Rice Politics in Cameroon: State Commitment, Capability, and Urban Bias

Rice Politics in Cameroon: State Commitment, Capability, and Urban BiasAuthor(s): Nicolas van de WalleSource: The Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 27, No. 4 (Dec., 1989), pp. 579-599Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/161110 .

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The Journal of Modern African Studies, 27, 4 (1989), pp- 579-599

Rice Politics in Cameroon: State Commitment, Capability, and

Urban Bias

by NICOLAS VAN DE WALLE*

IT has become the common wisdom among students of sub-Saharan Africa since the publication of the so-called Berg Report that the poor performance of agriculture in the continent is a result of the economic policies pursued by most governments.1 Their intervention in the economy, according to several authors, has systematically favoured those living in the towns and cities at the expense of the vast majority in the rural areas.2 Urban bias is allegedly the consequence of the inability of the state to resist pressure from urban constituencies. Robert Bates, in particular, has been influential in disseminating the view that these policies are chosen because they have a political rationality, even if they are economically irrational.3 His central contention has been that state allocations in Africa have favoured urban at the expense of rural constituencies because the former are able to exert more influence on decision-makers.

* Assistant Professor of Political Science, Michigan State University, East Lansing. Support from the Ford Foundation and the Princeton University Center of International Affairs is gratefully acknowledged.

1 See the World Bank, Accelerated Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: an agenda for action (Washington, D.C., I981), commonly named after Elliot Berg, the co-ordinator of the African strategy review group.

2 Among a vast literature, see Robert Bates, Markets and States in Tropical Africa: the political basis of agricultural policies (Berkeley, 1981); Michael F. Lofchie and Stephen K. Commins, 'Food Deficits and Agricultural Policies in Tropical Africa', in The Journal of Modern African Studies (Cambridge), 20, i, March 1981, pp. I-25; Carl K. Eicher and Doyle C. Baker, Research on Agricultural Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: a critical survey (East Lansing, I982); Richard Sandbrook, 'The State and Economic Stagnation in Tropical Africa', in World Development (Oxford), I4, 3, I986, pp. 319-32; and Henry S. Bienen, 'Domestic Political Considerations for Food Policy', in John W. Mellor, Christopher L. Delgado, and Malcolm J. Blackie (eds.), Accelerating Food Production in Sub-Saharan Africa (Baltimore and London, 1987), pp. 296-308. Individual country-studies with this argument include, Uma Lele, 'Tanzania: Phoenix or Icarus?', in Arnold C. Harberger (ed.), World Economic Growth: case studies of developed and developing nations (San Francisco, 1984), pp. I59-95; John Waterbury and Mark Gersovitz (eds.), The Political Economy of Risk and Choice in Senegal (London, 1987); and Jeffrey Herbst, 'Societal Demands and Government Choice: agricultural producer price policy in Zimbabwe', in Comparative Politics (New York), 20, 3, I988, pp. 265-88.

3 See Bates, Markets and States in Tropical Africa, and Robert H. Bates, Essays on the Political Economy of Rural Africa (Cambridge, I983).

23-2



580 NICOLAS VAN DE WALLE

Some authors have criticised the work of Bates, particularly his use of public-choice methodology, but have accepted his argument that

policies inimical to agriculture and rural producers result largely from societal pressures on state elites.4 Well-organised unions; associations, and other interest-groups pressure governments into adopting economic policies that will benefit them. In effect, policy outcomes are

explained by the prevalence in sub-Saharan Africa of'strong societies and weak states'.5 While there is some evidence to back up this society- centred view of the policy-making process, this article will argue that factors within the state itself account for many of the outcomes observed.

That the African state is weak is beyond dispute, by almost any definition of the term, and results from a low resource base and weak levels of managerial competence and institutionalisation.6 The state is

highly fragmented, composed of divergent interests and permeated by patrimonial networks that link its top echelons with the most isolated

villages.7 At the same time, however, policy-making processes in the state apparatus are relatively impermeable to pressures from economic and functional interest-groups. The paradox is only apparent; for

though the state is weak and its capacity to implement desired policies severely limited, its monopoly on coercive power and the absence of

significant independent non-state institutions grant it much autonomy. This article will rely on a careful case-study of the rice sub-sector

in Cameroon, and recent attempts by the Government to bring about its reform, to suggest that urban bias is a poor explanatory framework for many allocation decisions in Africa because it accords the state a control over markets and producers that it may not possess at all. Many policy outcomes do not result from organised societal pressures on

decision-makers, and can be better understood by focusing on such issues as low state planning and implementation capacity, corruption, intra-state competition, and the ideological beliefs of lites. In addition, it will be argued that the impact of international donors on policy formation has been underestimated in the literature. A more useful

approach to understanding policy outcomes in Africa is often to focus

4 See, for example, Herbst, loc. cit., and Naomi Chazan, Robert Mortimer, John Ravenhill, and Donald Rothchild, Politics and Society in Contemporary Africa (Boulder and London, I988).

5 Joel S. Migdal, Strong Societies and Weak States (Princeton, 1988). 6 Among a burgeoning literature, see Donald Rothchild and Naomi Chazan (eds.), The

Precarious Balance: state and society in Africa (Boulder and London, 1988); Zaki Ergas (ed.), The African State in Transition (Basingstoke and London, 1987); and Jean-Francois, Bayart, L'Etat en Afrique: la politique du ventre (Paris, I989).

7 On patrimonialism, see Rene Lemarchand, 'The State, the Parallel Economy, and the Changing Structure of Patronage Systems', in Rothchild and Chazan (eds.), op. cit. and Bayart, op. cit. pp. 99-I113 and passim.



