# What's so bad about Cameroon? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 7, 2012, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-cameroon/630739 "2012-08-07T15:24:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2012, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-cameroon/630739/41 "2012-08-13T13:48:12Z")
In a culture where corruption is endemic, a bigger market just means bigger opportunities to skim off the top. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2012, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-cameroon/630739/42 "2012-08-13T16:17:59Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > In a culture where corruption is endemic, a bigger market just means bigger opportunities to skim off the top. Cameroonians are not just naturally more corrupt than other people, nor is it an exceptionally immoral culture. The corruption is a system, and it’s a self-perpetuating one that goes beyond individual actions. For example, to become a policeman requires a bribe of about US $10,000. In a country where half the population lives on a dollar a day, this is an enormous sum. Usually a family will rally around one of their brighter sons, with the entire extended family giving literally everything they have to give him a shot. In return, of course, he will be expected to keep the family going. He may be the sole sourse of cash (as opposed to tradeable goods- which can’t pay for medicine or school fees) for a family of thirty people. Because the government doesn’t actually pay policemen particularly well or particularly consistently, bribes will become a part of his reality. There is no other way to recoup his family’s investment. The lone wolf who decides to buck the system will achieve nothing. All they will do is screw themselves and their family over. In fact, my school was a bit of a purgatory for teachers who could not keep up with their “financial obligations” to various officials. Rather than being posted to schools near their homes, they were sent to the distant north, with a completely foreign culture, language, poltical system, and living conditions (120 degrees in the shade!). They were expected to live there, at least three days of hard and expensive travel on dirt roads from their families, completely alone. They continually encountered “paperwork errors” that could only be corrected in the capitol, which they could not afford to go to much less afford the “fees” to set things right. Everyone was in a desperate quest to get the hell out of there. Nobody is going to do this voluntarily just to prove a point. Likewise, choosing not to play isn’t a great option. What are you going to do if you shrug off the only sources of salaries in the country? Farm cassava for the rest of your life? What is that going to prove? What are you going to make better stuck in the village with no cash? That said, it’s not hopeless. It’s a young country that only got a start as a modern state 52 years ago, when there was only a handful of college graduates in the entire country, a skeletal infrastructure, and a very unsustainable political system (the French basically armed some traditional leaders and said “Here is the deal- bring us X amount of goods from the surrounding population to the regional outpost every Y months. How you achieve this up to you. If you fail, we’ll just arm the guy in next town over and put him in charge. Good luck!”) Cameroon came into the modern world completely unprepared, and unsurprisingly it’s a long and painful proccess to get something that works. But Africa on the whole is booming, and democracy is a reality in more and more African states. The Cold War dictators are dying off, and along with them are the ridiculous real politk systems that used to run Africa. The great powers are realizing that African states are more lucrative as trade partners than vassels, and China is lighing a fire under everyone’s ass to start offering Africa something they could actually use before China does. ---
**Author:** ![Lust4Life](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ecc23a/32.png) [@Lust4Life](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lust4Life)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2012, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-cameroon/630739/43 "2012-08-13T17:29:24Z")
We have a veritable flood of illegal immigrants and so called “Asylum seekers” from all over the world anyway, as does all the other countries of Western Europe. There were a lot of widespread, not entirely joking comments before the Olympics even started about how many of the members of Third World teams would actually return home after the event was over. I would not be stunned with amazement if the team members befriended less attractive female British citizens, living on welfare, in Social Housing, while in pre Olympic training, and have moved in with them. A few babies down the road and then they’ll be telling H.M.G. about how they were oppressed at home, were secretly in opposition to the government all of the time, etc. etc. It seems to be the most used tactic by illegal, economic migrants in recent years. ---
