Rice is a staple food in Cameroon. It is consumed by almost everybody, everywhere and at every time. Statistics show that national demand is in the neigbourhood of 600,000 to 650,000 metric tons per annum while production staggers around 135,000 metric tons.
For years now, equating demand to supply has been difficult to come by obliging public authorities to resort to unenviable importation to feed growing mouths, with disastrous effects on the balance of trade. In the first half of 2012, the State reportedly spent about FCFA 96.7 billion to import 366,600 metric tons of rice. Not much has changed since then.
Disturbingly, the country has almost all what it takes to produce rice aplenty to feed itself and export surpluses to ready markets in the neigbouring countries. Records show that the country possesses 240,000 hectares of cultivable land and barely 25,000 hectares have been developed. Of these, 13,000 hectares are for the Yagoua Rice Production Agro-industry (SEMRY), 3,000 for the Upper Noun Valley Development Authority (UNVDA) Ndop and the rest shared between Santchou, Nanga Eboko, and Kousserie among others.
Before now, most Cameroonians justified their total dependence on Pakistani rice, Thailand rice or rice from Vietnam and China for scarcity in locally produced rice. It is certainly consoling that the Ministry of Trade has brought down rice from SEMRY to be sold at cost-effective prices in Yaounde. It fits squarely in the Head of State's wish expressed during the January 2011 national agro-pastoral show in Ebolowa when he said, "Cameroonians should consume what they produce and produce what they consume."
Without being a devil's advocate, it goes without saying that were all Cameroonians to bid farewell to imported rice to concentrate on what they produce, hunger will strike. Besides promoting made-in-Cameroon rice, which is good anyway, authorities need to fully maximize existing potentials for a qualitative and quantitative local production to meet demand that is bound to grow. The FCFA 100 billion the State averagely spends yearly on imports could be redirected to other productive sectors of the economy were local production optimal.