RICE POLITICS IN CAMEROON

on the state apparatus rather than on such socio-economic aggregates and dichotomous categories as regionalism, ethnic conflict, class, or

capital/labour, rural/urban, agriculture/industry, and so on. Of course, the ability of elites to disregard societal pressures will vary

across countries and issues, depending on the strength and resources of each state, as well as on the presence of organised interest groups, but it will never be totally absent. The degree of state autonomy is not

fixed, but rather the evolving outcome of a dialectical process that involves state-formation efforts and the ability of individual interests to

aggregate. It is hypothesised below, for example, that the turbulence that followed independence, and the highly repressive policies that characterised the consolidation of the regime headed by President Ahmadou Ahidjo, weakened non-state institutions and today provides Cameroon with more freedom from societal pressures than most African states.

As elsewhere in West Africa, Cameroon has promoted the objective of food self-sufficiently inter alia through large-scale investments in

economically inefficient schemes of irrigation, while at the same time

allowing a rapid growth in consumer demand for cheaper imported rice.8 On a superficial level, the evolution of this sub-sector seems to conform to urban bias with a 'cheap rice' policy that hurts rural

producers while designed to placate those who live in the towns and cities. A close analysis reveals a more complex situation, however, in which governmental interventions have actually sought to favour the

growers, albeit ineffectually and inconsistently. Indeed, Cameroon's

policy has been shaped less by fear of urban and rural interest groups than by an often inconsistent mixture of rent-seeking, technocratic

ideologies regarding the modernisation of agriculture, and a widely shared ambition to achieve food self-sufficiency.

THE EVOLUTION OF THE RICE SUB-SECTOR AND THE NEED

FOR REFORM

I. The Development of Domestic Production

The sustained drought of the early i97os spurred the Government into ending the benign neglect that had characterised its attitudes towards the food sector since independence.9 The interventionist

8 The similarity between this situation and that prevailing in other countries in West Africa is underscored by Claude Freud, Quelle cooperation? Un Bilan de I'aide au developpement (Paris, 1988), pp. I25-50, and by Scott R. Pearson et al., Rice in West Africa: policy and economics (Stanford, I98I). 9 For an exhaustive discussion of food politics in the colonial period and the early years after independence, see Jane I. Guyer, 'The Food Economy and French Colonial Rule in Central

58I



NICOLAS VAN DE WALLE

programmes and policies that emerged for food production and

consumption reflected the confident ideology of the technocrats

directing agricultural policy with the assistance of foreign donors. As elsewhere in Africa, direct state intervention was promoted explicitly to make up for the lacunae of the private sector and to galvanise traditional producers, as well as to provide the state with much needed revenue. 10

Policy emphasised domestic production in part because the Govern- ment largely equated food security with self-sufficiency, and indeed continues to do so.1 One of the centre-pieces of the Government's

strategy came to be represented by the Societe d'expansion et de modernisation de la riziculture de Yagoua (Semry), a capital-intensive irrigated-rice scheme in the arid Far-North Province that was meant to

spearhead the ambitious plans ofAhidjo's 'green revolution' campaign to achieve food self-sufficiency and eventually export to neighbouring countries.12 It was believed that Semry would in time become an

important source of revenue and foreign exchange. Largely forgotten since independence,l3 Semry received some 30,000

million C.F.A. in investments between I97I and 1986, as a succession of projects were funded by French, World Bank, and E.E.C. aid

agencies.14 Their ambitious size and technological sophistication in such a backward region of the country - involving the building of a 50-

Cameroun', in Journal of African History (Cambridge), 19, 4, I978, pp. 577-97, and 'The Provident Societies in the Rural Economy of Yaounde, I945-1960', Boston University, African Studies Series, Working Paper No. 37, I980. The Government's change in attitude as regards food policy is well described by Jane I. Guyer (ed.), Feeding African Cities: studies in regional social history (Manchester, I987).

10 See Keith Hart, The Political Economy of West African Agriculture (Cambridge, 1982). 11 Republic of Cameroon, 6th Five Year Plan: I986-i99g (Yaound6, I986); Ministry of

Agriculture, Bilan diagnostic du secteur agricole de 1960 a I980 (Yaounde, March 1980), and Plan alimentaire a long terme (Yaounde, February 1981); and Ministry of Planning, Enquete budget- consommation aupres des menages (Yaounde, September 1987).

12 For an account of Ahidjo's 'green revolution' campaign and its impact on agricultural policy, see Mark W. Delancey, 'Cameroon National Food Policies and Organizations: the green revolution and structural proliferation', in Journal of African Studies (Los Angeles), 7, 2, Summer 1980, pp. I09-22.

13 The Secteur expdrimentale et de modernisation de la riziculture de ragou was started by the French colonial authorities in I954, in order to cultivate rice on some 6,ooo hectares on the banks of the

Logone river. For Semry's early history, see Marcel Roupsard, Nord Cameroun: ouverture et developpement (Paris, 1987), pp. 261-74. It was reorganised in 1971 as a parastatal under the aegis of the Ministry of Agriculture, but kept its old acronym despite the change in titles.

14 The evolution of Semry since I97I is well described in Republique francaise, Ministere des affaires etrangeres et de la cooperation au developpement, Evaluation socio-economique du projet SEMR au Cameroon (Paris, 1983) and Roupsard, op. cit. pp. 275-305. Other rice projects include Soderim in the West Province and the U.N.V.D.A. project in North-West Province. They have known the same kinds of difficulties as Semry, but have had only a marginal impact on overall levels of production.

