Camer360

Cameroon’s mid-term check on its “Vision 2035” strategy shows the country drifting off course on industrialization—the plan’s second pillar—according to economist Narcisse Palissy Chassem Tchatchum. In a new book, Le train de vie de l’État: comment les dépenses publiques influent sur l’ambition d’émergence du Cameroun à l’horizon 2035, the GECAM deputy executive director (No. 1) argues that the current trajectory will not deliver the promised structural transformation without a sharp acceleration in factory-floor growth.

The original roadmap (set in 2010) targeted a rise in manufacturing value added from 14.5% of GDP to 19.7% by 2024 and 25% by 2035. Instead, using World Bank data and his own calculations, Chassem finds the indicator slipped to 13.9% in 2024—evidence, he says, that Cameroon’s industrial base is eroding rather than consolidating. To catch up, he estimates the economy now needs industrial output to expand by roughly 5.5% per year through 2035—more than double the pace initially required (about 2.2% annually).

That gap matters because industrialization underpins the broader Vision 2035 promise: (1) upper-middle-income status (over US$4,000 per capita), (2) a 25% industrial share of GDP, and (3) a poverty rate cut to 10%. With the manufacturing share moving in the wrong direction, the plan’s foundations are weakened and timelines come into question.

The author urges a course correction: disciplined public spending, faster project execution, and a pipeline of bankable, export-oriented manufacturing investments—from building materials and agro-processing to light engineering—paired with reliable energy, logistics and standards enforcement. Without that pivot, he warns, Vision 2035 risks becoming an aspirational slogan rather than a deliverable program.