Effects of Rising Prices of Basic Household Commodities on Women in Cameroon: Policy Implication to sustainable development.

Effects of Rising Prices of Basic Household Commodities on Women in Cameroon: Policy Implication to sustainable development.

1.0 Introduction
Cameroon on like the rest of the world has experience a constant rise in prices of basic household commodities since the year 2000, In 2008, citizens where tied of these rise and reacted on it with a public riot that ended up losing lives of Cameroonian. This rise has greatly affected the lives of women and children as they remain at the lower ladder of the societies. In 80% of Cameroonian households, women are in charge of the functioning of the household: cooking, cleaning, and caring for the children. It is the responsibilities of the women to ensure that children/husband have food. In most cases, especially in rural communities the men do not care if the children are well fed or not, all the care is their meal. Men generally have between 2-5wives, with an average of 10children, when one woman is unable to provide food, they other provide. Most urban women manage their households from meager income provided by their husbands and rural women from the sales of excess farm food stuff. With this income remaining constant, prices have doubled. This has resulted to poor feeding habits in most household, insufficient food/balance diet for children and the mother as well as general poor health for women and malnutrition for children. This paper will make a critically analysis of the causes of rising prices of basic household commodities in Cameroon and its consequences, as well as policy implications by the government Cameroon in achieving sustainable economic growth.
2.0 Household structure and leadership in Cameroon
2.1 Cameroon population structure
According to the (CIA World Fact book, 2009) “the population of Cameroon can be fragmented as: 0-14 years: 40.9% (male 3,891,762/female 3,822,870) ; 15-64 years: 55.9% (male 5,298,143/female 5,250,493); 65 years and over: 3.3% (male 283,289/female 332,744) (2009 est.)”. An analysis of the above figures shows that, they are 9,473,194 male and 9,406,107 female making a 50%/50% ratio of male and female in the 2009 Cameroonian population.
2.2 leadership in household structures in Cameroon
In most areas in Cameroon, especially in rural areas women are responsible for feeding their families, they are considered as feeders of their household no matter the size of the household. They grow staple food crops from their farms which they use for feeding the household. Other basic household commodities needed to complement farm food such as salt, soap, oil, fish are also provided by the women from money raise from the sales of extra farm produce in the rural and urban markets. Men in the other hand take care of major household expenditure like children school fees, health and at times clothing for the family during feast days like Christmas. Men are involved in the growing of the cash crops. Among the pastoral populations, men herd the livestock and women process dairy products use for food. . In general, men have higher social status than women. They have more rights with regard to marriage, divorce, and land tenure within most local systems of social organization and more access to government bureaucracy and the courts. However, women may have informal power within households, enforced through their control of subsistence activities and their role as conduits to female ancestors. Even thou women are responsible for providing household food from food stuff gotten from their farms, they do not have access to land for the cultivation of this food. Women have to either get land from their husbands land or rent farm land from other families with excess land. In areas where some women do not have access to enough land, women might end up cultivating very limited land for food, not enough for supplying their household with food stuff.
3.0 Causes and consequences of rise in basic household commodities
3.1. What are basic household commodities in Cameroon?
Basic household commodities in Cameroon are those commodities that can only be gotten from the market by both the rural women and the urban women, that is women who depend on the farm to feed their household and working class women. These basic household commodities in Cameroon are: salt, rice, and kerosene, groundnuts, washing soap, vegetable oil, fish, grains, sugar and a host of other items used by the household which are essential for the functional of that household.
3.1 Causes of price rise in basic household commodities
According to the (Wikipedia website, 2009), 2007–2008 experienced a dramatic increases in world food prices, creating a global crisis and causing political and economical instability and social unrest in both poor and developed nations. The increase prices in Cameroon started gradually since 1998, but 2007/2008 had a drastic increase. Prices of these commodities have almost tripled in value, this is especially serious in the rural areas of Cameroon, as goods have to be transported on very bad roads to this areas. The main cause of the increase prices of these basic household commodities can be associated to the increase in oil prices since 1998. According to the Director General of the UN Food and Agricultural Organization in an interview with (BBC, 2007), the price of oil has risen gradually from $20 per barrel in 1998 to $90 per barrel in 2007, this increase in cost has being translated directly to the cost of running machines that produced food such as wheat, sugar etc. Moreover, increase in oil prices has cause farmers to increase the use of nitrogen fertilizers so as to increase their yield, which will translate to increase profit, unfortunately for the farmers; the production of nitrogen fertilizer uses a high proportion of oil. This has resulted to a drastic increase in the prices of fertilizers from an average $100 for 1tone in 1999 to $350 for the same one tone in 2007. For farmers to remain in business, they have no choice than to translate these prices to the prices of the food they produce, resulting to hikes in the prices of basic household communities in the world. This problem however, is addressed in developed countries as the price hikes are not so terrible.
Developing countries, like Cameroon for example suffer from the worse side of the story as they are consumer countries. Their own prices further increase due to the freight cost, the cost of shipping these goods from the developed countries to the developing countries, drastically increases the prices. Basic household commodities in Cameroon are only imported into Cameroon from different countries and increase in oil prices, consequently translated into increase transportation cost and finally, translated to these basic commodities, these has cause the prices of certain goods to increase by 700% since 1998. For example, the price of a kilogram of sugar has increase from 200FCFA to 800FCFA today, rice has increase from 100FCA per kilogram in 1997 to 400FCFA per kilogram today.
3.2 Consequences of rise in basic household commodities