582



583 RICE POLITICS IN CAMEROON

TABLE I

Semry Rice Production, 1954-87a

Production Semry Purchases

Area Paddy Yield Year (Hectares) (Tons) (T/Ha) Tons %

I954-5 1,900 2,100 II 1,200 57

1964-5 4,900 4,700 0'9 2,500 53

1970-I 5,923 - 5,409 I97I-2 5,325 5,I43 1972-3 5,769 2,348 I973-4 6,303 5,427 I974-5 6,253 13,222 2'II 11,296 85

I975-6 6,262 23,391 3'73 20,140 86

I976-7 6,107 26,706 437 18,074 68 I977-8 6,033 26,002 4'31 I8,865 73 I978-9 7,o82 34,II6 4'82 26,757 78 1979-80 4,504 21,171 4'70 12,107 57 1980-I 7,795 35,473 4'55 28,218 8o

1981-2 10,230 52,888 5'I7 36,923 70 1982-3 I3,706 74,026 5'40 61,152 83 I983-4 14,740 80,240 5'44 61,6 1 77 I984-5 16,470 78,897 4'79 41,657 53 1985-6 20,352 102,905 5'o6 89,566 87 1986-7 15,435 80,403 5'21 70,000 87

a Source: SEMRT, Contraintes et conditions structurelles d'equilibre de la SEMRY et de la filiere riz (Yagoua, September I987).

mile dike and an artificial lake, complete control of water-flow over

20,000 hectares to allow two crops a year, and the immigration of thousands of farmers totally ignorant of rice cultivation -were

representative of the technocratic ideals shared by donors and the Government. In the name of food self-sufficiency and modernisation, it was assumed that Cameroon could and should rapidly become a large- scale producer of rice, despite that crop's unimportance in domestic

consumption patterns and virtual absence from traditional farming systems.15 Indeed, it soon became clear that local populations preferred sorghum and millet to rice, and that Semry would have to sell its output in Yaounde and Douala, over ,o000 miles away from its production perimeters.

15 See Evaluation socio-economique du projet SEMRT au Cameroon.




Granted the status of an integrated rural-development agency, Semry

enjoyed technical and financial assistance from different donors in order to dispense modern inputs, provide credit, and extend various services to peasants. It charged a fixed rent at harvest on the plot of land assigned to each small-holder, thanks to a statutory monopoly on

marketing. The growth of output was slow at first, but much more

rapid after 198 I, as may be seen from Table i. By I984, Semry provided some 22,000 households with an average income of I48,600 C.F.A. francs from the cultivation of rice, and was the most important agricultural enterprise in the Far-North Province.16 It produced some

80,000 tons of paddy, roughly equivalent to half of the domestic

consumption of rice in the mid-I980s,17 and was considered a major technical success, having achieved some of the highest yields in Africa.

Unfortunately, Semry was much less successful in financial terms, being never able to match the price of imported rice, despite donor finance and assistance. Its factory-gate price between 1975 and I980 was roughly 25 per cent more expensive than the F.O.B. price at Douala harbour. The Government hoped that high transport costs of

imported foodstuffs would provide enough natural protection for the

locally-grown rice in the markets in the north, as well as in

neighbouring Nigeria and Chad. Unfortunately, northern markets were much too narrow for Semry's ambitious production targets, and

jumelage was introduced in the mid-I970s in order to help the sale of its

rapidly expanding output in Douala and Yaounde. This 'twinning system' meant that rice merchants were obliged to buy a certain

quantity of rice from Semry if they wished to import rice from abroad. The consumer price was then set at some point between the two, and traders subsidised their Semry purchases through their sales of the less-

expensive imported rice.

2. Crisis and the Need for Reform

The jumelage system worked as long as domestic production was

reasonably small and merchants could put up with losses on their sales of Semry rice, but by the I98os this was no longer true. With the jump in production from 26,700 tons in 1977 to 74,000 in 1983, much greater

16 See the 1984 agriculture census for the production data. The impact of Semry on the economy of the North is described in Roupsard, op. cit. pp. 31II-12.

17 Estimates of annual domestic consumption range from I30,000 tons (Semry, 1987) to 99,000 tons in the I983-4 household budget survey published by the Ministry of Planning in I987. The standard conversion factor for paddy to rice is 0-66.

584



RICE POLITICS IN CAMEROON 585

domestic output had now to be marketed, and merchants began to evade the increasingly onerous obligations of the new arrangements.18 In addition, Cameroon's ability to compete with foreign rice was fast

falling. World prices were decreasing while Semry's unit costs were

rising because of unwise investments undertaken in order to implement the third phase of the project, and the C.F.A. franc was overvalued. The parastatal was increasingly unable to sell its output, while illegal imports began flooding the market. Drought and the failure of traditional crops during I983-4 increased demand in the north for

Semry rice, thereby allowing some of its burgeoning stocks to be sold, but the return to normal rains and a record crop in 1985 reinforced the need for reforms.l9 During 1987 as many as 240,000 tons of rice were

probably imported. By then Semry had accumulated stocks of I,ooo tons of white rice and 80,000 tons of paddy, the equivalent of 13 months of milling at full capacity,20 and had amassed debts amounting to over I I,OO million C.F.A., despite some 8,000 million C.F.A. in subsidies from the Government.

REFORMS IN THE RICE SUB-SECTOR

i. The Proposed Reforms

The decision to undertake reforms in late 1987 was spurred by the Caisse centrale de cooperation economique, which made it a condition of a loan to restructure Semry.21 The French aid agency advocated the establishment of a Caisse de perequation, or equalisation fund, whereby Semry would be subsidised with the proceeds of a tax on rice imports. The aim was to allow domestic production to become competitive by instituting a border tax that would be equivalent to the difference between the prices of imported and domestic rice. Semry's rehabilitation was thus to be at least partly financed in a way that would also increase domestic prices to a competitive level with imported rice.22 It is

important to understand that the creation of the equalisation fund in

18 For a description of this period, see P. Baris, Claude Freud, and J. Zaslavsky, 'La Politique agricole du Cameroun de l'independance B nos jours', Paris, March I987.

19 The impact of the drought on the northern economy is described in Roupsard, op. cit. 20 See Semry, op. cit. 21 The C.C.C.E. attached a similar conditionality to a loan for the palm oil parastatal. See

'Cameroun 1988', in Marches tropicaux et mdditerraneens (Paris), 21 October 1988, p. 2,827, and 'Un Cadeau interesse', in Jeune Afrique (Paris), I6 November 1988, p. 29. The equalisation fund covered three other products as well: palm oil, sugar, and meat.

22 Such caisses are common in French West Africa - see Pearson et al. op. cit. for descriptions of similar funds in C6te d'Ivoire and Senegal.




