The crisis in anglophone Cameroon is damaging the Southwest Region’s economy, with palm oil plantations closing and the cocoa trade tumbling, an NGO report said Wednesday.
The Southwest Region faces almost daily clashes between the army and separatists in a conflict that originated mainly in Cameroon’s second anglophone area, the Northwest Region.
The state-run palm oil company Pamol has deserted some of its plantations, and cocoa and coffee production has stopped because villages have abandoned their crops, according to the Cameroon NGO Human Is Right.
Sources at the private firm Telcar Cocoa, a market leader, told the NGO that insecurity in the region had caused an 80 per cent fall in cocoa trade.
Company officials should negotiate with fighters to secure their facilities in remote villages, the sources said.
Meanwhile, rubber and oil plantations have been abandoned in two of…
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