**Author:** ![purplehorseshoe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/purplehorseshoe/32/2996_2.png) [@purplehorseshoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/purplehorseshoe)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2012, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-cameroon/630739/44 "2012-08-13T21:41:50Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > … a few stray products from Unilever’s developing world line (soaps, mostly) … Never heard of this. Can someone elaborate, please? ---
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2012, 5:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-cameroon/630739/45 "2012-08-14T05:56:07Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > But Africa on the whole is booming, and democracy is a reality in more and more African states. The Cold War dictators are dying off, and along with them are the ridiculous real politk systems that used to run Africa. The great powers are realizing that African states are more lucrative as trade partners than vassels, and China is lighing a fire under everyone’s ass to start offering Africa something they could actually use before China does. Booming? That is an interesting word to use. Maybe in terms of population growth (to double to 2 billion by 2050), but otherwise it sounds [pretty dire](http://www.southerntimesafrica.com/news_article.php?id=7079&title=50%20Years%20Later%20-%20What%20is%20the%20state%20of%20the%20African%20economy%20in%20post-colonial%20Africa): > [@](#): > > Perhaps not surprisingly, the African continent has been the least successful region of the world in reducing poverty, and problems such as malnutrition, inadequate water supply and sanitation, as well as poor health, continue to affect large proportions of the sub-continent’s populations. > > The World Bank revised global poverty estimates for 2008 estimated that 80.5 percent of the Sub-Saharan African population was living on less than US$2.50 a day in 2005, while more than 41 percent live on less than US$1 per day. > > This is mainly due to too little investment in building people’s capacity in rural areas where families virtually run out of food and water on a regular basis, crops fail and waterholes dry up because of droughts leaving little arable and grazing land or water for animals which weaken and die while families watch. > > Many African countries are not self-sufficient in food production, as local production relies on an agriculture, which is ridden with problems. The African continent therefore sits with a backlog of retardation, stunting and under-nutrition problems. Energy-calorie malnutrition (ECM) being the commonest nutritional problem in developing countries in Africa, according to information from the US Library of Medicine. About 0.5 to five percent of the population under six years of age suffer from severe forms of ECM and four-40 percent suffer from moderate forms of the condition… > > Although the central districts of many of Africa’s major cities now boast numerous skyscrapers of cement, glass and steel, and are host to great night life with vibrant bars and night clubs, these are transposed on unplanned, chaotic settlements built of wood, corrugated metal sheeting, mud bricks and whatever other materials may be at hand, with dirt roads and open sewer ditches. > > This scenario is further complicated by other ills such as lack of piped water, unsafe sanitation, near absence of refuse collection, unstable electricity supply, poor housing, striking inequalities in wealth, absence of recreation parks and green landscapes, heavy traffic jams, and pervasive poverty, all of which have negative impacts on the quality of life and working environment in many African cities and towns. > > These problems are compounded by corrupt and inefficient local government institutions and governance issues that hinder effective urban management as the lack of capacity and weakness in the municipalities result in critical problems such as unfocussed planning, weak resource mobilisation, and creation of slum conditions as “nobody is taking charge, and nobody is providing guidance”. > > As of 2007, Africa housed an estimated 250 million people in urban slums, which are reduced to wastelands of overcrowding, poverty and social exclusion, and labelled by governments as illegal informal settlements that do not deserve provision of services. > > In most African large cities, these informal settlements provide domicile to 40 and 70 percent of urban dwellers, especially those who work in the informal sector of employment… > > Although the trend towards political liberalisation and democratisation in Africa, as well as efforts to achieve good governance, have been endorsed by the AU and NEPAD with its African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM), the actualisation of the good spirit of these institutions is still in the balance. Especially as NEPAD and APRM are still to receive the full support and recognition of the continent’s governments, without which Africans will take relatively longer to “assume responsibility for monitoring their own behaviour, on their own terms and at their own initiative”. Also, see this Atlantic article - [‘The Coming Anarchy’](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1994/02/the-coming-anarchy/4670/1/). ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2012, 6:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-cameroon/630739/46 "2012-08-14T06:19:20Z")