January 1988 was considered to be a political victory for domestic rice

producers since it was designed to increase the resources accruing to them.

2. The Early Implementation Record

Although an inter-ministerial committee under the chairmanship of the Ministry of Industrial and Commercial Development was put in

charge of fixing the actual equalisation tax, subsequent to consultations with different economic agents and following an appraisal of market conditions,23 little progress was made throughout 1988 in making the new fund operational. The committee met on three occasions during the year and decreased the equalisation tax each time: from the level of 44 C.F.A. per kilo recommended inJanuary by Semry's rehabilitation

plan, to 20 C.F.A. in April, and to io C.F.A. in October 1988. More seriously, little or no capital accrued to the caisse from the

proceeds of the tax. Excluding the unbated flow of smuggled rice, official imports should have resulted in available resources for Semry of between 500 and I,500 million C.F.A. based on import patterns of

previous years. In fact, revenues from the tax totalled less than Ioo million C.F.A. The discrepancy could largely be blamed on the casual and corrupt implementation of the new system; delays and non-

payments by merchants were tolerated, an unspecified number of tax

exemptions were officially granted by the Ministry of Industrial and Commercial Development, and under-weighing and other irregularities were routine at customs. In brief, the caisse de perequation had not

operated, rice smuggling continued, and Semry's precarious position continued to worsen.

SOCIETY-BASED INTERPRETATIONS

i. A Cheap Rice Policy? The Economics of Rice Competition

Why were the reforms not successful in the rice sub-sector? Can the difficulties be explained with reference to societal pressures on decision-

making? To what extent can they be understood by focusing on weaknesses within the state itself?

How important has the maintenance of cheap consumer food prices actually been to the Government? By all accounts, rice consumption is

essentially an urban phenomenon (on average over 30 kg per person

23 Cameroon Tribune (Yaounde), 4 Feburary 1988, p. 4.




per year in Douala versus 2-4 kg in the rural areas), and is growing rapidly, as people shift their tastes away from traditional foods, including cassava, yams, and maize. The fact is that the prices of such domestic crops have risen regularly unlike those of imported foodstuffs. For example, rice prices are barely above their nominal level of 15 years ago - indeed, in the markets of Yaounde and Douala they have stayed in the I40-I70 and I25-55 C.F.A. per kilo range, respectively, for the last few years.24 As a consequence, consumers have increasingly substituted rice for the more expensive traditional local foods, the demand for which has slackened. In other words, the Government seems to have undermined the purchasing power of local producers of traditional crops by keeping rice prices low for those who live in the towns and cities.

Is this urban bias? Have not state interventions distorted market forces in favour of urban constituencies? Actually, under the 'planned' and 'communal' liberalism policies of Ahidjo and Paul Biya, respectively, the Government has by and large shied away from

intervening too drastically in the operation of markets.25 Although a number of policy instruments can be used to influence prevailing prices,26 efforts in this field have been half-hearted and ineffective.27 The primary concern in the rice sub-sector has been to protect Semry, not the welfare of urban consumers, and the Government's commitment to expand the output of rice by increasing producer incomes

suggests the opposite of an urban bias. World prices have consistently been lower than consumer rice prices in Cameroon, with an increasing differential in recent years. It is well known that the world rice market is manipulated by a small number of producers, and that there is

24 According to the Government's official consumer-price-index data, albeit of questionable

quality, the general level of prices has increased faster than those indicated above, so that in real terms most food prices have at best kept up with inflation, while those for rice have decreased.

25 See, for example, Shantayanan Devarajan and Jaime de Melo, 'Adjustment with a Fixed Exchange Rate: Cameroon, C6te d'Ivoire, and Senegal', in The World Bank Economic Review (Washington, D.C.), I, 3, May I987, pp. 447-87, and Salvatore Schiavo-Campo et al., The Tortoise Walk: public policy and private activity in the economic development of Cameroon (Washington, D.C., 1983), U.S. Agency for International Development, Aid Evaluation Special Study No. Io.

26 As is well known, depreciation of the currency serves to make foreign imports more expensive and domestic goods cheaper, and many observers have argued that overvalued exchange rates have been a characteristic of 'urban bias' policies. By most estimates, Cameroon's foreign- exchange rate has been reasonable during the last two decades, albeit increasingly overvalued since I986. As a member of the franc zone, Cameroon cannot change the nominal value of the C.F.A., however, and can only affect the purchasing power of its currency through other macro- policies - see Devarajan and De Melo, loc. cit. It is very doubtful if the Government is capable of targeting different policies to promote a real effective appreciation of the currency.

27 These efforts are well described in Jane I. Guyer, 'Feeding Yaounde', in Guyer (ed.), op. cit.

587




extensive dumping.28 The adoption of a laissez-faire policy by the Government would have resulted in lower rice prices for urban consumers.

It might be argued that the authorities could have further increased rice prices by taxing imports more, thereby raising revenue in the

process, and that its failure to do so indicates a fear of urban unrest. After all, a consequence of these generous producer prices has been

burgeoning deficits at Semry, and the current mixture of low consumer and high producer prices is not a sustainable or coherent policy-mix. As we shall see below, however, it is not clear that the state has enjoyed enough control over the rice market to be able to engineer increased consumer prices by rationing supply.

In addition, the donors have pressed the Government to maintain an

open-trading system and have opposed higher tariff levels. Ironically, the I.M.F. and the World Bank have intermittently favoured the

complete elimination of tariff protection against imported rice on

grounds of economic efficiency, measures which if taken would have enhanced the income disparity between urban and rural populations, as as well as undermined domestic production. The Bank ended its

support of Semry a decade ago, arguing that it would never be

competitive with imported rice. Today, however, both the I.M.F. and the World Bank are supporting the equalisation fund for revenue- enhancement reasons.

Interviews conducted in Cameroon during I988 suggested that consumer interests did not weigh heavily on the state's decision-makers.

