(Business in Cameroon) – The Steering Committee for the Rice Value Chain Development Project in Cameroon has approved a CFA15 billion budget for 2025 to increase rice production in the Northwest and West regions. This decision was made during a meeting on January 17, 2025, in Bamenda, the capital of the North West.
The project, which costs over CFA 133 billion and is funded by various donors led by the Islamic Development Bank (IDB), also covers the Extreme North region. The goal is to boost local rice production over the next five years, reducing the country’s reliance on imported rice. This would help conserve foreign currency reserves, which are drained each year by rice imports, worsening the country’s trade deficit.
Rice and frozen fish are the main food imports in Cameroon. According to the National Institute of Statistics (INS), rice imports reached CFA 200.8 billion in 2023, a 24% drop from CFA 264.4 billion in 2022. “India remains the top supplier with 55.2% of the market share, followed by Thailand, which saw a 2% increase in market share from the previous year. Together, these two countries provided 90.1% of the rice imported into Cameroon in 2023,” the INS report says.
