According to the Managing Director of Société de modernisation de la riziculture de Yagoua (Semry), Marc Samatana, the public agroindustrial company is to start, as of 2015, the rehabilitation of 18,532 acres of land devastated by flooding that occurred in rice zones in northern Cameroon in 2012.

This restoration of cultivatable land will make it possible to go beyond the 27,181 acres farmed in 2013, which only yielded 80,000 tonnes of unshelled rice last year, most of which was sold to Nigeria.

Annual rice demand in Cameroon is around 300,000 tonnes. Facing such miniscule production levels and the local under-consumption of the said produce due to uncompetitive prices, Cameroon imports approximately 120 billion FCfa per annum, mostly from Thailand.