Certainly, the possibility of urban unrest resulting from price increases was not taken seriously. Most officials seemed to believe that

implementation of the caisse de perrequation reform would have little or no

impact on consumer prices, but rather that the excessive profit margins of the importers would be whittled down. The officials in charge of the

equalisation fund were less sanguine but argued that consumer discontent was unlikely in the absence of shortages.29

Consumer prices did not figure in negotiations with either the French Government or the World Bank when they established their conditions for adjustment loans. The French experts that set up the caisse assumed that political factors and demand elasticities put a ceiling

28 The world-market price for rice is projected to remain at U.S. $250 per ton well beyond I990, according to the World Bank, Price Prospectsfor Major Primary Commodities, Vol. II, Food Products and Fertilizers, and Agricultural Raw Materials (Washington, D.C., 1988), p. I4I. This amounts to 75 C.F.A. at the 1989 exchange rate, less than the 78 C.F.A. that Cameroonian

peasants receive for a kilo of their paddy. 29 Interviews in Yaounde, I988.

588




on price levels at some 200 C.F.A., to be reached progressively as stocks were exhausted.30 When questioned, officials accepted this figure but insisted that prices could increase up to 200-220 C.F.A. per kilo without any problem. Traders in the private sector suggested that demand would be inelastic up to 220-240 C.F.A., simply because no other foodstuffs were in the same price range.

It may well be that policy-makers did not focus on the political consequences of price increases, given other problems of implementation in this early phase of the reform process. They might have demonstrated greater concern for the threat of urban unrest had prices begun to increase. Still, it is striking that the issue did not feature

prominently in the decision-making that resulted in the reform

proposals.

2. Rice and Regional Politics

Key allocation decisions are often explained by reference to regional and ethnic conflicts,31 not least because Ahidjo himself came from the

poor and least developed Northern Cameroon. The Semry projects themselves were supposed to have been motivated by the then President's wish to 'do something for the North'.32 Much has been made of the fact that most rice importers are from the North to explain their power, and it has been alleged that their privileges have been maintained by Biya because of a fear of northern discontent, particularly since the failed coup d'etat of 1984 which was allegedly masterminded by interests close to Ahidjo.33 Alternatively, it is argued that Biya has found northern trading power useful as a bulwark against the growing business power of the Bamileke, the dominant ethnic group in the West.

Regional politics and tribal considerations are thus commonly seen as a central motivating factor for policy outcomes. While not denying the political salience of such considerations, it is 'only one of many

30 Semry, op. cit. pp. 37-40. 31 See, for example, Joe Ntangsi, 'The Political and Economic Dimenions of Agricultural

Policy in Cameroon', World Bank MADIA [Managing Agricultural Development in Africa] Working Paper, Washington, D.C., September I986. Ndiva Kofele-Kale (ed.), An African Experiment in Nation Building: the bilingual Cameroon Republic since reunification (Boulder, I980), provides a discussion that tends to underplay these factors.

32 Evaluation socio-economique du projet SEMR au Cameroon. 33 Interviews in Yaounde, 1988. On Northern involvement in the attempted coup, see Gilbert

Moutard,' 1983-1984: deux ans de vie tourmentee au Cameroun', in Afrique contemporaine (Paris), 135, 1985, pp. 34-45, and 'Quelles chances pour la politique du Pr6sident Biya?', in ibid. I39, 1986, pp. 20-35; and 'Cameroon's Critical Hours', in Afrique-Asie (Paris), May 1984, pp. I8-20.

589




frameworks for social and political conflict' in sub-Saharan Africa,34 and rarely predominant. In any event, our analysis suggests they have had little impact on the rice sub-sector. First, the objective interests of

producers and importers are opposed - even if they are both from the North - since cheap imported rice cuts into potential Semry markets. Political discontent in the North is much more likely to be fuelled by measures that hurt Semry, on which some 150,000 northerners depend directly for their livelihood, than on the business affairs of a handful of traders.

In addition, the North is neither culturally nor ethnically homo-

geneous, and the mostly urban Muslim Fulani represent no more than one-third of its population.35 The other ethnic groups of the North, mostly animist and collectively known as Kirdi, have co-existed in an

uneasy and sometimes violent relationship with the Fulani since the latter migrated from the Sahel in the nineteenth century. Although modernisation and urbanisation have enhanced cultural integration,36 deep-seated resentments continue to this day. Ironically, Semry's producers are almost all Kirdi. An openly interventionist policy in the rice sub-sector was more likely to polarise the North than to gain its

gratitude. In any event, even if the Fulani merchants are at the top of patron-

client networks in towns like Yagou and Maroua, their entrepreneurial successes have not been designed to create a power base in that region. Their headquarters have long been in Yaounde and Douala, and they have diversified their activities away from the North. Profits from the rice trade have not been reinvested there, beyond symbolic amounts.

Thus, the loyalty they command in the North may be limited and weak.

Ex-President Ahidjo might conceivably have sought to strengthen his power base by promoting Fulani business interests, but such a

strategy seems less sensible today. Bayart is probably correct to argue that Biya, like his predecessor, is more likely to attempt to play off ethnic groups against each other, rather than link his political fortunes to one region at the expense of others.37 None the less, it is true that his

34 Bayart, L'Etat en Afrique, p. 84. In addition, see pp. 68-74 for a perceptive analysis of ethnic

politics in Cameroon. 35 See Victor Azarya, Dominance and Change in Jorth Cameroon: the Fulbe aristocracy (Beverly Hills,

1976). 36 On this point, see Emily Schultz, 'From Pagan to Pullo: ethnic identity change in Northern

Cameroon', in Africa (London), 54, I, I984, pp. 46-63. 37 See Jean-Francois Bayart, 'La Societe politique camerounaise, I982-1986', in Politique

africaine (Paris), 22, June I986, pp. I2-I3.

