Our nine preceding articles in this series covering the African continent also indirectly addressed, by association, Cameroon’s rural development challenges. This last piece of the series tackles some of those challenges as perceived in Cameroon’s development context from the vantage point of Cameroonian village communities. In the context of this article, the “village” refers to the rural population in general and to village agro-pastoral and other livelihood activities. State-village development linkages : Cameroon’s rural development challenges are best understood through the analytic lens of State-village development linkages in virtually all sectors. Since the colonial era and up to the present, those linkages have been weak, amorphous and ambivalent. This is due to several reasons. Firstly, Cameroon has never really had a “village policy”, or more precisely a longterm strategy for the modernization of its villages, in contrast to Government’s policies and projects promoting urban planning and development. It is as if the State lacked a clue about what to do with its villages. The lack of State policy and administrative identity for the villages extends also to almost everything within the village environment. It is for instance not clear where the State places the village smallholder - in the formal or informal economic sector? Is he recognized as an investor? If so is he granted the same privileges as enjoyed by other local and foreign investors? Further, village customary laws, including land laws, seem to be tolerated but not really recognized by the State beyond the village setting. With respect to language policy, the country is currently witness to a fratricidal conflict over foreign languages which could have been long replaced, like in Ethiopia, Somalia or Tanzania, by its more melodious native languages fluently spoken in the villages. This example, which should break the heart of any Cameroonian nationalist or Pan-Africanist, touches on the cultural policy dimension of rural development discussed in part 3 of this series. It also underscores the point made time and again in this series, namely that rural development in Africa is equivalent to nation building. Secondly, although the Constitution recognizes traditional chiefs, their village territorial jurisdictions - at least for the over 10’000 village-based 3rd degree chiefs - are not administratively defined in the same way as for Governors, Senior Divisional Officers, and Divisional Officers in presidential decrees Nos. 2008/377 and 2008/377, both dated 12/11/2008, relating to the administrative organization of the country. Recognizing traditional chiefs is obviously not equivalent to recognition of village communities. Traditional chiefs in Douala and Yaounde for example had lost their villages long ago to urbanization expansion. In the rural setting a good many village chiefs who have chosen to reside mostly in cities are no longer perceived by their village communities to be credible leaders. Yet the level of success to be expected in human capacity building programmes in Cameroon’s rural heartland will depend to a very large extent on village leadership aptitudes, which is why a root and branch reform of village traditional governance is indeed crucial, as noted further below. Thirdly, practically all the functions previously performed by the traditional chiefs seem to have been devolved to Divisional Officers, as borne out in the above-mentioned executive directives, notwithstanding the fact that traditional chiefs are officially considered to be Government’s “administrative auxiliaries”. But this designation is all but moot and vacuous in light of the Presidential Decrees in question, which muzzle the role of village communities as natural, self-contained self-governing units. By ancestral tradition, the chiefs are supposed to serve only their communities and be accountable to them. Fourthly, there is the more problematic ambiguity, if not contradiction, of having village hereditary monarchies operating as administrative adjuncts within a national constitutional democracy. Furthermore, Cameroon’s decentralization framework consists only of regional and local councils and therefore does not extend to the village periphery, which presumably falls within the jurisdictional purview of local councils. In Cameroon’s current rural setting, however, the vast majority of the local councils are still so short of technical and managerial capacities that they cannot properly perform the local government functions assigned to them under decentralization laws, and much less mount the much needed and overdue robust village modernization programmes. However, the increasing village-focused interventions of PNDP (Programme National de Développement Participatif), among other initiatives, appear like scattered bright spots on an otherwise sullen rural development horizon. Lastly, State-village relationships do not seem to have changed significantly since colonial times when the anti-village complex took hold. That would mean we are still trapped by pre-independence urban-oriented and command-and-control administrative legacies, which suited a particular era but are no longer appropriate to wrestle with the challenges of economic transformation, modernization and nation building, as also emphasized by René Dumont in his 1962 prophetic bestseller: “l’Afrique noire est mal partie”. The foregoing observations are sufficiently indicative of the vigorous institutional reforms required to clarify and elevate the status of Cameroonian villages within the overall decentralization framework; and also re-align village self-governments (traditional or otherwise) with national, regional, and local government democratic institutions and processes, for the benefit of much needed coherence and transparency in State-village development relationships. That could help galvanize rural development throughout the country. As argued in part 5 of this series, village communities being extended families or clans, if and when their kinship honour is pricked, such as in an inter-village development competition, could bring to the rural development process an emotional and motivational charge not likely to be experienced at more artificial, administrative levels of State organization. Development achievements can also spring from psychological art and craft, and not only from brick-and-mortar projects. Rural-based local governments can be a transformative development force if constantly stirred to action and held accountable by village self-governments which function democratically as active change agents or development molecules, both individually and through inter-village syndicates or associations. The present state of rural development : ...