Decentralisation and Spatial Rural Development Planning in Cameroon

Preface

xi Preface The second half of the twentieth century has seen the continuous transformation of the population in Africa into urban dwellers. However, rural areas still accommodate the majority of the population and will continue to do so well into this century. Africa is predominantly rural, and will remain so beyond the year 2020. Rural areas, rural development and the future of rural settlements need to be understood and addressed in the context of the ongoing democratisation trends and the emergence and development of civil society. Post-colonial history teaches us that the state succeeded in dominating civil society rather than serving it. By establishing a single cultural reference and imposing a centralised state, it exacerbated the fragmentation of civil society. Political pluralism has slowly been gaining ground since the 1990s. In the age of globalisation, there is a visible trend towards decentralisation and regionalisation. This trend is leading to a new allocation of roles between the state, local district organisation and civil society. Such changed framework conditions are opening up new possibilities for regional and multi-disciplinary spatial planning in rural areas in which all sections of the population participate. Decentralisation is the transfer of decision-making powers to more directly concerned, lower levels of government and administrative authority. The primary justification is to bring government closer to the people in the interest of efficiency. The argument is that people become more aware of the cost of the services they use, and the administration can take better account of their wishes. Decentralisation has also been presented as being beneficial to the economy as a whole, chiefly by means of more equitable distribution of national resources and fiscal advantages such as easier collection of taxes. The reasons for drawing up and implementing decentralisation programmes are timeless. The book explores the scope for implementing decentralisation programmes that focus on the citizen in rural areas in terms of development priorities, civic participation and user participation. For the purpose of decentralisation, civic participation in local politics and user participation in development programmes must be seen as two sides of the coin. The book focuses on spatial planning, that is, regional policy in the sense of planning as an on-going process in a political system. The process is concerned with spatial organisation in an integrative manner, and incorporates the design, establishment and implementation of a desired spatial structural organisation of the land. In many African countries, no such a planning role is played by the sovereign state, or it is exclusively economic xii and administrative in character, without reference to space. The formulation of guidelines for spatial development at the overall level of a state is therefore inadequate, especially in states with extensive territory, and there are rarely suitable institutions to tackle this task. This book develops a framework for spatial development planning with a focus on rural settlements. It emphasises the fact that the impact of political decentralisation on urban – rural relations in Cameroon like in many developing countries has not received much attention so far, and that priority attention has been paid to urban planning to the detriment of rural areas. Against this background the book attempts to tackle one question: how can decentralisation reach the rural population too, and how can this be translated into improvements in rural livelihoods through spatial development planning? Professor Eze Bassey Eze Department of Geography and Regional Planning University of Calabar, Nigeria xiii This is an indispensable handbook for: - Students of Geography and land use planning, - Rural development experts and Architects, - Rural Planners and Settlement Geographers, - Municipal mangers and administrators involved with the decentralization process, - Politicians involved with grassroots projects, - Teachers of Settlement Geography at professional level, - Agricultural and Natural Resource Managers - Policy makers at central and local level government. xiv ...