> [@Simple\_Linctus](#): > > But don’t they get a lot of that is to do with the Olympic Park atmosphere? I may be very very jaded but the area surrounding the Olypmic Park is frankly not very prosperous at all (and even not very clean tbh) - but did they see it I wonder? I’ve no idea I’m not familiar with that area of London, but the Barceloneta (the area around Barcelona’s Olympic Village) looks like Buckingham Palace when you put it side-by-side with much of Africa. Working toilets, lifts, ceilings and walls which don’t need to be fixed constantly… yes, there are working toilets and buildings with lifts and skyscrapers in Africa - but the people jumping on pateras across the Med didn’t come from the skyscrapers. > [@Lust4Life](#): > > I would not be stunned with amazement if the team members befriended less attractive female British citizens, living on welfare, in Social Housing, while in pre Olympic training, and have moved in with them. Many subsaharians in Spain are now trying to “marry in”; their seduction methods are far from the subtlest. Fake marriages apparently were a booming business for a short time; not marriages of convenience, but using data from a single woman who wasn’t involved in the scheme at all (in one case, a woman’s data had been used in three separate false marriages). ---
**Author:** ![grude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2012, 8:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-cameroon/630739/47 "2012-08-14T08:16:45Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > Fake marriages apparently were a booming business for a short time; not marriages of convenience, but using data from a single woman who wasn’t involved in the scheme at all (in one case, a woman’s data had been used in three separate false marriages). How on Earth could that even work? :dubious: Marriage based immigration requires endless forms and in person interviews with both people, photo IDs(passports) are produced and looked at. How do you do that with stolen info? ---
**Author:** ![orcenio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/orcenio/32/1036_2.png) [@orcenio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/orcenio)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2012, 12:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-cameroon/630739/48 "2012-08-14T12:29:40Z")
> [@Chen019](#): > > Booming? That is an interesting word to use. Maybe in terms of population growth (to double to 2 billion by 2050), but otherwise it sounds [pretty dire](http://www.southerntimesafrica.com/news_article.php?id=7079&title=50%20Years%20Later%20-%20What%20is%20the%20state%20of%20the%20African%20economy%20in%20post-colonial%20Africa): > > Also, see this Atlantic article - [‘The Coming Anarchy’](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1994/02/the-coming-anarchy/4670/1/). Hmmm… a dead link and a ~20 year old article about “‘the rapid?’ destruction of planetary social fabric”. Your links are shit. Here’s a different take from the economist [ > [@](#): > > Over the past decade six of the world’s ten fastest-growing countries were African. In eight of the past ten years, Africa has grown faster than East Asia, including Japan. Even allowing for the knock-on effect of the northern hemisphere’s slowdown, the IMF expects Africa to grow by 6% this year and nearly 6% in 2012, about the same as Asia. > > The commodities boom is partly responsible. In 2000-08 around a quarter of Africa’s growth came from higher revenues from natural resources. Favourable demography is another cause. With fertility rates crashing in Asia and Latin America, half of the increase in population over the next 40 years will be in Africa. But the growth also has a lot to do with the manufacturing and service economies that African countries are beginning to develop. The big question is whether Africa can keep that up if demand for commodities drops. ]([Africa rising](http://www.economist.com/node/21541015)) Not surprizing since this year all African economies are showing growth[ > [@](#): > > African economies are growing amid bleak global conditions but the continent risks contamination from Europe’s woes, a top economist said Tuesday. > “Every country is showing growth, that is the story: there is no country in Africa which is in the red,” Mthuli Ncube, chief economist and vice president at the African Development Bank told AFP. > His figures do not include troubled Somalia and South Sudan. > “The lowest rate is in Swaziland with 0.8 percent. Even in North Africa: Tunisia recovered, Egypt recovered, Libya recovered in a big way,” said Ncube, referring to the bank’s growth estimates for mid-2012 to mid-2013. ]([http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5icEvzhAq1varpn8K3dug8wQMvABA?docId=CNG.423038fc3e3ce0258de5e74aa8dc5376.2f1](http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5icEvzhAq1varpn8K3dug8wQMvABA?docId=CNG.423038fc3e3ce0258de5e74aa8dc5376.2f1))To **Lusty** / **Chen** : Oh, and yes Africa is demographically growing too. Pretty soon “they’ll” be sneaking in your cities marring your “ugly” women-folk. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Deeg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/deeg/32/2955_2.png) [@Deeg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Deeg)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2012, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-cameroon/630739/49 "2012-08-14T17:30:31Z")
