Gender and Plantation Labour in Africa: The Story of Tea Pluckers� Struggles in Cameroon

Chapter 2. Production and marketing policies on Cameroon’s tea estates

21 2 Production and marketing policies on Cameroon’s ea states Introduction This chapter provides a brief historical review of tea production and marketing in Cameroon. The first section argues that tea production in Cameroon has some distinctive features. First of all, it started quite late in the colonially established plantation economy in the area and then remained concentrated in the Anglophone part of the country for a long time. As a multinational enterprise, the Estates and Agency Company Ltd (EAC) was initially involved in regional tea production before the Cameroon Development Corporation (CDC), the huge agro-industrial parastatal enterprise that had been operating in the region since 1946/47 came to gradually monopolise tea production until 2002 when the sector was privatised. The second section of this chapter discusses how locally produced tea was not competitive on the world market due to its high production costs, which resulted in local producers being compelled to sell an increasing proportion of their output on domestic and West and Central African markets. Tea Production in Cameroon Anglophone Cameroon has always been the centre of tea production in Cameroon. The political history of the region since European occupation has, however, been complex (Ngoh 1996, 2001; Konings & Nyamnjoh 2003). It belonged to the German Kamerun Protectorate from 1884 to 1916 and was occupied by British forces during the First World War. After that, it became a British Mandate and subsequently a British Trust territory until independence and reunification in 1961. Being part of what was variously called the 22 Gender and Plantation Labour in Africa ‘Cameroons Province’ or ‘Southern Cameroons’ during the British era, it was then integrated into the administrative system of Nigeria. The 1954 Nigerian Constitution, which outlined the framework for a Federal Nigeria, gave it a quasi-federal status and a limited degree of self-government within the Federation of Nigeria. It attained full regional status in 1958, which placed it on parity with the other regions in the federation. In a United Nations-supervised plebiscite in 1961, it voted for reunification with Francophone Cameroon and joined the Federal Republic of Cameroon. Following reunification, the Southern Cameroons was renamed the Federated State of West Cameroon and the former French Cameroon was called the Federated State of East Cameroon. Eleven years later, in 1972, the Federation was abolished and replaced by a unitary system of government, namely the United Republic of Cameroon.1 The erstwhile Federated State of West Cameroon was divided into two provinces: the South West Province and the North West Province. A large number of large-scale private plantations were established during the German colonial period, mainly around Mount Cameroon in the present Fako Division of the South West Province (Epale 1985). German planters cultivated a variety of crops, including cocoa, rubber, palm products, kola, tobacco and coffee. Apparently, they also considered growing tea on a plantation basis. Rudin (1938) mentions that a tea seed bed was constructed in the famous Botanical Gardens in Victoria (present-day Limbe) on the coast. However by the end of the German colonial period, no tea estate had yet become operational. After the First World War, the British authorities allowed German planters to go on producing until the Second World War but never encouraged them to grow tea. During the interwar period, the only British contribution to tea development was the creation of an experimental farm at Tole, a village on the slopes of Mount Cameroon near Buea, that used seeds from the Victoria Botanical Gardens. Covering only 66 acres, the estate did not constitute an economically viable unit and the original plants grew into trees as little was done with them. Of great significance, however, is the fact that the 1928 planting formed the basis for the subsequent tea cultivation in the area, with most of the original trees being used for their seeds. 23 Chapter 2: Production and marketing policies on Cameroon’s tea estates The Second World War boosted local tea cultivation. Tea growing came to be considered a ‘war effort production’ and helped alleviate the local tea shortages caused by the war. To this end, tea production at Tole was expanded for some years and although this renewed interest was important during the war period, production nevertheless remained modest, with output rising from a few thousand pounds in 1943 to £26,208 in 1947 (Bederman 1967). The Second World War also encouraged tea cultivation indirectly. The confiscation...