Privatisation of the CDC Tea Estates and Impact on the Population

Abstract

Purpose: During the Post-colonial period, the Western Powers intervened in African economies in different ways as strategies were put up to guarantee continues influence in Africa. Amongst such policies was the introduction of the Structural Adjustment Programs by the World Bank through the Bretton Woods Institutions which placed privatization as a precondition for giving out loans to developing countries. Following the economic crises that plagued Cameroon in the late 1980s and 1990s, she was pressurised by the Bretton Woods Institutions to privatise State Corporations as a pre-condition to benefit from loans. As a consequence, the Tea Estates of the CDC (Cameroon Development Corporation) was sold to a South African Consortium called Brobon Finex PTY Limited, which ran the tea sector under the name Cameroon Tea Estate (CTE) in 2002. This action bred negative consequences on the workers and the inhabitants of the surrounding areas who had benefitted significantly from the Corporation. The need to ascertain the degree of consequences of privatisation of the Tea Estates to the workers and its environs stimulated this research. All in all, this paper examines why privatisation that was meant to disengage state corporations from public to private ownership with the hope of enforcing efficiency ended up bringing misery and suffering to the people.

Methodology: Using information from oral and written sources, and adopting both qualitative and quantitative research methodology,

Findings: This paper came out with the findings that privatisation of the Tea Estates ushered in negative consequences on the people.

Unique Contribution to Theory, Practice and Policy: The paper makes some recommendations that could be considered in future, when privatising state corporations especially those with direct contact on the population like guideline policies on buyers, creation of monitoring strategies to control the activities of buyers as well as the provision of support facilities to the new beneficiaries.