Abstract EN:

This thesis which is entitled : “Politiques agricoles et crise de l’économie camerounaise (1960-1998)” in English “The role of the Cameroon’s agricultural policies in the wreck of the national economy from 1960 to 1998”, appears to be a historical essay on the misadventures of Cameroonian agriculture since the country became independent in 1960 up till the fateful years of the economic crisis which stroke Cameroon in the years 1990. Using a constructivist approach, the work goes back into the remote past, during the colonial period to point out colonial choices based on the production of commercial cash crops. A choice which the government of Cameroon inherited from the French and English colonial masters. The essay shows that colonization deeply influenced the way the government foresaw the place of Agriculture into the independent Cameroon. It also stresses the response it gave to the frequent misfortune of the choice of the government, the successive attempts of solutions that were forwarded. The implementation of the Green Revolution on the one hand and the instauration of Agricultural Shows happened to be the major attempts the government brought to sustain its policies. These attempts certainly delayed the wreck of an agricultural policy staled in its basements but could not prevent the economic structural crisis that erupted with the sudden fall of the main export cash crops on which the economic development of Cameroon depended. A disillusion which guided the government toward a new and more innovative approach based on a more diversified Agriculture bound to protect the economy from the instable international market. But the new policy seems not to be very different from the former one considering the strong emphasis the government still puts on the exportation of the same cash crops.