WHY CAMEROONIAN MANAGERS FAIL

By SNOWSEL ANO-EBIE in Douala
When one critically looks at the Cameroonian society since November 1982, it is not immediately clear whether the citizens have doubted 27 years of benefits or whether their leaders have benefited from 27 years of doubt. One way or the other, there has been benefits and doubts. A dispassionate examination of the business and organizational leadership sectors in the country clearly points to 27 years of managerial failure.


One can consider management as the ability to plan, organise, and coordinate an organisation’s financial, human, material and other resources in order to achieve its objectives. You don’t need to study the management classics, or delve into “Scientific Management” by Frederic W. Taylor, “Management as a Profession” by Mary Parker Follett, or “The Manager’s Job: Folklore and Fact” by Henry Mintzberg, in order to identify managerial failure in Cameroon.


Over the years, Cameroon has been plagued by many problems like corruption which is now a national culture, crippling youth unemployment, ethnocentric calculations that breed tribalism, inability to attain a two digit growth rate and break lose from the grip of the economic crisis, a hideous debt burden, and many other challenges that can all be blamed on mismanagement.


It is the inability to plan, lead, organise, and control, hence the failure of managers, that a country like Cameroon can boast of 50 years of independence, with 27 of those years under the “New Deal”, but the most pressing needs of the citizens have not been addressed.


It is ignorance of the planning processes in management as expounded by management scholar Henri Fayol, and the inability to engage in the kind of long-range planning described by Peter F. Drucker that Cameroon has been deprived of “an express train” between Douala and Yaounde, the “Trans Cameroon Railway” has not been extended from Ngaoundere to Maroua and Kousséri, the hydro electric potential of Menchum Falls has not been tapped to solve the country’s energy needs and even export electricity to countries like Nigeria, the Limbe deep Seaport has stagnated; and the Ring Road, the Kumba-Mamfe Road, and paved roads leading to all divisional headquarters in Cameroon have remained tools of political blackmail.


The failure of Cameroon’s managers can be seen in the reluctance to create technical universities in the country, in the much heralded democratic process that is aborted in its embryonic stage, and in the wanton lack of recreational and sports infrastructure even though “the fighting Lions’ spirit” is exploited for political capital.


Those who have sat in Management classrooms, studied Management Courses, and taken time off to master the Management Classics, know that effective managers rely on two things; the ability to manage, and the opportunity to do so. Unfortunately, in Cameroon, those who have been saddled with the opportunity to manage national organisations and institutions have for the most part been overtaken by their glaring deficiency in managerial skills. It is very difficult, and almost impossible to find any Cameroonian parastatal or state corporation where the managers do not squander opportunities, waste resources, and kill the talents of the people who have been entrusted into their care. The resultant consequence of managerial failure is mismanagement which can aptly be described as one of Cameroon’s greatest nightmares alongside absentee leadership.


There are many reasons why Cameroonian managers fail and the most obvious is poor education. The greater majority of people who lord it over Cameroonian organisations don’t have a management education. All those managing directors, general managers, and chief executive officers, who preside over billions of CFA Francs of tax payers money, have not been trained in the “Principles of Management”, Managerial Economics, Finance, and Accounting. Why would they not fail?


In Cameroon, many managers are technocrats who are appointed up the rungs of the organisation from service heads or first line managers to directors or middle managers and finally to general managers or top management. The disadvantage of this system is that while such managers may succeed with the operational aspects of the organisation, they woefully fail in the functional aspects like budgeting, financial reporting, accounting, and human resource allocation. When one expects teachers, medical doctors, engineers, journalists, lawyers, and other professionals to get academic training in order to become efficient and effective, people who aspire to occupy management positions or ramble into the management field by some struck of luck, desperately need to undergo training in order to speak the language of management and avoid the kind of ignorance that nurtures failure.


Even managers who claim to have training in their CVs are for the most part talking of their stay in the National School of Administration and Magistracy ENAM in Yaounde. For a long time, to qualify as a manager in Cameroon one was required to be a civil administrator trained at ENAM. Graduates from this “prestigious” school of Administration have imposed themselves on state owned companies and organisations. Administration has been erroneously equated to Management. The negative results in terms of failed policies, companies that have been brought down and driven out of existence, cumbersome organisation charts, squandered opportunities, and misplaced priorities are there for everyone to see. Unfortunately, the ENAM myth is still considered a prerequisite for top managers in Cameroon.


Another reason why Cameroonian managers fail is because they are selected through a system of appointments whose underlying motive is to reward political allies and their “God children”, punish Regions of the country that are politically hostile to the present dispensation, and perpetuate a reign of ethnic and tribal hegemony.


The other risk is that appointments are at the discretionary mercy of the person making them, and many unqualified and inexperienced people get appointed, some of them directly from school into top management. Managerial failure can only be the logical outcome.


It is indeed unfortunate that a Developing country like Cameroon has not adopted the MBA or Masters in Business Administration as a standard qualification for all top managers. In other African countries foreign and locally trained MBAs have already taken charge of the economy and national institutions but this is not the case in Cameroon.

Management by political appointments and management by “trial-and-error” have failed Cameroon. Only a logical system based on merit, a sound education, and a solid experience, can turn the tides of managerial failure in Cameroon around.