a lack of infrastructure and an education system that fails to develop alongside shifting labor needs.
As the IMF noted in a 2014 survey, “the country’s infrastructure indicators trail those of regional peers. In spite of a slight improvement in the overall quality of infrastructure in 2013, indicators are low by sub-Saharan African standards, especially for roads, air transportation and electricity.”
This lack of infrastructure, which limits transportation, cuts off those who live in rural areas. Rural citizens do not have access to fundamental resources and are marooned from diversified labor opportunities.
Furthermore, the education system has failed to develop alongside market demands. As the World Bank found, “the country’s tertiary education continues to focus on traditional academic disciplines and is not positioned to respond to economic transformation.”
In Cameroon, 43 percent of the population has little or no formal and primary education. What’s more, 67 percent of the population that is of working-age has received no further training in developing job sectors, leading to a significantly higher level of unemployment among youth–especially those living in rural areas. The rural people in Cameroon and Africa in general need to be assisted so that they move out of poverty.
This double-edged sword hits residents in the countryside. They have higher odds of living in poverty because of struggling infrastructure and inadequate educational opportunities. The country must address these issues to combat the causes of poverty and increasing poverty rates. Education as many prominent leaders in the world have said, is a tool that could liberate people from poverty and see they graduate from poverty. Poverty is a bad thing that nobody should live in poverty. The world has enough resources to see everybody live a happy life. Infrastructures could easily be constructed in the country because the country has enough resources to prosper.
Indeed, steps are being taken. People are across the country are calling for performance-based financing for educational institutions to drive up competitiveness and quality of studies. Also, many organizations, including Heifer International, an organization that works to end global hunger and poverty, are working to increase jobs in rural areas. Regarding infrastructure, Cameroon recently launched a 10-year development plan focused on massive public investment in infrastructure, including roads.
By understanding the roles of infrastructure and education in the causes of poverty in Cameroon, the country may be able to improve living conditions for its impoverished people. In life there is no permanent situation except change. It is only change that is permanent. And therefore, in that sense the people of Cameroon should have a big heart and move on as they have the power of changing the fate of their country and see it up to the standards they wish to see their dear country attaining.
