Nkoemvone’s colonial cacao station: a legacy of ambition and decay in Cameroon

In Nkoemvone, southern Cameroon, a sprawling site of over three hundred hectares—only ten of which are developed—stretches across the landscape. A paved road cuts through it, passing dilapidated buildings and a sign identifying it as the “Nkoemvone multipurpose agricultural station,” under the authority of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. The structures are heavily worn, yet the station remains partially active, primarily in agronomic research: multiplying and distributing cacao seedlings has become its main activity.

Founded in 1944, this place stands as one of the major remnants of colonial modernity. The “Nkoemvone Cacao Experimental Station” embodies what historian Hélène Blais calls the “garden-object” within the French colonial empire—particularly during the 20th century when plant reproduction became the dominant pursuit. Though less documented than other colonial stations like Bambey in Sénégal, it nonetheless shared their mission: to migrate, displace, introduce, and relocate plants—in this case, cacao varieties—aiming to transform colonized societies. Its history ultimately proved brief, and its ambitions clashed with the challenges of an independent Cameroon.

The economic and social crisis of 1929, though softened in colonized Africa by the metropolitan buffer, triggered a profound shift in French colonial policies. It condemned the trade economy and pushed the colonial state to manage infrastructure and export crops while also addressing the living conditions of colonized populations. Thus, the colonial state became “developmentalist.” This turning point was confirmed at the Brazzaville conference from January 30 to February 8, 1944, chaired by Charles de Gaulle, which pursued a dual objective: reviving the French economy and improving the lot of the colonized through planned development.

“Popularizing high-yielding subjects”

On agricultural matters, a dominant narrative emerged: African societies were seen as essentially peasant, so improving their lot required boosting yields through massive investment in farming. This logic led to a proliferation of agronomic research institutions across the French empire, with Cameroon serving as a key observation ground. By decree of June 8, 1944, the governor of French Cameroon, Eugène Paul Carras, dissolved the Technical Council for Agriculture and Livestock and replaced it with three separate services: the Agriculture Service, the Livestock Service, and the Forestry Service.

This reorganization, more than a simple administrative measure, aimed to give agriculture a dedicated service. According to agronomist Pierre Barthe, former head of Cameroon’s Agriculture Service, in a 1946 report, this new service was structured into several sub-services. One consisted primarily of agronomic research institutions, including three experimental stations at Dschang, Maroua, and Nkoemvone. All these stations were created between the two world wars, except for the Nkoemvone cacao experimental station, established in 1944 following the June 8 reforms. It is therefore the quintessential product of the modernization of colonialism that emerged during the interwar period.

The Nkoemvone cacao experimental station was implemented gradually. According to agronomist Raymond Juliat, head of the Agriculture Service in 1944, it was not initially formalized by any text and its role was “the selection of cacao trees to popularize only high-yielding subjects.” In 1947, three hundred hectares were requisitioned for its location, but construction stalled due to a lack of labor and materials, and “the absence of an overall plan.” Despite these difficulties, in 1948 the colonial administration confirmed its mission to encompass all research and experimentation work, before officially instituting it through a regulatory text the following year. Construction then began, financed by the cacao fund.

Forced labor?

However, setting up the Nkoemvone experimental station faced significant practical hurdles. As Jean Braudeau, the station director, noted in his 1949 annual report, a shortage of staff prevented building roads, creating a nursery, and planting 15 hectares of crops. He managed to recruit some temporary workers from a nearby village, often paid by the task. Whether this labor was voluntary or forced remains difficult to determine: although High Commissioner Renée Hoffherr began banning forced recruitment upon his arrival in 1947, Cameroonian historian Léon Kaptué reminds us that the French administration continued to mobilize forced labor until 1949.

To attract workers from beyond the region, the colonial administration chose to build housing within the station—a common practice among colonial administrations, as historian Gwendolyn Wright points out. These workers were expected not only to help construct the station but also to participate in agronomic research activities.

Agronomist Achille Pacilly, who succeeded Jean Braudeau as head of the experimental station in 1949, revealed that a labor camp was first established, consisting of twenty huts made from local materials. By 1956, fifty-eight permanent houses were built, housing 130 to 140 families a few years later. The advent of the labor camp thus solved the workforce problem.

Alongside these lodgings, residences for senior staff were also erected. Added to these were research laboratories, a potable water supply and electricity for the site, the construction of an infirmary, and numerous large-scale facilities such as nurseries and gardens for cacao variety collections. In short, the station was a site where living spaces and research spaces were closely intertwined. The station’s development was completed in 1959, on the eve of the country’s independence.

