Preparations have begun in Cameroon to set the base in view of carrying out a general national census on agro-pastoral production in the country. Stakeholders under the coordination of the Ministries of Agriculture and Rural Development (MINADER), that of Livestock, Fisheries and Animal Industries (MINEPIA) and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) have up till December 2015 to prepare the ground for the census which is expected to arm decision-makers with viable and up-to-date statistics.

This preparatory work will consist in putting in place administrative procedures, technical documents and an adapted methodology to ease the inventory. Launching the preparatory phase in Yaounde on Wednesday May 14 in the presence of MINEPIA boss, Dr. Taiga and FAO Country Representative, Mai Moussa Abari, MINADER boss, Essimi Menye, said viable and updated agro-pastoral statistics are indispensable for the irreversible second-generation agriculture policy the State has embarked on. Minister Essimi Menye said good governance needs reliable statistics which have a price and that second-generation agriculture needs planning with statistics as an indispensable tool.

“The last available data on agro-pastoral production in the country dates over 30 years ago. We need to re-establish some basic data so that we can conveniently put in place second-generation agriculture,” Mr Menye said.

The project to span through 64 months (February 2014 to May 2019) will gulp in some FCFA 9 billion with over FCFA 8 billion to come from the State and FAO to chip in FCFA 221.5 million alongside technical expertise.

“We are still working towards getting the real budget and being able to certify that we have the whole money needed. However, with the support of FAO, we have been able to launch the preparations of the census and we hope that by the end of this year, we would have all the documentation ready and the budget accepted by the government as well as all the paper work in order to have the full agreement to launch field census,” the Minister noted.

Commenting on his organisation’s input, Mai Moussa Abari said FAO is the implementation agency and technical partner of government because of its expertise in the field. “We will train the staff who will be involved. We will be sharing lessons learnt from other countries that are already involved. We will also be moving unto the operational phase with government in order to make the agro-pastoral census very successful,” Mr Mai Moussa said.