Paper short abstract:

In West Cameroon, villages with performing agriculture control the emerging space that fully participates in globalization. Towns remain languid or are increasingly short-circuited in the international food stock trade. Pressure groups from the big cities have much to do with these mutations

Paper long abstract:

Contrary to the commonly accepted idea, small urban centers of Western Cameroon, practically has little or no territorial anchorage, very little control over the production of wealth and consequently on the local economy. A number of political, social and rural-urban stakeholder factors play to keep these centers away from the local economic dynamics.

Social actors from large cities, transposed economic games to the antipodes; upstream are population creation: agro-towns that control international trade of agricultural products. They are directly connected to main national and sub-regional towns. Downstream, the Divisional headquarters are increasingly short-circuited in the international trade.

At the center, the sub divisional headquarters, languid, has remained the seat of the forum of the political game within the Municipal Council animated by individuals or pressure groups from the big cities. Alliances are formed and unfold according to the interests of the villages from which one is a native.

This power play is constructing a space where some villages emerge and fully participate in globalization while towns, small or medium, through political gambit put themselves at the service of the villages with very little to gain in return.

The countryside of Western Cameroon is recovering its primacy in rural economy and an apparent emancipation from the weight of the city. In reality, the city, insidiously takes control over the countryside, downgrading to the background or even dismissing from the political sphere and the management of rural affairs, those residents who until then were opinion leaders in the rural world.