A tool of colonial propaganda

Beyond being a place of science, the Nkoemvone experimental station also functioned as an instrument of colonial propaganda for the French administration. This propaganda unfolded in a particular Cameroonian context—the 1950s, marked by violent repression by the French army against Cameroonian nationalists. During the first phase of this conflict, whose brutality was most evident in the Bassa country, in southern Cameroon’s cacao-growing region, the Nkoemvone experimental station became a tool for winning hearts and minds.

In 1958, André Boyer, a journalist and head of the propaganda service of the French administration in the country, distributed a film titled “The Cacao Center of Nkoemvone” among the population. It was part of a general repertoire of techniques aimed, in his own words, “at bringing the strayed back to normal life and convincing the masses of the truly nationalist and sincere action of the Cameroonian government.”

The experimental station was also used by the French colonial administration to showcase its benefits in Cameroon. This is evident from the Report of the United Nations Visiting Mission to Trust Territories in West Africa (1958) on Cameroon under French administration. The writers and observers sent by the United Nations inspected the station on November 19, 1958, and stated: “(…) The activities of this station consist essentially of selecting the best cacao varieties and producing cuttings for distribution to planters. The hope is to replace the current low-yielding trees in plantations with elite plants. The station has already produced good results.”

This use of the station as a propaganda tool was taken up after independence by the government of the first Cameroonian president, Ahmadou Ahidjo, this time in the service of international prestige. Thus, in the station’s report covering 1961-1962, we learn that the institution had received visits from the United States ambassador to Cameroon, the German ambassador, and three African heads of state: Madagascar’s Philibert Tsiranana, Gabon’s Léon Mba, and Chad’s François Tombalbaye. Also came the director of the National School of Administration in Paris and the World Bank director for Africa, among others. However, this international visibility serving the Cameroonian government also marked the beginning of a gradual decline.

French oversight until 1975

After the independences of 1960, the new states, including Cameroon, signed agreements with France providing “for applied research, an agreement on programs, mixed financing for operations, a quasi-commitment from France for investment financing, and within this general framework, the establishment of specific conventions detailing the modalities for setting up and managing specialized institutes whose presence was deemed necessary.”

These agreements allowed France to continue administering the station through, for example, the appointment of former colonial agronomists such as Jacques Liabeuf as station director. As noted by Jean Gaillard, Hocine Khelfaoui, and Jean Nya Ngatchou in a text published in 2000, the new Cameroonian state found its interest, thus being able to concentrate its resources on higher education and training while leaving scientific research to France. French oversight only ended in 1975.

In the following decades, the station entered a period of decline, worsened by the economic and social crisis of the 1980s, which severely affected Cameroonian agronomic research, which “experienced a serious financial situation and a change in the structure of its budget,” according to the aforementioned authors, leading to a stagnation of research within it.

Extractivist ambitions become an obstacle

The crisis affecting Cameroonian agricultural research extended to the country’s entire scientific research. During its most acute phase, from 1990 to 1996, “research programs funded nationally were stopped; only programs and projects benefiting from external financial support continued more or less normally, due to delays in salary payments to staff.” This situation led to reduced funding, researcher discouragement linked to salary devaluation, and the abandonment of many programs, including those on cacao at the Nkoemvone station, where scientific activity came to a near halt.

Around the turn of the 1990s, the station was transformed into a multipurpose agronomic research station, placed under the supervision of the Institute of Agricultural Research for Development (Irad), created by presidential decree in 1996 and reorganized in 2002. This restructuring did not improve the institution’s situation, which continued to deteriorate. To the gradual degradation caused by the economic crisis were added natural causes, worsening the state of disrepair at the Nkoemvone station. On March 17, 2006, an article titled “Will the Nkoemvone station recover?” revealed that a violent storm a few days earlier had destroyed the areas reserved for plant trials, damaged the administrative block, and ravaged many homes. Since then, the situation has not improved.

Paradoxically, the very size of the site, inherited from the station’s extractivist ambitions as a place for producing knowledge about cacao and transforming the environment, now constitutes an obstacle to its rehabilitation due to insufficient resources. This relative state of abandonment is not solely explained by the state’s disengagement, justified by successive crises and natural hazards. It also reveals more deeply the contradictions of a colonial modernity project whose excessive ambitions and extractivist imaginaries clash with the far more complex realities of the postcolonial period.