Economic Development, Growth and the Cameroonian and African Economy
This domain asks you to distinguish growth from development, apply development theories, and use evidence from Cameroon and Africa. Strong answers use structural features rather than slogans.
Growth and development
- Growth is a sustained rise in real GDP; development adds health, education, living standards, equity, freedom and sustainability.
- Measures: real GDP per capita at purchasing power parity, the Human Development Index, poverty headcount, Gini coefficient and the multidimensional poverty index. Cameroon's HDI is in the medium category and poverty affects roughly a third or more of the population, concentrated in the north and rural areas.
Theories and strategies
- Lewis dual-sector model: surplus rural labour transfers to industry, but only if investment and wages allow.
- Rostow's stages, dependency theory and structuralist views on primary commodity dependence.
- Import substitution versus export-oriented industrialisation; structural adjustment programmes of the 1980s and 1990s; the role of institutions and governance.
- Dutch disease and the resource curse: a commodity boom appreciates the currency or raises domestic costs, squeezing tradable sectors.
Cameroon and Africa
- Structure: oil, cocoa, coffee, timber, rubber, cotton and bananas; a large informal sector employing most workers; a young, urbanising population; infrastructure and energy gaps.
- Policy: the National Development Strategy 2030 and Vision 2035 emphasise structural transformation, infrastructure such as the Kribi deep-sea port and hydroelectric capacity, and regional integration through CEMAC and the AfCFTA.
- Constraints: the Anglophone crisis, corruption, weak tax mobilisation, debt service and climate risk.
Worked example
An oil boom raises export earnings.
- Foreign exchange inflows rise, and under the fixed peg the adjustment occurs through higher domestic prices.
- If domestic inflation runs at 6 per cent against 2 per cent in the euro area, real appreciation is about 4 per cent a year.
- Cocoa, cotton and manufacturing exports lose competitiveness, output shifts towards oil and non-tradables, and growth becomes enclave and volatile. Investing oil revenue in infrastructure and human capital is the policy response.
Traps that cost marks
- Treating growth and development as synonyms.
- Comparing GDP per capita across countries without purchasing power parity.
- Assuming resource wealth guarantees development.
- Ignoring the informal sector when quoting unemployment or wage statistics.
- Treating aid or debt relief as automatically growth-enhancing without absorptive capacity and governance conditions.