What is preventing Cameroon from improving? I have the (perhaps naive) notion that unless there are negative forces (e.g. government oppression, war, resource scarcity, or racial problems) that a society will slowly get better. It doesn’t sound like the crime or corruption is so bad as to make things worse. Am I reading it wrong? ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2012, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-cameroon/630739/50 "2012-08-14T19:00:41Z")
> [@Deeg](#): > > What is preventing Cameroon from improving? I have the (perhaps naive) notion that unless there are negative forces (e.g. government oppression, war, resource scarcity, or racial problems) that a society will slowly get better. It doesn’t sound like the crime or corruption is so bad as to make things worse. Am I reading it wrong? Now you are getting into development theory, which is a world of academic research of it’s own. The two major camps are “modernization theory” and “dependency theory.” Modernization theory, which is basically what you put out there, is that the world is on a general march of progress, and economic development is mostly about developing countries “catching up.” Dependency theory is based on ideas that the economic progress of developed countries relies on systems that contribute to underdevelopment in other countries, and that these systems will have to be re-imagined before the poorest countries can catch up. A simplistic example might be that Britain relied on cotton grown by forced labor in its colonies to get the raw materials at a price cheap enough to kick start the British industrial revolution. Pure dependency theory is largely discredited, but most people recognize there is some truth to the basic concepts. As with most things, the truth probably lies somewhere between the extremes. Bill Easterly, one of the better regarded theorists (and a notorious aid skeptic) explains this as a series of “traps,” where a certain amount of poverty creates a self-perpetuating cycle that can be hard for a country to break. For example, high infant mortality may lead to increased birthrates, which leads to decreased education, which leads to high infant mortality. In any case, Cameroon has a few strikes against it right now. One is that the political system is so uncertain that it discourages foreign investment. Would you invest in Cameroon? Nobody is sure what the government of the country will look like five years from now, and so people are reluctant to trust that their investment won’t disappear. Without investment, it’s hard for a country to become a part of the modern economic system. A country can’t really go it alone. What foreign economic activity does happen is largely guided by France, which frankly does not give the most favorable terms. Health is a major issue. HIV isn’t as big of a problem as it is in some parts of Africa, but it still takes a toll on what should be workers in their prime. Malaria takes a massive, massive toll on productivity. Most working adults spend a month or so out of the year with reoccurring malaria, which creates and economic hit. High infant mortality encourages high birthrates. And health problems leads people to spend their money on drugs, transportation and hospital fees rather than education, investment or other productive purchases. Finally, infrastructure is poor, especially the roads. They literally this year paved the one road that connects the capital and southern regions to the rest of the country. The transportation infrastructure does not support internal trade. I lived in the north (picture a country the size of California) and I’d go months without seeing fruit. In the meantime, the south was literally swimming in delicious fruit that would be sold for a song. A scrawny, half-fermented pineapple in my village would be seen a few times a year in the market for around $2.50. A few hundred miles to the south, pineapples were sold ten per dollar, with unsold pineapples rotting the field. A huge portion of the yearly agricultural output is lost to spoilage due to poor infrastructure. Then there are a host of other problems- an antiquated colonial education system unfit for today’s realities, soil degradation, desertification and deforestation, unstable neighbors, a diversity of genuinely harsh climates from impenetrable rainforest to full-on desert, increased global polarization of religion, and so on. But there is hope, too. When I left, the nearest internet cafe to my town was four hours away on an unpaved road. Now my former students are contacting me on facebook. Cameroon is only 52 years old, and it started out with next to nothing. History shows us that making a nation is a tough process, and it takes a while to start getting things right. If you were looking at the US right in the middle of the war of 1812, you might say “OMG this nation is screwed!” but mostly we just had some things we had to work out, which didn’t really get worked out until the civil war, and eventually things started to gel. ---
**Author:** ![Deeg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/deeg/32/2955_2.png) [@Deeg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Deeg)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2012, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-cameroon/630739/51 "2012-08-14T20:18:04Z")
Thanks even sven, I appreciate you taking the time to answer my questions. It’s very interesting. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2012, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-cameroon/630739/52 "2012-08-14T20:24:01Z")
