The Cameroonian government and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) have launched an initiative called the Grassroots Poverty Reduction Subprogram. It has already improved the living conditions of more than 20,000 people in rural areas.
In Cameroon, 9 out of 10 poor people live in rural areas, according to the fourth household survey conducted by UNDP. It further revealed that “the poverty rate in rural areas has increased from 55.7% in 2007 to 56.8% in 2014.
To lower this trend, the government has decided, since 2013, to make direct interventions for the benefit of people living in rural areas. The sub-program of poverty reduction at the grassroots level aims at creating jobs at the communal level, strengthening the growth-generating sectors with, as priority targets, young women and men from rural areas.
Amadou Ratiéso, another beneficiary, based in the Nyambaka district in the Adamaoua region, is satisfied. “The funding has allowed us to transform our cassava into flour on the spot, before we went very far to do so,” he confides.