Complaints are frequently heard that the African farmer, the small trader, the everyday person has no means of getting the funds needed to improve his farm, to expand his trade, or to pay his child's school fees. It is often alleged that the low-literacy peasants and workers in a partially-monetised economy have no desire to save, even if there was any surplus money, and that in any case there are no institutions in which to accumulate or to redistribute their savings. It is argued that the banks fail to meet their needs because it is so difficult to obtain loans, while the private money-lenders, often operating illegally, almost always charge exorbitant rates of interest that discourage all but the most desperate of borrowers.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. African Studies Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to African Studies Review. In the history of the cooperative movement in anglophone Cameroon, women's cooperatives have played a particularly small role. Although the first cooperatives opened in the anglophone portion of the country in the 1920s and a small-scale women's project was attempted in the 1950s, the currently existing cooperatives for women began only in 1970. Today, in terms of number of members, amount of capitalization, scale of economic transactions, number of viable (or even operating) organizations, or any other measure, the women's cooperatives account for only a small portion of the total cooperative movement.1 In early 1970, beginning in the southern, coastal portions of the then West Cameroon state (the anglophone state in the bilingual Federal Republic of Cameroon) several governmental bodies and the women's wing of the Cameroon National Union (WCNU) began to organize women in urban areas in palm oil cooperatives. A number of societies came into being in a short period of time and the idea soon spread from its original site in the Southwest Province to the Northwest Province. Most of the original structures established in the coastal area have failed, but those in the Northwest Province continue to exist, though with a mixed record of success. Although in many respects the experiments in the Southwest and Northwest were similar, there are differences in purpose, governmental involvement, and social situation that may be related to the differences in success. Interviews with Cameroon officials and foreign assistance workers, archival and documentary material, and personal observations during two periods of research in Cameroon (1975-76 and 1980-81) have provided the data upon which to compare and analyze these two experiences. THE SOUTHWEST PROVINCE EXPERIENCE Specifically women's cooperatives have very little history in the Southwest Province prior to the palm oil scheme, although women have been active in the cooperative movement. Virginia DeLancey (1978) has studied women's participation in credit unions and Mark DeLancey (1978) has indicated some aspects of the role of women in the more traditional rotating credit societies (njangi) and ethnic savings African
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