Seconded. Before this, Cameroon was only a gag in _Trading Places_ for me. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Excellent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f19dbf/32.png) [@Mr.Excellent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Excellent)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2012, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-cameroon/630739/53 "2012-08-15T16:31:47Z")
**even sven** , it sounds like the Anglophone provinces of Cameroon may actually be a bit better-governed than most of Nigeria. Nigeria was an English colony was well - what do you think made for the difference? Is it just that the oil and minerals gave them a nasty case of the resource curse? ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2012, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-cameroon/630739/54 "2012-08-15T20:16:47Z")
> [@Mr.Excellent](#): > > **even sven** , it sounds like the Anglophone provinces of Cameroon may actually be a bit better-governed than most of Nigeria. Nigeria was an English colony was well - what do you think made for the difference? Is it just that the oil and minerals gave them a nasty case of the resource curse? Anglophone Cameroon has the advantage of being a united minority (and thus relatively homogenous) with some shared interests in a small area. It’s a small group with a fairly common vision. Nigeria, on the other hand, is an enormous and densely populated state full of different groups with different interests and very little to unify them. And, they got a nice stash of unequally distributed natural resources to fight over. It’s like comparing Singapore with India. One is small and cohesive, the other has a pile of problems on its hands. That said, Nigeria gets a bit of a bad rap. Yes, it is dangerous and often unstable. But it’s got a rising middle class, education systems, a place in the international economy, etc. From an African perspective, it’s seen as a powerhouse. A shady, often criminal powerhouse, but definitely not a horrible place. I think it occupies a lot of the same mental space as much of Latin America a couple decades ago. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2012, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-cameroon/630739/55 "2012-08-15T20:31:33Z")
> [@grude](#): > > How on Earth could that even work? :dubious: Marriage based immigration requires endless forms and in person interviews with both people, photo IDs(passports) are produced and looked at. How do you do that with stolen info? It wasn’t marriage-based immigration as you’re thinking of it, marry and then come over, or come over as a spouse-to-be. It was immigrants who were already in the country, getting civil marriages where the woman was using fake ID using data from actual, single Spanish women: a civil marriage between a national and a foreigner (or even between two foreigners) involves proof of identity and proof that both parties are single but it doesn’t involve Immigration at all. In the case of the woman whose information was used three times, it was in a very short period of time and in three different provinces: when the lists of new marriages got cross-referenced (which doesn’t happen daily), “her” three lit up a red bulb about the size of Times Square. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2012, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-cameroon/630739/56 "2012-08-15T20:43:31Z")
Left something out: if one or both parties are foreigners, then the marriage has to be acceptable according to their country’s laws. For example, in Spain the minimum age to marry is lower than in some other countries: a foreigner who was above Spain’s minimum age but below that in their country would not be able to marry in Spain. ---
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2012, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-cameroon/630739/57 "2012-08-15T21:38:16Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > Anglophone Cameroon has the advantage of being a united minority (and thus relatively homogenous) with some shared interests in a small area. It’s a small group with a fairly common vision. > > Nigeria, on the other hand, is an enormous and densely populated state full of different groups with different interests and very little to unify them. And, they got a nice stash of unequally distributed natural resources to fight over. It’s like comparing Singapore with India. One is small and cohesive, the other has a pile of problems on its hands. > > That said, Nigeria gets a bit of a bad rap. Yes, it is dangerous and often unstable. But it’s got a rising middle class, education systems, a place in the international economy, etc. From an African perspective, it’s seen as a powerhouse. A shady, often criminal powerhouse, but definitely not a horrible place. I think it occupies a lot of the same mental space as much of Latin America a couple decades ago. Heck, United Airlines flies to Lagos now, so how bad could it be? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-cameroon/630739.md?page=2)