Self-help Efforts and Sustainable Rural Development in Cameroon: an Empirical Assessment

This book is the outcome of a research study aimed at assessing the path of rural development undertaken by some developing countries. It is an attempt to compare government-initiated Community development projects with those initiated by local people themselves with a view to finding out factors responsible for the difference in their level of success at planning, implementation, utilization and maintenance stages agencies. The study validated some hypotheses revealing that the development of the community was more a function of the self-help efforts of the people than Government. Government's extractive, regulative, distributive, symbolic and responsive capabilities were grossly inadequate to initiate and sustain rural development in the area. The study recommends the bottom-up approach to rural development and calls on government to re-orient its rural development policy especially in the North-West region of Cameroon. It also recommends decentralization and the granting of more autonomy to local communities especially in matters of determining their own priorities, project planning financing, and management of other local resources.