Beschreibung
The current economic crisis and political liberalization process in
Africa have led in many cases to a partial withdrawal of the state,
creating more space for autonomous forms of organization and action. Most
analyses of these developments focus only on the national level,
overlooking forms of organization and action at regional and local levels.
This monograph tries to fill this gap.
It first examines the impact of the current economic crisis on one of the
oldest private agro-industrial enterprises in Cameroon, the Plantations
Pamol du Cameroun Ltd, or Pamol, as it is still popularly called. It is a
subsidiary of the giant Unilever company located in the South West
Province of Anglophone Cameroon. The Francophone-dominated Cameroonian
state denied any assistance to the ailing company during the crisis,
leading to Pamol’s liquidation in 1987. Interestingly, the newly appointed
liquidator then decided to run the company as an ongoing business until a
prospective buyer was found.
The book also assesses the roles played by Pamol’s trade unions and
contract farmers’cooperatives, as well as by newly created regional elite
groups and associations, in defence of their members‘
interests. Their
capacity to act appears to be strengthened by the current political
liberalization process.
Piet Konings is a senior researcher at the African
Studies Centre in Leiden. He has conducted extensive research on
the state, labour and trade unionism in Ghana and Cameroon.