• DOI:10.1080/03050718.2011.595149
• Corpus ID: 153875639

Local governance under Cameroon’s decentralisation regime: is it all sound and fury signifying nothing?

@article{KofeleKale2011LocalGU,
  title={Local governance under Cameroon’s decentralisation regime: is it all sound and fury signifying nothing?},
  author={Ndiva Kofele-Kale},
  journal={Commonwealth Law Bulletin},
  year={2011},
  volume={37},
  pages={513 - 530}
}

• Ndiva Kofele-Kale
• Published 1 September 2011
• Political Science
• Commonwealth Law Bulletin

Cameroon like many African countries is currently in the process of decentralising significant functions, previously exercised by the central administration, to local governments. This is in line with the 1996 Constitution, which transformed the country into ‘a decentralised unitary state’ comprising a central government and several ‘autonomous’ sub-national governments. It has taken almost 15 years to translate these constitutional provisions into reality. This article briefly explores the reasons behind the recent push to implement the law on decentralisation and examines in some detail Cameroon’s decentralisation regime. The paper demonstrates that the Cameroonian model on decentralisation combines features of political devolution with generous portions of administrative deconcentration with the result that the end product resembles more a false version of devolution than the real one. It argues that constitutional and legal prescriptions to the contrary, the form of decentralisation favoured by Cameroon’s legislator operates in such a way that the powers purportedly devolved to regional and local governments are severely circumscribed by an intrusive and ubiquitous central government.