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Presidency has made it feasible for a number of southerners (Biya is of Bulu origin) to engage in lucrative influence-peddling and other

corrupt activities as a result of their new political power. One

consequence has been the dramatic increase in fraudulent rice imports, because Biya has proved to be less capable than Ahijo of controlling the commercial appetites of his cronies.38

3. Interest Group Pressures on the State

It may be claimed that societal opposition to reform has been articulated at a higher level than the mass of consumers. For example, it may be that a coalition of organised economic interests has conspired to undermine the process. This is the heart of the public-choice model offered by scholars like Bates, who argue that individuals undertake collective action based on their own narrow economic interests. Further, the ability of different groups to organise themselves varies, and thus some will have more influence on policy than others.39 In the African context it is posited that widely dispersed, illiterate farmers will have less influence on policy than commercial interests and consumers concentrated in a few large cities.

We have already indicated that urban consumers did not weigh heavily on state decision-making in Cameroon. What about commercial interests? In Yaounde it was widely argued throughout 1988 that extensive pressure from the so-called 'rice lobby' was conspiring to

sabotage the reform process. Let us examine the interests of the different actors in order to better understand the importance of this

pressure on state action. Rice importers are the most important interest group alleged to be

conspiring against the caisse de perequation. Although the decrease in the tax from 44 to I C.F.A. per kilo might be thought to imply a considerable amount of power from the rice lobby, it is instructive to examine this more closely. Why would importers have been opposed to the tax? Several officials expressed the erroneous, and perhaps disingenuous, view that they would have to pay for it out of their profits: retail prices would not increase, and the tax would come from

38 Interviews in Yaounde, I988. 39 Bates, Markets and States in Tropical Africa, pp. 81-95. A general exposition of the public-

choice model is included in Mancur Olson, The Rise and Decline of Nations (New Haven, I982), and a critique is offered in David R. Cameron, 'Distributional Coalitions and Other Sources of Economic Stagnation: on Olson's rise and decline of nations', in International Organization (Cambridge, Mass.), 42, 4, 1988, pp. 56T-603.

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TABLE 2

Rice Import Costs and Wholesale Prices, 1988 C.F.A./kg

Original Period Since Rice January 1988 May-October October I988

C.I.F. price 75-00 92.70 0o6.oo

Tariff 15.40 19.00 21.73 Equalisation tax 44.00 20.00 10.00

I34.40 131.70 147.73 Wholesale price 130-160 140-170 150-180

Note: The C.I.F. prices from the caisse are presumably an average. The tariff and other minor taxes make up some 20-5 % of the C.I.F. value. The wholesale prices reflect the range for 50- or 92-kilo bags reported to the author in Yaounde.

the 'excessive' profit margins of the traders.40 In fact, if demand is as inelastic as believed, the tax would be passed on to consumers in the form of higher market prices, and profits would suffer a modest decline at worst. Trader opposition to the reforms on these grounds is not

convincing. A more careful evaluation suggests that importers were not opposed

to the equalisation fund per se, albeit rather unhappy with the evolution of the sub-sector in general. Importing rice was increasingly unprofitable because of widespread fraud, and the only impact of the fund's reform was to increase minor import costs. Table 2 underscores the

problems faced by importers. In the period between May and October

1988, they could be expected to pay 92-70 C.F.A. per kilo of rice on the world market, plus a tariff and equalisation tax to get their merchandise out of customs, making a total of 13I*70 C.F.A.

If we take the middle value of the range of estimates given for the wholesale price, normally I55 C.F.A., an importer could expect a gross earning of 23'30 C.F.A. per kg, a return of under I8 per cent. Netting out insurance, financial, handling, and transport costs, the net return

may well have been negative, without even taking into account the various expenditures incurred in dealing with a corrupt administration for the necessary authorisations and licenses.

The Government had assumed that the price of rice would increase and stabilise around 200 C.F.A., much higher than that prevailing in the market throughout 1988 as excessive supplies of rice were keeping

40 Interviews in Yaounde, I988.

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prices down.41 Retail prices were unlikely to rise as long as fraudulent

imports continued at current levels and old stocks of rice had still not been exhausted. In sum, what the importers opposed was not the level of taxation, which they know they could pass on to the consumers, but rather the state's loss of control of the import business. As we shall now see, the issue of fraud and the regime's inability to rid the sector of it, is at the centre of the reform's failure.

AN ALTERNATIVE INTERPRETIVE FRAMEWORK

It has been shown above that the Government's policies were

historically less disadvantageous to rice producers than assumed, even if they might have been further strengthened by greater intervention on their behalf. The distributional consequences of policy outcomes do not indicate the presence of a simple 'urban bias'. And, the difficulties in

bringing about successful reforms are not well explained by the various kinds of social pressures that many scholars have pointed to as

constraining the state. What alternative explanatory framework can be

presented ? It is suggested that the reforms have so far failed because of the state's

limited capability, characterised by its inability to control the rice market, to alter the incentives for fraud, or to get policies implemented by subordinate state personnel. The last points to a second important factor, namely that divisions within the state and lack of governmental commitment to the reforms served to undermine them.

i. Import Fraud: Incentives and Mechanisms

The first major obstacle to the successful reform of the rice sub-sector has proved to be fraud, so it bears greater analysis. The incentives are obvious as long as there is such a large difference between world and domestic prices - importers who do not pay the import tariff and

equalisation tax net the corresponding amount. It is in this sense that the official price on the market can usefully be considered a 'public good', while the structure of the incentives can be thought to pose 'free rider' problems. If importers respected the terms of the market, none would make excessive profits and all would benefit from a well-

functioning market. However, there is a great incentive to 'free ride' on the proper

41 Interviews in Yaounde, I988.

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behaviour of others by importing fraudulently, since this will result in windfall profits. The import tariff and tax amount to some 31*73 C.F.A./kg on the recent wholesale price of I40-170 C.F.A. per kilo, and this corresponds to the potential gain from fraud, to be shared with the corrupted officials; thus the 'rent' on the Ioo,ooo tons imported annually is potentially worth a little over $io million at today's exchange rates! The more fraud there is, however, the lower the 'rent' becomes as wholesale prices are pushed downwards, and the greater the relative incentives to act dishonestly as legal imports are no longer profitable. Fraud corrupts would-be-honest importers and ruins the market.

