The National Development Strategy provides for a considerable improvement of indicators pertaining thereto during the current decade.
With a poverty rate estimated at 37.5% in 2014, efforts deployed by Government of Cameroon, for several years now to reduce the proportion of the population living under poverty threshold, have not yielded extraordinary results.
In order to increasingly reverse this trend, the 2020-2030 National Development Strategy (NDS30), recently unveiled by Government, envisages to bring down the country’s poverty rate to ‘‘at least 25% in 2030 ’’, that is, a reduction of more than 12 points, according to official sources.
During the 2021-2030 period, on the basis of several reforms and other investments, it is also about ‘‘raising the Human Capital Index from 0.39 in 2018 to 0.55 and the Human Development Index from 0.52 in 2016 to 0.70 in 2030’’, emphasized Pierre Nguetse.
The Unit Head for the Formulation of the National Development Strategy at the Ministry of Economy, Planning and Regional Development (MINE- PAT) was thus expressing himself on 19 January 2021 in Yaounde, on the occasion of NDS30 ownership workshop organized by MINEPAT. Among the levers which Government intends to activate to alleviate poverty in the country and improve on human development indicators, there is employment, a corollary of the announced development of the country’s industrial fabric.
During the implementation period of the NDS30, it is estimated that the reference scenario growth profile will give rise to the net creation of about 363 889 jobs on annual average (moving from 258 349 jobs in 2021 to 477 122 in 2030) as against 536 661 for the vision scenario (moving from 270 365 jobs in 2021 to 824701 in 2030)’’, the strategy provides.
With a calculator in hand, during the current decade, Cameroon is banking on the creation of 5.3 million jobs in all, giving priority to local labour force. This strategy itself, as we learn, is based on ‘‘the introduction of a certified mass training and capacity building programme for informal sector workers (close to 90% of the country’s workers, editor’s note) ’’code-named ‘‘Train My Generation’’.
But, above all else, the issue of employment according to NDS30 will be tackled not under the prism of job multiplication, but increasingly under that of creating decent jobs, so as to ‘‘reduce underemployment from 77% in 2014 (it stood at only 70.6% in 2010, editor’s note), to less than 50% in 2030’’.
Concretely, as official sources hold, ‘‘The Reference scenario which pro- jects a growth rate hovering between 5% and 6.2% would enable to obtain a decrease of 11.8 %, in informal jobs whereas that of the Vision scenario for which growth is entertained between 6.6 and 9.3% would be translated by a reduction of 17.2%.
This drop in jobs created by the informal sector is manifested by effects at the level of the underemployment, which loses 22 points to reach 55.2 % in 2030 under the reference scenario, and 25 points under the Vision scenario, for which it stands at 50.1% ’’.
Adonis Abondo
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