Transparency Snapshot

One of the potentially richest countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Cameroon is known mainly as an oil producer, but it also holds rich mineral deposits and has seen a recent revival in the mining sector. Though Cameroon has been developing its extractive industries sector for three decades, the benefits of this wealth for economic and social development remain to be seen.

Cameroon ranked 131 on the UN Human Development Index for 2010 and 30.1 percent of its population lives on less than $2 a day (World Bank, 2007), despite an average GDP per capita of $1,142. With life expectancy at 51 and an adult literacy rate of around 71 percent, indicators for Cameroon are mixed. But the nation of 20 million people continues to lag behind world averages and its own potential by many measures.
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Extractive Industries

A complex production sharing system, combined with taxes, has led to a high percentage of government oil revenue when compared to other oil producing countries—between 67 and 70 percent of the value of oil exports.

Cameroon is host to the Chad-Cameroon pipeline. Built in 2002, it is one of the largest infrastructure projects in the region and carries oil extracted in Chad to the offshore export terminal in Kribi, Cameroon. The government is a shareholder in pipeline operations on the Cameroonian side and by the end of 2010 it had collected $284 million in pipeline receipts since operations began in 2003. These figures are not yet included in Cameroon's EITI reports.
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