Indeed, this seems to be what happened in Cameroon during 1987-8. As fraudulently-purchased rice flooded in the wholesale price remained extremely low, thereby making the market increasingly unprofitable. The major complaint of the importers was that the state's loss of control of the market was undermining fair and stable prices.

Rice imports have always invited fraud because of their profitability and the cursory harbour controls. Since the creation of the caisse, dishonesty takes place at two levels. First, rice is imported officially - i.e. it has been the subject of an 'import authorisation' from the

Ministry of Industrial and Commercial Development and the tariff is

paid at Douala- but escapes the equalisation tax in some way. Secondly, neither the tariff nor the tax may be paid. Different types of fraud are resorted to or combined in a large number of ways, but two favourites are under-reporting imports by bringing in, say, o0,ooo tons with the complicity of the customs instead of the 5,000 tons authorised, as well as duty-free goods slated for transit that are never re-exported. Chad and Central African Republic statistics suggest that rice imports from Cameroon total between o,o000 to 25,000 tons,42 whereas the

official transit trade at Douala amounted to 90,000 tons in 1982 and

46,000 in 1983, the last year for which we have statistics. This suggests that anywhere between 50 and 90 per cent of the rice imported with transit licenses is being fraudulently sold in Cameroon.

42 The F.A.O. estimates that the C.A.R. and Chad imported, respectively, 6,000 and 17,000 tons of rice in 1986, but this seems slightly too high. Total rice consumption in the C.A.R. is between 3--4,000 tons a year, according to World Bank sources, including on-farm consumption from extensive rain-fed cultivation. Chad consumes between I2-20,000 tons a year; Republique du Tchad, Bureau Interministeriel d'etudes et de programmation, 'Etude de la filiere riz', Ndjamena, June 1988. Rice projects on the Logone and elsewhere possibly produce 4-6,000 tons. The C.A.R.'s imported rice is probably entirely from Douala, much more accessible by road than

Semry in Northern Cameroon. A significant proportion of Chad's imports must presumably be

Semry rice, however.




The Government has shown itself to be incapable of eliminating fraud, mainly because it has been either unable or unwilling to use any of the several instruments with which it could attack the problem. It could, for example, have allowed rice imports freely onto the market, but has been unwilling to do this because of a real desire to protect the domestic producers of competing crops and to achieve food self-

sufficiency. The technocratic approach of increasing administrative controls and modernising import procedures was followed in i988, but to little consequence. The creation of the equalisation fund added another regulatory layer, because in addition to an 'import licence'

importers now needed to petition the relevant Ministry for an 'authorisation to import', which in turn depended on an 'import contract' with the Ministry that specifies the amount to be imported, the amount of tax to be paid, and the payment procedure. Asked why at least one layer had not been eliminated, several officials interviewed

argued that redundant procedures helped to lessen corruption. In fact, the exact opposite may be true, with each extra regulation adding another level of corruption.

Far from opposing workable reforms, the private sector would have

preferred an end to the prevailing chaos, and the return of a business climate in which profit-making enterprises would be less vulnerable to the arbitrary power of public officials. Most traders favoured reforms that they hoped would discipline the market, though they would continue to engage in whatever lucrative smuggling activities presented themselves. On the other hand, the inability of the state to control fraud in this field was not least due to the fact that a number of

government officials involved in the rice trade benefited from the chaos which enhanced their power, and had little incentives to see the reform succeed. They favoured the decrease of the equalisation tax, even

though it would lower their illicit profits, if this was a condition of

getting the traders 'to play along', and opposed only liberalisation measures that would reduce the regulatory functions that constituted the source of their power.

3. The Issue of Government Commitment

The Government's half-hearded commitment to reforms also explain the current obstacles to a smoothly functioning equalisation fund. The

Presidency spent little of its political capital on behalf of the policies, and the Ministry of Industrial and Commercial Development did not police its own ranks, in which much of the corruption relating to

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foreign trade takes place. If the authorities had been truly committed to the reforms, they would have cracked down on customs officials by giving them tough jail sentences for fraud, and the Ministry of

Agriculture, more sensitive to Semry's needs, could have been granted a larger role in policy implementation instead of being left out in favour of the Ministry of Industrial and Commercial Development, with the latter's reputation for dishonesty.

However, it is clear that certain components of the state apparatus were in favour of the reforms, notably the Ministries of Agriculture, Planning, and Finance, because successful implementation implied more resources and responsibilities. They accepted the Ministry of Industrial and Commercial Development's control over the process in

exchange for new revenues with which to support Semry.43 It should be noted that although officials in that Ministry were against any process of deregulation or liberalisation likely to jeopardise their rent-seeking activities, they were not actually opposed to Semry.

The Presidency itself might be expected to be above such narrow

interests; it had supported Semry with large subsidies in the past, and had pushed a recalcitrant Ministry into creating the caisse in the first

place. At the same time, Biya's weakness made the Presidency very tentative about interfering in the day-to-day implementation of policy by different Ministries, or to co-ordinate action between them. In fact, some have been allowed to pursue extensive rent-seeking over their

respective jurisdictions unhindered until problems of crisis proportions have erupted, or until the Presidency has had to step in when their interests have collided. Such arbitration between the Ministries of

Agriculture and Industrial/Commercial Development on the equalisation fund was certainly needed during 1988.

