Dr Benjamin Akih, coordinator of English Cameroon for a united Cameroon, thinks that the figure of 3.6 percent rate of unemployment attributed to Cameroon is not only unrealistic but the result of guesswork, based on the richer data used by Nigeria to arrive at its own rate of 5 percent.
In a message titled: “What is the rate of unemployment in Cameroon? Much higher than the 3.6% claimed by the government”, Dr Akih regrets that Cameroon, like most developing economies does not have established resources and methods to accurately measure unemployment.
He wonders how Cameroon could have a lower unemployment rate than say the United States which uses the statistics of people claiming social welfare to establish unemployment trends, concluding that this arises from the fact that peasant farmers and grown children living with their parents in our cities are counted as self-employed.
Dr Akih urges stakeholders in Cameroon’s politics to shine a light on unemployment: how to measure, and how to combat it in a manner that reduces the growing poverty nationwide.
He begins by commenting on the tension between FECAFOOT and the Biya regime regarding the upcoming football match between Cameroon and Namibia, noting that it is an internal fight in the CPDM with Cameroon football as the victim. Following is the message its entirety :
What is the rate of unemployment in Cameroon? Much higher than the 3.6% claimed by the government
Dear brothers and sisters,
We thank God Almighty for the gift of life and this beautiful country, Cameroon. We confess our failure to make good use of the many talented people with whom God has blessed this nation. Cameroon belongs to all of us; we can change this country for the better and enable every Cameroonian to live out his or her full potential.
How can we discuss our topic for today without remarking how embarrassing the tension between FECAFOOT and the Biya regime regarding the upcoming football match between Cameroon and Namibia? This is a scandal generated by the disease called “je suis le seul patron ici”. Nothing meaningful can be done by one person as suggested by this mania of “je suis le seul patron ici”. The secret of federalism and decentralized government is to generate efficiency through collaborative, responsible, and predictable decision-making processes. This practice is intuitive in Anglo protestant systems but the autocracy we have identified in Franco Catholic systems is deep and even contagious. Divided powers are not exclusive powers; FECAFOOT does not have facilities, logistics, and security resources to jeopardize our football by competing with Mr. Biya’s government, which Mr. Eto’o enthusiastically supports. This is an internal fight in the CPDM, and the victim is Cameroon football. It is time to end the internal CPDM drama.
Today, we want to address the question of the unemployment rate of Cameroon. What is the unemployment rate of Cameroon? What is unemployment rate, by the way? How is it measured? Is it getting worse or better? These are the type of questions that elevate political debates during presidential election campaigns. We will first discuss the unemployment rate and related measurements, then apply that to the reported data on Cameroon, and then call on all stakeholders in the politics of Cameroon to contribute toward more accurate and informative measurement of labor statistics.
1. What is the unemployment rate and how is it measured?
1.1. Our ordinary language use of the term unemployment suggests that we consider someone to be unemployed if they don’t have a wage employment or a visible dependable small business that makes them self-employed.
1.2. The rate of unemployment is a significant metric of an elected government such that a rise in that unemployment can call into question any attempts by the ruling power to seek and win re-election.
1.3. However, our ordinary language understanding of unemployment differs from the technical definition provided by the International Labor Organization (ILO). Governments in developing countries abuse this definition to maintain their people in poverty while fulfilling conditions for more loans from international organizations. These loans are largely embezzled and mismanaged to the extent that the poor folks in those countries are compelled to make further economic sacrifices to pay back the loans and take out more loans at higher interest rates.
1.4. The opposition and civil society organizations in such countries ought to enlighten their people about this abuse of unemployment definition and fight for more transparent metrics of the labor market and health of the economy. Such focused measurements can increase productivity and bring the countries closer to their full economic capacity of maximum high-quality employment.
1.5. According to the ILO, for a person to be classified as unemployed, the person ought:
1.5.1. not to have worked at all in the reference week,
1.5.2. to be available to take up work within the next two weeks and
1.5.3. to have been either actively seeking work in the past four weeks or have already found a job that starts in the next three months.
1.6. We can see that the first condition makes it difficult to track under employed people. For example, highly educated university students who decide to use motor bikes to earn money by transporting people are masked as employed. For this reason, some countries actively measure this under employment. Also, the other conditions make it difficult to track people who have given up looking for a job because of a bad job market or who are committed in underemployment but can take up a job much later.
1.7. Even if we agree to the ILO definition, the practical question arises regarding accurate measurement of the unemployment rate. For economic analysis, the segment of the population that is at least 15 years old and potentially economically active is considered the working-age population. Depending on the structure of the population, this can vary from 65% to about 70% of the total population of the country. The labor force is defined as the number of people who are employed and those who are actively looking for employment. The unemployment rate is the ratio of the unemployed as defined by ILO to the labor force consisting of employed and unemployed. The labor force participation rate of the economy is defined as the ratio of the labor force to the working-age population. The labor force participation rate for advanced economies such as European nations can vary from 65-80%, while it can hover around 50-65% for some developing economies.
