By Boris Esono Nwenfor
Cameroon’s Minister of Forestry and Wildlife, Jules Doret Ndongo, has launched the sixth phase of the Programme for the Sustainable Management of Natural Resources in the South West Region, during a high-level a high-level meeting at the Mountain Hotel in Buea on June 19, 2025.
The programme, co-financed by the Federal Republic of Germany through the German Development Bank (KfW) and the Government of Cameroon, aims to conserve biodiversity hotspots in the region while improving the livelihoods of over 100,000 people in more than 170 forest-dependent communities.
The launch which coincides with the Steering Committee Meeting, and is attended by various stakeholders, and local leaders, focused on validating the 2025 annual work plan, assessing the program’s financial report, and charting a roadmap for the expanded implementation phase. The last steering session took place in Limbe in 2024.
Visible Impact on Communities
Minister Jules Doret Ndongo, while praising the program’s achievements so far, highlighted the visible impacts on communities: “The program has been active on the field and I think the population and local communities are really happy with all our achievements. We have put in place water supply systems, farm to market roads, put in place and organize capacity building seminars or workshops.”
“It’s a very important programme funded by the Federal German Republic and co-financed by the Cameroon government and so far we have been able to improve the livelihood of at least 100,000 people in 171 villages.”
Minister Doret Ndongo equally announced plans to extend activities to all national parks in the South West, including Rumpi Hills and Tofala. He said: “I think this is important and for the next phase we intend to extend our activities in all the national parks in the South West region.”
German Commitment to Biodiversity
Robert Roth, Resident Director of KfW, lauded the significance of Cameroon’s biodiversity. He said: “Mount Cameroon is one of the main hot spots in biodiversity on the globe. So of course for German people, it’s a goal to protect and to conserve this richness and also the splendid flora and fauna but also to bring support to the local population.”
Roth confirmed that the sixth phase would consolidate gains from phase five, extending sustainable forest management approaches to new regions. He praised the program’s decentralized model and said that the exploitation of non-timber forest products would continue to be a strategic priority.
“We are happy to see that the fifth phase was already very successful and we just consolidated that. So the sixth phase now the new upcoming phase will extend the approach to the Rumpi hills but also to Tofala which is of course a new opportunity as well,” Robert Roth added. “We are also happy as German Development Corporation to see that the approach which is a quite decentralized approach will be repeated and taken beyond.”
Traditional Authorities welcome the sixth phase
Traditional authorities have welcomed the launch of the sixth phase with great expectations. HRM Chief Ndongo Emmanuel Molunge of Bonakanda recounted the positive impact on his people
“We have one who has benefited from scholarships. She is now working with Mount Cameroon National Park. We also have beekeeping which is an activity that the people are doing now. We have hundreds of bee hives given to community people and some of the hives are already colonized and they are using the honey at home and also for finances,” said HRM Chief Ndongo Emmanuel Molunge.
He emphasized the need to go further: “There is one problem that we have over the years that has not been realized – the problem of water. We don’t have potable water in our village and over the years we have been trying to see how to drill boreholes but we have not succeeded.”
“The second expectation is farm-to-market routes because we have a very big farming population but we don’t have roads to transport our products from the farm to the village or the market. Thirdly we are a village that does not have a community hall. We feel that the project can assist us in constructing a modern community hall for the village.”
In Cameroon, the well-being of communities is often deeply intertwined with the health of their environment. As the fourth most biodiverse country in Africa, Cameroon’s rich array of ecosystems and species undergird its economy, providing its people with food, income, protection against natural disasters, and more.
However, this abundance is in jeopardy, with declines in the extent of ecosystems and populations of species. 9000 species of flora have been registered in the country of which 156 are endemic. Equally, 297 species of mammals, (10 endemic), 849 species of birds (11 endemic), 373 species of reptiles and amphibians (19 endemic) and 451 species of fish have been catalogued.
