Solid Base Is Crucial For Robust Dev’t!

Cameroon’s first citizen has severally expressed his wish to align the country with newly industrialised nations; in other words: Emergent countries. The President of the Republic while taking an oath of office for the ongoing term of office on November 6, 2018, invited all Cameroonians to make the emergence of the country a national cause by declaring that: “the objective of emergence must be established as a major national cause that rallies all our fellow citizens in order to make Cameroon a modern and socially-advanced country.”
A hope-raising way for a leader who loves his people and who has benefitted from their confidence for the past four decades to position his fellow compatriots on the path of global progress. To make life better for them and to bequeath a nation to the future generation better than what he inherited. In fact, President Paul Biya desires to boost sustainable growth in the country. He wants to ensure the increase in the value of Cameroon’s goods and services, which creates more profit for businesses, a more propitious business environment that gives companies capital to invest and hire more employees. Logically so as when more jobs are created, incomes rise and consumers have more money to buy additional products and services given that purchases drive higher growth. An ambitious way to develop a nation!
Having a vision is good more so in leadership as it is susceptible to setting the government; in the case of a State, charged with executing the policies of the Head of State, into motion. Every fruitful vision has stages which absolutely needs to be methodically followed to produce results. Sustainably developing a country is more or less like building a house which must begin with having a construction plan, laying a solid foundation depending on the nature of the structure envisaged, raising the walls and roofing before carrying out finishing works. Reversing the formula or laying a weak foundation for a gigantic structure can at best be planning to fail as the slightest torrent would blow off the building. 
Cameroon’s vision of having an economy that can rub shoulders with industrialised ones must therefore be angled on a step-by-step movement where the foundation, for instance, is not forfeited for the walls or roof. In fact, where people do not pay lip services and play to the gallery in the name of executing a vision as ambitious as that of the Head of State in giving the economy an affluent. This would simply be a mockery of the vision and its bearer. 
It sounds good learning that development blueprints drafted to materialise the vision has sectoral strategies structured around the development of industries and services in line with the Industrialisation Master Plan. But where is the Master Plan and what has become of it ever since it was brought to public space? The wordings that industrial development is considered the focal point of the country's medium and long-term economic challenges sound good for the ears. What remains disturbing is how well such carefully-drafted talk is being walked on the field. Cameroon’s production, especially agro-pastoral which is at the centre of any industrialization, is still nearly at subsistence level. What authorities have chosen to brandish left and right as Made-in-Cameroon goods are simply artisanal products managed by either individuals in their homes or small common initiative groups. Difficult to say if the artisanal and paltry products can ever supply the neigbourhoods of their producers were demand to be higher talkless of being competitive with others elsewhere. This is no industrialization at all in global terms and in the context of competitiveness.  Cameroon needs real industrialisation!
Those vested with the powers to walk the Head of State’s talk must not lose sight of the fact that there are two main sources of economic growth: progress in the size of the workforce and growth in the productivity of that workforce. They are certainly not unaware or should be made to know that only strong productivity growth increases national wealth for shared gains. 
Cameroon’s sustainable socio-economic development dream requires a solid foundation to produce desired fruits. Experts have said time and again that much of the fundamental structural change needed lies in transforming the key systems of energy, transport, industry, cities and land. A cursory look at what is going on in the name of developing the country is all except laying solid pillars on which the economy could stand today, tomorrow and thereafter. 
The state of roads alone in the country leaves much to be desired. Cameroonians have been told that where a road passes, development follows. But it looks like someone somewhere feels he or she can bypass the development vector and still attain desired growth. Difficult, if not impossible!  Politicians and the State engineer can beat their c...