1.8. The unemployment rate of developed economies is preferably less than 10%, less than 5% preferred. But the problem introduced by using the ILO definition of unemployment is shown by the fact that some developing countries plagued by poverty, can still report unemployment rates even lower than those of the advanced economies. These low numbers are also generally the result of guess work, since the developing economies do not have established resources and methods to accurately measure unemployment.
2. The unemployment rate of 3.6% estimated for Cameroon or reported by the Biya government is unrealistic. Greater insight can be gained by contrasting with the richer data of Nigeria.
2.1. Economic data on Cameroon show that the unemployment rate has been hovering around 4%, with the value for 2023 being 3.6%. This is either a meaningless metric or it is an insult to our many brothers and sisters looking for jobs. We have seen many times that recruitment into the public service often results in about 20 to 100 people or more competing for a single position.
2.2. Advanced economies use the statistics of people claiming social welfare to establish unemployment trends. Some countries, such as the USA, additionally use surveys of about 60 000 households every month to establish the level of unemployment.
2.3. We are unaware of systematic methods and resources used by Cameroon to measure unemployment for economic data or political orientations. Our neighbor, Nigeria, has a designated National Bureau of Statistics that measures and reports many data on a publicly accessible website. There is a similar bureau in Cameroon but not much is known about what they do.
2.4. Based on the results of the third quarter of 2023, Nigeria reports a labor force participation rate of 79.5% of working age population, an unemployment rate of 5.0%, and an under-employment rate of 12.6%. But greater insight is provided by the breakdown that shows that of the employed, 87.3% are self-employed while only 12.7% engage in wage employment.
2.5. The breakdown of self-employment and wage employment rates show why the ILO definition of unemployment is useless for developing economies with many rural households. In advanced economies, self-employment rate among the employed ranges from about 10-15%. The vast majority of the employed are wage employees.
2.6. The poverty in developing economies with paradoxically low unemployment rates arises from the fact that peasant farmers and grown children living with their parents in the city and discouraged by the harsh economy, are eclipsed or counted as self-employed.
2.7. In the case of Cameroon, over the last decades, economic prospects have worsened for our people. There are many unemployed and underemployed. Many young people are risking their lives, looking for work abroad.
3. Stakeholders in Cameroon’s politics must shine a light on unemployment: how to measure, and how to combat it in a manner that reduces the growing poverty nationwide
3.1. Cameroon is not a small city-state where the state of the society can be discerned by a town hall meeting and voting by a show of hand. A modern state must be governed by extensive use of numbers arising from measurement of social, economic, and political phenomena. The CPDM government has governed by motions de soutien and propaganda. We are supposed to believe that when the rich and well connected are doing well, Cameroonians automatically do well. The future is very bleak, if we continue along this primitive path now preferred by the centralized and autocratic government.
3.2. Mr. Biya is visibly campaigning for re-election that will take place on the eve of his 93rd birthday. Quantitatively, can he show that his government has addressed the problem of poverty, unemployment, underemployment, bureaucratic hindrances to establishing businesses, attraction of foreign investment, etc.? How are we to assess whether these are positive achievements unless we develop a culture of quantitative measurements of our economic system?
3.3. The opposition in Cameroon is rather weak when it comes to scrutinizing the economic activities of this government. That weakness is compounded when there are no measurements of the problem of unemployment. This needs to change.
3.4. Cameroon’s academics can do more where the government fails. The future we seek must be grounded in statistical measurement of key features of our society. The oracular gesticulations of so-called politologues will not help us.
Dear brothers and sisters, the problem of unemployment is serious. Mr. Biya has not solved it. His tribal mechanism continues to distort the demographics of our public service. Our compatriots in rural areas don’t even have roads to exchange their farm produce with those in cities and thereby create the means to buy manufactured goods. The situation is very bad. Do not be deceived; the unemployment rate is not 3.6%. This number means that Cameroon’s unemployment rate is lower than those of USA, Canada, France, UK, etc. In those countries, the unemployment rate is measured carefully, and most employed persons are wage employees. State funds are now used to promote a propaganda video of Mr. Biya as a great statesman. Mr. Biya who is now seeking re-election, wants you to believe that you should be happy because most of you are self-employed, that is, you’re CEOs of your own Poverty limited or unlimited. Are we that stupid? Let’s measure our unemployment in a better way.
May God bless you and may God bless Cameroon as we fight for a politically stable and prosperous Cameroon with maximum rate of wage employment.
English Cameroon for a united Cameroon
Serving the nation since 2017
August 30, 2024