Second, there is a difference between a high level of commitment to the principle behind certain policies, and the ability to make them

operational. The Government is obviously in favour of food self-

sufficiency and the increased production of rice, but it is not able to ensure the implementation of agreed reforms. In addition to political weaknesses, key officials are not always respected by their subordinates in either the centre or the field, monitoring mechanisms are weak,

43 Interviews in Yaound6, I988. One official at the Ministry of Agriculture probably expressed a widespread view when he referred to the caisse de perequation as the chasse gardee of the Ministry of Industrial and Commercial Development, i.e. not to be interfered with. Presumably, in a bureaucratic quid pro quo, rent-seeking by officials in the Ministry of Agriculture in another area would not be questioned by the hierarchy in the Ministry of Industrial and Commercial Development.

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co-ordination between agencies is virtually non-existent, and the

analytical capacity of the regime is limited. As for putting an end to or circumscribing dishonesty in the Ministry of Industrial and Commercial Development, where the small number of departments responsible for granting licenses and authorisations could be policed, or at Customs, where import policy is implemented, this appears to have been an Herculean task beyond the capabilities of the Presidency. Despite the technical assistance received during the last two decades, corruption scandals have regularly surfaced, each bringing about jail sentences and promises of reform.44

CONCLUDING REMARKS

Evidence has been presented to show that the obstacles of effective

decision-making in the rice sub-sector have been within the state

apparatus, and that urban constituencies and their supposed interests have not had a significant impact. Increases in the cost of rice may some day cause civil unrest in Yaounde and Douala, but this possibility seems to have been ignored by those who designed reforms that were

likely to push prices up. Nor have regional politics really been relevant. Instead, the choices made by the state elites seem to have been shaped by their ideological orientation and developmental objectives, notably food self-sufficiency and agricultural modernisation. Paradoxically, in the fragmented African state this has not been translated into

operational commitment.

Today, the major constraints to reform are to be found within the actual system of government and administration, in the divisions that

separate ministries and departments, in the rent-seeking activities that are threatened, and in the limited ability of the state hierarchy to have

many of its decisions implemented by subordinates, or to control the

dynamics of the rice market. These weaknesses have allowed reforms to be derailed by extensive frauds that have wrecked the rice market, and the regime's lack of commitment has contributed to implementation difficulties.

The African state emerges from this case-study as weak while being relatively autonomous from societal pressures. As argued by John Dunn, it is dominating in part because 'of the relative insubstantiality of civil society in these countries, the limited degree of viable and enduring institutionalization of local social forces outside the sphere of

44 For example, for information about a much-heralded campaign by the Biya regime to clamp down on smuggling at the Customs, see Afrique-Asie, July I984, pp. 20-I.

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the state'.45 This is the result, at least to some extent, of a colonial authoritarianism that would not tolerate competing centres of power within traditional society, and of the adoption of a similar outlook by the elites since independence, because they also realised that 'the

organisation of the civil society is an obstacle to the paramountcy of the state .46

This view may have been particularly strong in Cameroon. The

patent weakness if not absence of independent societal groupings -

whether trade union and business organisations, or co-operatives, ethnic

associations, and religious groups - may be explained as resulting from the censorship and repression of a state traumatised by civil war and its lack of popular legitimacy.47 The state elsewhere in Africa has been much more permeable to the interests of organised societal groups on certain issues - for example, the Islamic brotherhoods in Senegal, or the small-holders in Kenya. Clearly the degree of state autonomy in the continent is not immutable, but rather determined by the perceived exigencies of state formation and the persistence of societal interests.

None the less, the present case-study improves our understanding of state weakness in Africa and of the dynamics of policy outcomes. The

inability to pursue developmental objectives successfully derives as much from internal weaknesses and contradictions as from external

pressures. The state is unable to achieve the necessary internal

discipline to implement even measures needed to attain such an obvious objective as food self-sufficiency, about which there is a general consensus. It cannot police its own ranks and end rent-seeking for the sake of the general good.

Corruption, it might be argued, is a phenomenon that indicates the

ability of social forces to permeate government structures and shape policy outcomes.48 Clearly, non-state agents share the rents with officials in magendo networks throughout the economy. These are based on family, village, and 'old boy' links that run through the public and

private sectors, and they remind us of the somewhat artificial distinction between state and society. Still, rent-seeking is an artifact of the state

45 John Dunn, 'Comparing West African States', in Dunn (ed.), West African States:failure and

promise. A Study in Comparative Politics (Cambridge, I978), p. I5. 46 Jean-Francois Bayart, 'Civil Society in Africa', in Patrick Chabal (ed.), Political Domination

in Africa: reflections on the limits of power (Cambridge, 1986), p. II5. 47 On the impact of the civil war and the confused independence years in Cameroonian politics,

see Jean-Francois Bayart, L'Etat au Cameroun (Paris, I979), and Richard Joseph, Radical Nationalism in Cameroun: social origins of the U.P.C. rebellion (Oxford, I977).

48 See Donald Rothchild and Naomi Chazam (eds.), The Precarious Balance: state and society in

Africa (Boulder, 1988).

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since it is the latter's policies that create rents by driving a wedge between the official and market prices of goods. Though corruption benefits individual traders, it is created and maintained by the state, often knowingly.

The result of these weaknesses in Cameroon is a 'cheap rice' policy, quite at odds with the original intention of protecting a domestic

parastatal from international competition. Inconsistent policy out-

comes, such as subsidising national production while at the same time

encouraging imports, result not from political rationality (though individuals within the central apparatus may benefit), but from the state's weak implementation capacity, undermined by an inability to control markets, and by the divergent agendas pursued by the barons of the state apparatus.

Reform is thus undermined by a combination of low state capacity and commitment. The exact level of each is ultimately not that

important, since they reinforce each other. The state's inability to

adequately control the operation of food markets facilitates the

development of corruption, while the profits that certain state elites derive from the ensuing chaotic markets provide them with incentives to resist enhancing control mechanisms. Even if they wanted to, state executives such as President Biya usually lack the popular legitimacy and support to tackle head-on entrenched interests within the state. Crisis management and strategies of 'one step forward, two steps backward' result as they attempt to attenuate the inherent contradictions in the resulting policies.

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Documents

Rice Politics in Cameroon: State Commitment, Capability, and Urban Bias