Report: Cameroon Is Doing Little to Achieve MDGs

By Gerald Ndikum in Yaounde

It is six years to development evaluation time, but Cameroon is not considered as doing enough to wrest itself from the pangs of poverty. The country is lagging behind in 5 of the 8 indicators by which a country’s development is evaluated.

The 2008/2009 national human development report launched in Yaounde on 29 December 2009 shows that Cameroon made progress only in achieving primary education, promotion of equality of sexes and reducing poverty. By contrast, it fared badly in millennium development goals (MDGs) like maternal health, infant mortality, fight against AIDS, access to potable water and rate of employment.

Statistics presented at the ceremony indicate that the maternal mortality rate moved from 420 to 669 in the last ten years. In the same period, the rate of unemployment moved from 7.6 to 8.8 percent.

Even though Cameroon fared well in the area of primary education, moving from 75.2% in 1996 to 82.8% in 2005, it made less progress than other African countries like Senegal, Morocco and Tunisia. Morocco, for example, that was at 55.8% in 1996 is today at 86.05%, which puts her now ahead of Cameroon.

Even though the percentage of those living below the poverty line improved from 50.5% in 1996 to 40.2% in 2008, drafters of the report still pointed to a red indicator for Cameroon because other countries were making more progress than she.

Speaking at the ceremony, Thierry Martens, UNDP resident representative in Cameroon, said the non-attainment by Cameroon of the MDGs should not be considered a fatality. He said the drafting and implementation of Cameroon’s growth and employment strategy paper (DSCE) whose ambition is to make the country an emerging economy by 2035 was an important step towards making the MDGs achievable. He said a double-digit growth would serve no purpose if infant and maternal mortality remained high.

For his part, Louis Paul Motaze, minister of economy planning and regional development, said the 2008/2009 national human development report under the theme: “Cameroon: the challenge of achieving the Millennium Development Objectives” was the country’s contribution to the debate on the promotion of human development. He expressed regret that the rate of maternal mortality in Cameroon during the last 10 years had worsened, even if the country scored points in the areas primary education and promotion of equality of sexes.

The economy minister was, however, hopeful that with the implementation of the DSCE, some of the MDGS would be attained by 2015. He therefore called for the mobilization of partners, national and internal alike, to this end.