According to the (IFAD website, 2009), Cameroon has attained some success in combating poverty. The first national household survey in 1996 estimated that 51 per cent of the population was living below the poverty line of less than a dollar per day( World Bank standard) , a figure that had fallen to 40 per cent by the time the second household survey was conducted in 2001. But the decline mainly benefited people who live in urban areas, 22.1 per cent of whom are poor, compared to 49.9 per cent of poor people in rural areas of Cameroon. In Cameroon, poverty is fundamentally a rural phenomenon. Women and children are particularly hard-hit: 52 per cent of the people in poor households in Cameroon are women living in rural and urban areas, and half of the members of poor households are under 15 years of age. Among the major causes of poverty in Cameroon, continuous increase in the prices of basic household commodities is a huge contributing factor. This rise in prices, is falling more on the already 52 per cent of people in poor household who are women. Basic income of wage earners has remain the same, yet prices have doubled more than 500%, poor women in rural areas who depend on the sale of farm excesses to purchase additional household commodities earn the same income on what they sell, as they cannot increase the prices of their goods, yet what they buy as basic household commodities has undergone increase in price more than 500%.
The consequences of this act is that, most women are forced to manage their household without or with a very limited level of consumption of these commodities. These effect is very significant on the women because, traditional women eat last after serving their husbands. In this situation women are bound at time to eat food without soup, some will eat without meat as the initial serving when to the husband and children. For the case of income earning household, this problem maybe more drastic, as the household essentially depends on the market for the entire household food consumption.
4.0 Government actions to address problem
For consumer countries like Cameroon, depending on imported goods for a majority of household items, except major food item that can be gotten from the farm will continue to experience this increase in food prices, there is actually no hope for a fall in the prices. The government of Cameroon however in 2008, decided to subsidies the price of fuel so that, in-country transportation of basic household commodities can be cheaper and thus will translate to the fall in prices for the already impoverish citizens, especially the women. With these subsidies in oil prices, most super markets maintained their prices selling at the same rate as they were selling before, this resulted to numerous strikes within the country by poor peasants and those unable to afford the continuous hikes in the prices of basic household commodities. By the end of 2008, the governments of Cameroon launched another policy of recruiting price control agents. The main task of the price control agents being to control prices business offer on basic household commodities, if businesses charge above the stipulated government prices, such businesses will be close down.
5.0 Implication for policy and sustainable economic development
In 2008, after a number of continuous rioting by Cameroonians in all parts of the country, the government decided to enact some policies to address continuous price hikes on basic household commodities: 1) fuel subsidies within Cameroon 2) setting of standard prices and recruitment of Price Control agents 3) Police action on citizens when their actions on demand for government solutions go persistent. An analysis of the policies taken by the government to address the price hikes, starting with fuel subsidies given to companies, this policy was not effective because despite what the government did, individual supplier still did not care about using the subsidies, and with the corrupt nature of the country, consumers were the ones to suffer. On the second policy on setting of standard prices for household commodities and recruitment of price control agents, this was another difficult policy to be implemented by business owners as they complaint of already importing foreign goods before government subsidies on the prices. And finally recruitment of more police force to stop citizen from rioting is just a temporal solution to such a huge problem.
6.0 Conclusion and Policy recommendations for sustainable development
Considering the fact that 52 per cent of the people in poor households in Cameroon are women living in rural and urban areas, and half of this population under 15 years of age,( IFAD Website, 2009), the incident of hikes in prices goes a long way to affect this population most. If the government of Cameroon with it policy makers do not address these problems, it will hinder the country from attending the Millennium Development Goal(MDGs) by 2015, of eradicating extreme poverty. The government of Cameron should consider the following actions as policy recommendations;
6.1 Investment in the Agricultural sector: The hikes in prices of basic household commodities should be taken like advantages to the government. Being an agricultural led economy with 42% of GDP coming from agricultural activities and the same sector employing 70% of the total population ( World Fact book, 2009). The government should increase investments in the agricultural sector by increasing the budget of the agricultural sector. The sector should not be limited only to the primary production, but should go a long way mechanizing our primary products to host of secondary products Cameroon imports.
6.2 Investment in the grain and other sector: Even thou Cameroon have the potential to produce grains, the country keeps on depending on the importation of grains from other countries for example rice, flour etc. The government should design policies that will ensure investments into these sectors, encouraging small farmers already in the sector by use of agro-machinery and availability of credits for investments.
6.3 Reforms: the government of Cameroon should focus on reforms such as; land and water management; trade and marketing infrastructure; food and nutrition security; agricultural research and technology. These reforms existed before the structural adjustment programs which started in 1992.
6.4 Comprehensive focus on food security: This involves including programs like; irrigation schemes, investment on the use of organic fertilizers, marketing and rural roads.
If the above strategies are fully implemented, monitored and evaluated, the government Cameroon will not only address its food security issues. Current unemployment of 30% will be highly curb and overall standard of living of the country will be improved, enabling it to achieve the Millennium Development Goal (MDGs) of 2015. With the strategic location of Cameroon in Central Africa, we will become a potential market for agricultural products in the region.









7.0 Bibliography
Javier Blas in London and Isabel Gorst in Moscow, Wheat prices in biggest one-day rise
the Financial Times, Published: February 25 2008.
Websites
http://www.everyculture.com/Bo-Co/Cameroon.html
http://www.ifad.org/operations/pipeline/pa/cm.htm
http://www.theodora.com/wfbcurrent/cameroon/cameroon_people.html